As corny as this sounds, as someone who did tech support for a cable company for a while, and have done a lot of "I have lag/slow speeds" calls...
Do you have an Anti-Virus program? If no, there's your problem. If yes, and you paid for it, it's probably too bloated/restricted and there's your problem. If yes, and it's free, it was probably loaded with spyware or something and is bad, and there's your problem.
Seriously, that's the answers we'd give...and then the management would wonder why everyone hates the cable company.
Not here to start a fight but I HIGHLY disagree with this statement. Wherever you got your education is where they taught this fantasized textbook response. I agree the average computer (illiterate) person shouldn't be without protection however I have NOT had the need for any virus/firewall protection EVER! It slows down the computer, bloats it, and hogs the memory. I suppose the reason is because i'm an advanced computer person. The simple reality is, if people were to actually WATCH what their doing and NOT download anything from untrusted sources - they would simply be fine. The truth is that people just blindly go to a website and clicky click click.. Even AFTER the virus gets downloaded, the person has to open it! Jeez... time to start paying attention. When that security box pops up, read very carefully. Chances are that if you weren't trying to intentionally open an application - it's a virus. I think windows needs to take a few hints from mac or linux though. I'v used all 3 OS's and (no - lets not start a flame war here), there are advantages and disadvantages to each. Virus awareness just happens to be the better end on a mac or linux box. If you absolutely feel the need to be protected, give ZoneAlarm a try. A lot of people would suggest Norton but as a PC tech - its a load of crap. We were always fixing computers that had Norton.
Back to the topic; I agree that it's probably not your internet. Most likely a software issue on your computer. That being said, your ISP could also be hindering your experience. Highly unlikely but there are limits and redirects that you're not aware of. The only way to tell is do a tracert - but this is really only for advanced users. If you know what DOS (command line) is then you can go to your command prompt, type "tracert vgcollect.com" (without the quotes) and post the results here. To copy the results from a command line/terminal, right click -> mark, highlight the prompt, right click again. The selection is a little different as it's not your usual copy selection. You have to highlight the whole window by dragging to the bottom of the window, then drag fully to the right of the window.
After seeing this response, it will be able to tell us if it's your software or internet that's causing the problem.
Sorry for the long read.