My connection speed

Hi I hope someone out there can help. I live in Cyprus and have had adsl installed so i could use Direct Connect. I have to use Direct Conect in passive mode, which is ok, but the fastest download speed I can obtain is only about 2KB/sec which is hopeless.
when I try downloads from other sites - eg download.com I can get about 60KB/sec.
Can you give me any clues as to why Direct Connect downloads are so slow?
I also use MSN Messenger to keep in contact with friends in the UK but when they try to send me picture files I get the following message.
"We could not send this file because the connection is blocked. Please contact your system administrator or Internet service provider; they may be able to enable file transfers."
My internet provider here is Cytanet and the adsl supplier is NetRunner. It's a dial up connection firstly to Cytanet then to NetRunner. Their tech support is hopeless, and I am often fobbed off with all sorts of nonsense and just get no where. Any Ideas on this one?? I had the adsl installed about six months ago and at that time I could sometimes achieve 20kb/sec using Direct Connect which was almost acceptable, but now it's down to 2kb/sec I think I'd do better with a standard modem connection.
Apart from learning Greek so I can communicate better can you offer any advice??

 

i would try a test at a place like

www.pcpitstop.com


click "internet connection" under "test my pc" in the upper left hand corner