Realy high pings, what could be cause?

[Sharp161]

Ok I have NTL 10mbit cable and a surfboard 4400 modem I think definatly a surfboard. Ive had NTL and this modem right since the very day they released 512k broadband years ago. Oh and I'm in Northamptonshire.

I've never realy had any problems and I can always download at max speed. Even now on 10mbit I can happily get 1100kb/s + 24 hours a day.

Unfortunatly recently I have been having realy bad problems with Lag in games. I mostly play Diablo2, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Counter Strike. I mostly play diablo and mostly my ping is happily around 40-60 however since playing alot this week I have noticed my ping is way above 1000. At first I realised this was just at peak times and if i played at lunch time it was fine. However it is now 3:50am and i still cant play since my ping is over 1000. At first I blamed this on heavy server load so i tried a few other games such as UT and I have the same problem.

So now I am thinking its something to do with my connection. Could be everyone else in my street is raping their connectiong at 4am as much as they did at 6pm? lol Or could there be a problem somewhere?

Im at a bit of a loss realy if anyone could give me some advice would be greatly apreciated. I was also woundering if anyone else had similar problems?


EDIT: Oh also could someone please enlighten me as to how I can download at max speed then stop my download enter a game and have a stupidly high ping? How can there be enough bandwidth for downloading but not gaming?

Do a couple of traceroutes and post them.