It's faster at the moment, probably because of less trafic.
It was very slow this morning, the only site compared to many that I go to.
I'm on cable, bandwidth is currently 6.06 Mbps and download from server is 777 kb/s.
When I ping any site I get about 24 to 37 ms sending and receiving.
I suspect it is a server somewhere out there that is the cause of it's the Agora servers that slow down at peak times. One never knows how many servers a single message will go through to finally receive the data.
I can't stand slow sites after using a cable that is at 5 Mbps and above.
Again, lots of luck and total success in your upcoming surgery.