Download speed was around 2,000 K.  Did some web surfing, opened tixati to check on my file, download speed has dropped to less than 1 K.  My connection is fine and my browsing speed is normal.  I tried a very well-seeded torrent and got only slightly better results, around 100 K.  I am using default settings.  What gives?

perhaps your ISP throttled your connection?  browsing speeds would be fine usually when they decide to do some traffic shaping