> ping did _this_ Ping is not very informative or accurate. If you run a traceroute, which is also not very accurate, you can get some idea about where the delay appears to be. Is it the DSL segment? Is it somewhere else that traceroute can show you? The nice thing about delays that are this long is that 9000 ms is long enough it won't just be lost in the noise...
It wouldn't be surprising if it's in your DSL, and if your DSL has changed to a lower speed (which looks like it might have happened), then maybe something _is_ wrong with your DSL, or maybe the slower speed is causing traffic backups that weren't a problem when you were getting 512 kbps, or you're getting TCP retransmissions, but maybe the problem is somewhere else in the network.