Internet Problems

[Vinceisg0d]

Hi there,

So I have been having major problems with Shaw. We're paying for apparently "the best in town", yet I lag horribly sometimes.

With nothing else open and no one using bandwidth sometimes it feels like I'm on dialup. =o

Also, I did www.speedtest.org yesterday and received a 1400/900 with 150 ping.

Well, anyway, for one reason or another I reformated, nothing to do with internet but I decided to.

Did the speedtest again and here's what I got:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/348922569.png

A bit of a jump from 1400, I'd say.

Anyway, I was up for 8 hours or so, checked again before bed and it was still the same... Then I woke up, did it again, and noticed internet was shaky. These were my results:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/349229955.png

Here are all the applications I've installed since I formatted:

MSN Messenger
Firefox
Warcraft 3
Winamp
AdobeReader
Soundblaster X-FI Drivers
ATI Display Drivers
StuffPlug 3 for MSN Messenger
AdobeFlash Player
WinRAR
So, any ideas? Let me know any information you need.

 

[JackMDS]

Make sure that your TCP/IP is optimized to the type of connection.

Optimizing the TCP/IP Stack - http://www.ezlan.net/Internet_Speed.html

For Vista use this, TCP Optimizer - http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

Measure the "Speed" by doing a large File transfer.

No good? Complain to the ISP Insist thta they would come to your place and check the output at the Modem.

Otherwise there nothing anyone else can do for you.

 

[Vinceisg0d]

What would cause me to jump that far in bandwidth overnight, though?

Did the fixes, then tried downloading this:

http://www.download.com/3001-2...3e59d7c3b8dc68d704daf8

Not breaking 125KB/s.

I know this connection should have the potential of 1MB/s+ (it used to, all the time.)

 

[JackMDS]

Try to avoid temporarily loading the applications that use the Internet (Like IM and WOW).

 

[Cutthroat]

Shaw is cable internet and the your bandwidth will be shared with your neighbors. If you live in an area with lots of people that are using up bandwidth you are going to get slowdowns, especially at high traffic times. Try a speed test at 3AM and see what kind of results you get.

 

[Paperdoc]

We're on DSL, not cable, but we see a similar problem on occasion. It appears this is the sequence. At a clean start the modem establishes a data transfer speed with the host. If something causes too many errors requiring re-transmission of packets, the modem and host agree to slow down the speed to compensate for the poor signal. If it happens again, they slow down again. There seems to be no system for speeding up again when errors do not occur. So eventually the system drops down to a really low speed. A complete disconnect, reset and re-connect gets back to the default high-speed configuration. Note that many systems will not reset completely with a short disconnect - they treat it as a temporary interruption and re-establish using the old addresses and parameters - so you may need to disconnect for at leat 10 to 20 minutes.

We had a lot of this for a while and eventually tracked it down to a dirty contact in a connector. Fixed that and problem disappeared.

By the way, check with your ISP's tech service dept. Many modern modems are "smart" and they keep track of signal levels and transmission speeds. (These are adjusted according to error rates). They also have a small web server built in so that any browser can see that info. You just need the IP address and default password for the modem, and you can look at your own modem from your browser. Get the tech guys to tell you what readings to expect, and what values would tell you there is a problem. Then you can check and see whether the signals are OK or weak, and whether they are OK most of the time but experience occasional glitches. Some tech service depts. can use their equipment to run frequent checks on your modem this way remotely to monitor the problem.