Internet speed trouble

[Ironside]

The past few days my internet conection has occationally been extremely slow and I was wondering if it's possible to check the supposed internet speed and use on the computer, to see if someone is leeching on it (can people do that?) or if it's time to complain on the broadband supplier.

For example writing this took me about 20 min due to the extremly slow loading times, but halfway through the waiting time after posting my speed goes up to normal and the net is working properly

[R'as al Ghul]

If you have a dsl connection then you can use one of the many speed
tests. Just google for "dsl speed test". It will return your transfer rates.

To check which processes run on your computer you use the
Task-Manager/Processes-Tab. Her you can see which Process
takes how much resources and CPU-time. If one of those
is unfamiliar, google the name.

To check your Internet-Traffic, use your firewall. Usually it
logs the Traffic and which Programs have access atm.
I'm not sure that this does work with the XP-Firewall.

If you find nothing do a full virus scan and run ad-aware
or spybot-search & destroy.

To answer your initial question, it is possible that people leech your bandwith.

[Proletariat]

Here's a bandwidth testing site.

http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

[drone]

Do you have a wireless router? If so, your neighbors might be leaching your bandwidth with pr0n and music downloads. You should be able to access the router and check to see who is connected. Easiest short term fix for this is to filter on MAC address, so only you can get through. Also, change the password on your router and don't allow router control through the wireless connection (unless that is the only way you can connect to it).

Other than that, the only thing I can think of is a worm infection or malicious control. You are in Sweden, right? I heard there were some cartoon-related DDOS attacks going on, maybe your ISP is having problems with that.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Have you got a bandwidth limit, and do you download warez? If so, then that might explain it. Apparently, some companies will switch your connection down to dialup speeds once you exceed your limit.

Trust me, i know...

[Ironside]

Broadband through cable, 100 mbit.

No major downloads last month and the taskmanager's network tab shows no leeching of capacity. No loss of RAM either, but have'nt had time to check all running tasks yet.
It's just that getting less than 0.01% of max capacity seems common.


Taking the speed tests never got higher spikes than 3%. Extremly fluctuating speeds when doing multiple tests.
And at the time I was posting the first post, I wouldn't even be able to open that bandwith testing site.

No luck yet with the anti-virus but I couldn't make a full test before I went away for the weekend (on another comp right now).

My guess it that it's something on my comp that make my comp re-route my capacity before it even gets to my computer and leaves me with the left-overs.
Not sure what that is in computer terms.