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.

[orangat]

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.
......

100 mbit? What exactly do you see in the results?
It should be somewhere in the region of 1.5-3 not 100. Maybe you're only getting 100kbps.

[Papewaio]

Broadband will still share a pipe further down the link with other users. Do you find that you have time of day problems?

Even with a wide pipe while sharing latency will go up as other users get on.

Also there could be fluttering on the link... this is something you would need to get your internet provider to investigate as it would be a router issue at the ISP end... could be slip errors on it or clock issues.

[Ironside]

100 mbit? What exactly do you see in the results?
It should be somewhere in the region of 1.5-3 not 100. Maybe you're only getting 100kbps.

Well I'm paying for getting 100 mbps and before the upgrade (about 2 month ago) to 100 from 10 I've been able to occationally download stuff in speeds higher than 1 megabyte/s. Haven't fully tested the current connection.
As for the tested results it varied from 3200 to 60 kbps, when my speed was high enough to actually make me see those pages.
Doing the same test twice in a row gave 3200 and 600 in download and 1200 and 1800 in upload.
I'm quite certain that the fluctuations isn't supposed to be that extreme (and low).

Saw wrong on the task manager though, it's meassuring the network-card capacity and use.

Broadband will still share a pipe further down the link with other users. Do you find that you have time of day problems?

Even with a wide pipe while sharing latency will go up as other users get on.

Also there could be fluttering on the link... this is something you would need to get your internet provider to investigate as it would be a router issue at the ISP end... could be slip errors on it or clock issues.

As it's (randomly) considerbly slower than the old 56.6k modem and that I've been able to be alone with 10mbit connection before, unless about 10.000 people suddenly is starting to use the same connection, I think we can rule out that it's because more people is using the same connection.

Checking with the Internet provider is the next step if the troubles remains after cleaning the comp.

[Beirut]

I found simply turning off and on my router box, be it cable or DSL, solved slow net cruising speeds sometimes. Seems like the box jams up and needs to be reset.

Killing cookies and temp-net files also helped.

[orangat]

Well I'm paying for getting 100 mbps and before the upgrade (about 2 month ago) to 100 from 10 I've been able to occationally download stuff in speeds higher than 1 megabyte/s. Haven't fully tested the current connection.
As for the tested results it varied from 3200 to 60 kbps, when my speed was high enough to actually make me see those pages.
Doing the same test twice in a row gave 3200 and 600 in download and 1200 and 1800 in upload.
I'm quite certain that the fluctuations isn't supposed to be that extreme (and low).

Saw wrong on the task manager though, it's meassuring the network-card capacity and use.
..................

LOL What provider and service exactly are you playing for? 100Mbps is waay out of league for normal users using cable/dsl.

If you are in Sweden as per your avatar then you've got to find a local server to test bandwith instead of US website otherwise you'll get poor results.

In any case contact your ISP for help asap, because if you are really paying for 100Mbps then you must be shelling out at least $10,000 every month for that sort of bandwidth.

[Proletariat]

I'm pretty certain he misspoke or misinterpreted the 100MB thing, but I agree a call to your ISP's tech support is in order. They're the ones responsible for your connection speed and if they value you as a customer they should get this straightened out for you, since it already sounds like you've already tried all the Do-It-Yourself options.

[orangat]

Yep. I think he was referring to bandwidth on his fast ethernet nic.

[Ironside]

LOL What provider and service exactly are you playing for? 100Mbps is waay out of league for normal users using cable/dsl.

Optic fiber.

If you are in Sweden as per your avatar then you've got to find a local server to test bandwith instead of US website otherwise you'll get poor results.

I'm aware of that. I only need that speed for less than 1% of the time, but when I need it it's very useful.

In any case contact your ISP for help asap, because if you are really paying for 100Mbps then you must be shelling out at least $10,000 every month for that sort of bandwidth.

About $40-$50 a month.

[Xiahou]

Optic fiber.

I'm aware of that. I only need that speed for less than 1% of the time, but when I need it it's very useful.

About $40-$50 a month.

Interesting, so you're on a fiber network at home with 100Mbps? I couldnt imagine what could be going on with your computer to use all of that up. My guess would be that the 100Mbps would only be your WAN speed and not necessarily the Internet speed.

Does it run better on off-peak hours like very late at night?

[R'as al Ghul]

Broadband through Optic fiber cable, 100Mbps.

...duuuude.

[orangat]

Ah lucky dude. OFC isn't a common option for residential users in US. What did your isp tell you?

[Just A Girl]

The usual problem with Slow internet is a combination of windows.
TTl. Mtu and Rwin.
also black hole's But we will skip those.

now the basic principal is simple.

To acces a web page you need to transfer data to the host and then back to your pc.
The amount of data you can transfer at 1 time is designated by your MTU (maximum transfer unit)
now you always need to jump across a whole host of servers and sub servers to get to your destination.
the amount of hops you take is known as TTL. (time to live)
These basically dictate how many hops you can take to get one place or a nother.

Now heres how it works.

If you have a High value for your MTU.
You could drop packets along the way. Each hop you take and the larger the MTU size The more likley the connection is to drop it.

So you can lower your mtu and increase your ttl.
Giving your connection the opertunaty to make more hops. with smaller packets.
Again. the more hops you take the Greater the chance of a droped packet.

The basic idea is.
You get your MTU as high as you can.
and your TTL as low as you can.
Then you ping your desierd host. ( https://forums.totalwar.org ) for example
And see how many hops it takes how many packets droped excetera.
Then you re adjust again and again Untill you get a Low ping,
no droped packets.
and the least amount of hops were needed.

Then you repeat the whoe process witha number of your fave sites. Or game servers.
and you take the Best over all setting that worked for all of them.

Thus traveling the distance with all the data needed in the least amount of hops.
This is the ONLY way to properly optimize an internet conection.

You can do it within the registry,
But it takes Time patients and you need to know what your doing.

Another option is to get a program called.
tcpoptimizer

This thing is so simple its beond belief.
You simply tell it what connection speed you have.
hit optimize settings at the bottom,
And click ok.

If you think they suck.
You can use it to make your own custom settings and to ping servers as Described above.

and if you still think it sux.
! simple button press and your back to windows defaults.

Winodws TTL defaults Suck.
And windows MTU defaults also suck. Although Both are designed to Prety much guarantee acces to web pages.
They are also Set to be SLOW And deliberate.

Another thing to remember is.
DSL download speeds and upload speeds are Never the same.
Uploads from your pc els where will on avarage be 256Kbs.
And the 512kb's or 1mb's rating only concerns your Download speed.
Although there are plans to increase dsl's Uploads to the same speed as the downloads.


Hope this helps.

[Viking]

...duuuude.

You need to have some advantages when you live in Scandinavia, you know.

[Ironside]

Back home and currently it seems to work as normal.

Interesting, so you're on a fiber network at home with 100Mbps? I couldnt imagine what could be going on with your computer to use all of that up. My guess would be that the 100Mbps would only be your WAN speed and not necessarily the Internet speed.

Does it run better on off-peak hours like very late at night?

Neither could I, that's why I suspected theft or some problems with the provider.
There's no way in hell that I can be shared (AKA equal share 100mbit with others) down to the speed I had.

As mention before I've had 10mbit for myself (and that was when I "only" had 10mbit) at 3 different times so I'm not sharing it with many people if I share (my guess is that if I've got shared and I don't think so, it's with either 5 or 14 households), but it's hard to check as it's not exactly common that the other end got the same speed as you. Never had any internet speed problems before though, the net has been down occationally, but that's another issue.