What's your internet speed?
Hotsauce84
8,450 Posts
For some reason, my computer's running reeeeal slow these days. Pages take longer to load and DL's aren't as fast as they were a few months ago (or at least it seems that way). This seems to be the case whether I plug into the modem or use wireless. I think my connection is password protected so I'm pretty sure it's not neighbors using my line, plus I live in a house that's at least 15-20 feet from any other houses.I called Qwest DSL and they said they're showing a strong connection, but they had me run a speed test anyways. I'm showing 1.307 mbps download and 0.78 mbps upload. Is this average for a home connection?Granted, I usually have 3 Firefox windows with a total of approximately 13-15 tabs open at any given time, but I seem to have the same issues even when I only open a couple tabs.Any ideas? I upgraded to 4gb of RAM thinking that would help, but no dice.
Comments
That was my guess. I have an older computer I upgraded from 500MB to 1GB and it made a big difference.
I have DSL - speed test shows 1.053 MB download and 0.3 MB upload.
I know you said you tried both, but I have had interference with my phone lines and wireless cause speed problems for me. One was I had my computer/wireless card too close to a power strip that had a bunch of adapters plugged into it - slowed down my speed and made my wireless drop a ton.
Another is I have a shitty ass phone jack that was wired by Alexander Graham Bell himself... sometimes it will get loose, cause my house phone to not work at all and slow my DSL to a snails pace.
Hopefully that is helpful.
What site did you use to measure the speed test? I have been using http://www.speedtest.net. The nice feature is it will give a local comparison of avg. speeds of the various providers.
My Comcast account while connected to the wireless router is clocking in at 7.6 Mb/s downloading and 2.8 Mb/s uploading in PDX. If I go to a wired connection my download rate shoots up to 18 to 19 Mb/s.
DSL is going to be slower than cable. Cable will be definitely slower than FIOS (I can only dream of fiber lines to my door in Portland).
If the problem is not external to your house a couple of things to look at are:
1) How old is the wireless router? I had my last linksys get fusted after a power surge damaged it. It connected and worked on a basic level but it was like a bird that had its wing shot off... it was flapping but not flying.
2) I have had a problem with squirrels chewing on the damn cable line witch in turn caused some issues. They have replaced the line twice now.
3) DSL usually requires filters on the phones (those little phone jack connectors that came with your modem) in the house to prevent feedback on the lines. Did you add a phone and not filter it?
4) Not as likely since you have the same problem with wireless and your ethernet connection, but could the card in your computer dying?
EDIT[/b]: 5) Do you have a home alarm system? Depending on how that is wired into the phone system it can cause interference. When my mom was running DSL we couldn't put filters on the alarm splice so we had to have someone come in and change how the splice hit the system (I don't remember exactly how, but it involved having the phone company rejigger the connection).
Anyway, short of actually being there to troubleshoot, that is the best I can offer right now.
Good luck.
your connection is crazy slow herm..
side note/hijack
I heard in Australia there average connect speed is like 100mbps, is that true?
What Comcast plan do you have? I can never get over 2 Mb/s download in Portland.
twoply,
We have the standard account here in PDX and we live in SE in the West Morland area. My family has two other connections in the city in NE Portland and they are clocking in the same speed as me or faster. I believe we are all guaranteed 12Mbs download speeds.
Comcast in Portland has been upgrading hardware upstream from our houses. But I am not sure if it has been completed city wide yet.
One thing you can do is trade in your modem (if you are renting one from comcast) at the local comcast location. Some of the older modems will not accept the new firmware updates.
If that doesn't help. I would contact comcast support and have them test the line. Explain that you are not getting the speed they are advertising.
I had two problems with my connection that they had to come out and fix:
1) Squirrels were chewing the line to the house.
2) We had an unterminated cable connection in the basement. If you have split a cable line and one of the connections is not terminated it can affect your connection.
There might be something else going on, like bad cabling or there are too many people using your stretch of cable.
Good Luck...
Herm,
Depends on who the local providers are. Comcast has some pretty sick speeds for cable. If you have Verizon FIOS in your area the speeds on that are beyond vomitous. I gave up on DSL (Qwest) about 7 years ago, they too damn slow and I had all kinds of issues with support.
Right now I am running Comcast Cable TV, Internet, and Phones for about $128/month. We have full HD digital TV (but I don't have any of the pay channels like HBO), my internet is blazingly fast, and I have free long distance (local and national) in the US and Puerto Rico. For those I want to talk with outside the US, I use Skype.
Do you use McAfee or any programs that screen your internet usage for viruses? My sister had this whole McAfee suite on her laptop which would slow her connection down and even kill it sometimes. Once I removed it her speed was fine.
wow - i have McFee and its doesnt hurt my speed.
I was definitely getting closer to 6 or 7 Mbps a few months ago, I have no idea what's going on right now. We've been having problems with the cable signal as well, so squirrels might very well have something to do with it. What's weird is that we get over 7 Mbps upload speeds regularly, which seems higher than average.
Thread hijack - I love your avatar, what's it from?
seatown we blog hard
twoply,
I would definitely swap the cable modem out (its free to do because you are paying a monthly fee for it already in your bill). Get the support number from the Comcast.com side of the company (the comcast.net will try and force you to email or chat) before you remove the modem. You will need to call comcast to register the new modem before you can surf again.
Once they have the new modem working have them do a remote line test and see if the modem or line are operating out of parameters. If they find a problem then request that a tech come and fix the "problem." They will give you a spiel about how if the problem is your fault you will get charged for the visit, I haven't been charged yet.
Hope this helps.
Grafwritah,
The avatar I got by following the link on a comment someone left on my photobucket account (I didn't know such a feature existed). I was looking through her photos and saw the guy in the mask getting punched and thought it would be a great as my avatar. I wish I knew where it came from it is funny as hell.
Man your Comcast connection blew mine away on upload speed but I am not feeling your Ping Time's elbows
What comcast internet package are you using? I used the next one up from standard for a couple of months and only got up to 22 Mb/s. I saved myself the extra $10 a month and get nearly identical speeds.
Yeah, they gave me the spiel. Turns out it was sort of my fault. We were using a cheap cable splitter when we should have been using a high-tech Comcast one (apparently theirs has a special computer chip inside). Still, the guy said "no charge." Turns out he was a record collector too, with a couple thousand pieces, mostly rock and psych. We chatted about shops and shows while he replaced our cables and splitter.
Here's where we're at now:
Thanks for the advice, hoLmeses!
tampa fios... guess its was faster then I thought
Awesome, you are getting better download times than me now.
Yeah, I had a cable tv connection in the basement that wasn't terminated that was giving me problems. I totally forgot we got rid of the 2nd TV and it was just sitting there raw.