Internet connection speed troubleshooting

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by sbattisti, Sep 22, 2010.

  1. sbattisti

    sbattisti Private E-2

    Hi folks,

    I could use some advice troubleshooting an Internet performance issue. I have Comcast broadband, and am expected to get around 6 Mbps for download speeds. I have a d-link modem and a Linksys wireless router, and my main PC connects via wireless.

    I've been using this setup for about a year now, and have always had fine performance. However, in the past month or so, I've found that suddenly my performance is very poor, sporadically, to the point where occasionally it will even fail to load Google. In particular, it's really noticeable when I'm on YouTube or something. It takes five to ten minutes to load a 3-minute flash video. When this slow-down happens, my connection still appears valid, as far as Windows is concerned.

    When I run speed tests using various broadband speed tests, I often come up with speeds around 6 Mbps. But then, periodically, I'll get results like 1 Mbps.

    I spoke with Comcast, and at that time they were getting a fine signal from my modem.

    This is a Win 7 64-bit system. I run Spybot Search and Destroy and Lavasoft AdAware regularly.

    Any suggestions for how I could troubleshoot this? One thing that I haven't tried so far is to connect directly to the modem instead of through the wireless router, but could a router problem cause the connection to slow down like this?

    Anyway, I'm moderately technical, but I'm not sure what to try next.

    Thanks!

    Steve
     
  2. rustyjack

    rustyjack MajorGeek

    Last edited: Sep 23, 2010
  3. sbattisti

    sbattisti Private E-2

    Thanks, I will try those tips. I have tried ipconfig release/renew before, and it always works (that is, completes without error), but with no noticeable change.

    When this problem occurs, incidentally, I never get any windows notifications indicating I have a poor wireless signal or anything. Windows always thinks I have a great connection, even when the throughput goes through the floor. :(
     
  4. Caliban

    Caliban I don't need no steenkin' title!

    That might be key. Signal and bandwidth are two different animals: for the most part, signal strength is measured by amplitude, bandwidth by volume. You might try loading a simple network monitor app, try to see if there's any correlation between your local slowdowns and the amount of network capacity.

    I'm leery about ISP support, especially if you don't press them - they usually have rote answers to every question, so you have to pump them with specifics.
     

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