Unsually slow Cable Internet

Hi,

I have Armstrong Digital Cable's Zoom100 package, and I'm fairly happy with it, but I was talking to a friend who also has Zoom100. He says hes gets 130+ Kb/s on downloads. I always get between 12-15 Kb/s and was wondering what I could do to get a faster connection.

I have 768 mb of Ram, 120 GB hard drive, AMD Athlon XP 2600+, 2.13 GHz. So I think that my computer is okay.

I have no spyware as I run Ad-aware regularly. I also run an anti-virus regularly. My computer is on a LAN with my dad's computer, and he gets the same bitrate as me. Also, When I go to sites that have a broadband speed tester, my connection is always pretty far under the target for Cable, and its closer to Dial-up than Cable.

I was just wondering what the problem could be, as my friend who has the exact same service as me gets so much higher bitrate than me, and his computer is also just average, not anything thats cranked up beyond your average computer.

Thanks for your help.

 

Make sure your incoming cable is not split too many times prior to it getting to your cable modem...

 

Go straight to the cable modem and test it.

Having a router in there only complicates troubleshooting.

 

I have just recently reloade windows 98 on a pc that is part of a network. And my home page loads unusually slow and when it finally does I can not go to another page be cause it takes so long that the page times out and i get the cannot find server error. The other computers on the network have the same OS and get to the internet fine. Any suggestions?

 

What type of router do you have on the lan?

 

It is a cable router

 

I'd complain to your cable provider and have them test your line and connection. You are paying for high speed connection, you ought to recieve it.

Did they supply the cable modem? If so, demand that they come out with a laptop and prove that the connection is good.

 

I meant to say it was a linksys router. And it worked until I reinstalled the operating system!

 

I believe I will switch out this computer with another one and see what that does!

 

If it worked fine before reinstall your OS try these things:
1) Ensure that no proxy options are enabled for your browser. Not even "automatically detect settings". In IE this is in tools -- internet options -- connections -- LAN settings. Firefox it's in Tools -- options -- general -- connection settings.

If this fails, reinstall your network card with the most recent drivers.