Thread: My internet is an absolute failure.

1)
wireless speed horribly slow (interference, weak signal, etc.)

2)
someone's leaching all your bandwidth cause your wireless is unsecured

3)
your machine is infected with something, and that thing is taking up all your bandwidth


that's all I can think of off the top of my head

Originally Posted by Ynot

1)
wireless speed horribly slow (interference, weak signal, etc.)

My laptop is sitting next to the router; and it says signal strength excellent and it doesn't seem to make a difference when i plug the cable in.

Originally Posted by Ynot

2)
someone's leaching all your bandwidth cause your wireless is unsecured

The wireless is password protected

Originally Posted by Ynot

3)
your machine is infected with something, and that thing is taking up all your bandwidth

It's the same for all machines in the house, which is four; and my laptop is absolutely spotless



It's destroying me.

Originally Posted by Ynot

1)
wireless speed horribly slow (interference, weak signal, etc.)

2)
someone's leaching all your bandwidth cause your wireless is unsecured

3)
your machine is infected with something, and that thing is taking up all your bandwidth


that's all I can think of off the top of my head

1. Not necessarily true, i get 50-60 Mb/s on my wireless, and i'm halfay across the house!

2. That could be a problem

3. This is probably the most likely

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

My laptop is sitting next to the router; and it says signal strength excellent and it doesn't seem to make a difference when i plug the cable in.

Ok, it's not the wireless at fault, then

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

The wireless is password protected

when you say password protected, do you mean wireless encryption is enabled, or just that you need a password to change router settings?
someone could still be using your wireless if it's not secured (encrypted) even if the router asks for a password to access settings

enable WPA encryption if your router supports it, disable SSID broadcasting if it's on, change the SSID name (can be anything, just write it down so you don't forget it)

The WPA encryption looks daunting, but most offer a passphrase option (sort of like a password) - if passphrase is an option, use that, and pick a password
Note down the code it gives back

Originally Posted by Seismosaur

1. Not necessarily true, i get 50-60 Mb/s on my wireless, and i'm halfay across the house!

it depends on the materials in the way of the signal

my parents house is full of steel reinforcement, and wireless is a no go even through one wall (signal gets refracted all over the place by the steel)

also something to note: 8Mb is a max.

I have a decent 1Mb connection and it maxes at about 100 kb/s. So, I went and sleuthed a bit and heres what I found.

8MB =/= 8Mb. A lower case b means bits and upper case means bytes. So, if the speed is 8Mb, you actually just have a 1MB connection.

of course, thats still not too near what you're getting. do the lights on your modem flash like mad even when you're not using the internet?

Originally Posted by Ynot

Ok, it's not the wireless at fault, then


when you say password protected, do you mean wireless encryption is enabled, or just that you need a password to change router settings?
someone could still be using your wireless if it's not secured (encrypted) even if the router asks for a password to access settings

enable WPA encryption if your router supports it, disable SSID broadcasting if it's on, change the SSID name (can be anything, just write it down so you don't forget it)

The WPA encryption looks daunting, but most offer a passphrase option (sort of like a password) - if passphrase is an option, use that, and pick a password
Note down the code it gives back

OK, I've disabled wireless, and am just using a cable now, and it remains slow.

Originally Posted by arby

8MB =/= 8Mb. A lower case b means bits and upper case means bytes. So, if the speed is 8Mb, you actually just have a 1MB connection.

deduct another 5% as well for overhead (not all the information in a TCP/IP packet is useful data, the packets also contain source & dest. IP's, parity bits, various flags, etc.)

but the speeds he's quoting are less than 56K, so something's going on

Originally Posted by arby

also something to note: 8Mb is a max.

I have a decent 1Mb connection and it maxes at about 100 kb/s. So, I went and sleuthed a bit and heres what I found.

8MB =/= 8Mb. A lower case b means bits and upper case means bytes. So, if the speed is 8Mb, you actually just have a 1MB connection.

of course, thats still not too near what you're getting. do the lights on your modem flash like mad even when you're not using the internet?

Yes the lights seem to be flashing alll the time, on the router.

Hmm, I'll check up on the MB Mb thing, but still im well slower.


I'm currently trying to connect to a game, downloading at 5kb/s. shiver.

turn off the router for a couple of minutes, then plug it back in
this will clear the router of all temporary information and force clients to requery for an IP

btw, I didn't ask before,
but your not using P2P or similar on any other machine are you?

I just took a speedtest online which said:

Download speed-143kb/s
Upload speed-176kb/s


I have never ever been even above 80 at very best, so that seems optimistic.. or am i missing something.

Originally Posted by Ynot

turn off the router for a couple of minutes, then plug it back in
this will clear the router of all temporary information and force clients to requery for an IP

btw, I didn't ask before,
but your not using P2P or similar on any other machine are you?

OK, I'll unplug and replug; is there anything I should do once I've rebooted it?


There is no p2p on any machine but mine, and mine is usually not turned on.

It isn't on now.

Originally Posted by Ynot

it depends on the materials in the way of the signal

my parents house is full of steel reinforcement, and wireless is a no go even through one wall (signal gets refracted all over the place by the steel)

My house is made of concrete.

std::

Originally Posted by Seismosaur

My house is made of concrete.

exterior walls, maybe
but internally?

any speed difference?

No, well I'm averaging around 18kb/s now.. but yeah, no real difference.

and your wireless is either disabled or encrypted?

If you can, configure a firewall to stop ALL access to the internet except through a solitary port. Then, configure an application to use that port. If its still slow... I dunno... Try bypassing your router. Like, take the cable thats hooked into the WAN slot and jack it into the back of your PC.

or buy an analogue modem (it'll be faster....)

Originally Posted by Ynot

exterior walls, maybe
but internally?

My whole house is concrete save the roof, it's metal.

std::

you live in a pillbox?

Originally Posted by Ynot

you live in a pillbox?

Uh... No. I live in a very cost-efficient house. It's warm in the winter, and cool in the summer, the Air and electric bills are always low, not much risk for a fire, I get water from my filtered well, and there are no architectural problems.

std::

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

No, well I'm averaging around 18kb/s now.. but yeah, no real difference.

It can take a while for the exchange and the ISP to get the line right. In the mean time, stay connected to the internet whenever possible.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

No, well I'm averaging around 18kb/s now.. but yeah, no real difference.

When you say that, how do you measure it? I would trust speedtest.net more than whatever site you're downloading porn from or whatever you use to check the number :-).

Try running tracert on the site you're downloading from, and try pinging the various hops to see if there's something close to you that's messing you up.

Also, try ditching the router and plugging the modem in directly (make sure you turn on a local firewall first!!!), unless your router IS your modem, in which case never mind.

Your modem is probably running a local webserver that probably has some other diagnostics that could help. you'll have to look up what it's running at (maybe 192.168.0.1 or something).