computer speedtest question.....

[0rion]

Will changing from an ethernet connection to wifi effect your speed test results? I'm thinking it shouldn't because you're measuring from your modem back to the server but I'm not positive on that. I've been having a ton of connection problems here. Had the cable company out a while back and he tested the line and we were just within spec (forget what the numbers were) and I know there's a splitter under the house that splits the line upstairs. Previous owners did that and I just never removed it although we have direct tv now and just use cable for internet. The tech said that was our problem. Internet was fine after his visit except every now and then it'd get super slow and wouldn't connect. Even the phones over wifi would slow down so that told me it wasn't a pc problem but a connection issue.

For 2-3 days straight this week we had no internet connection. I unhooked the pc's ethernet cable and moved the modem and wifi out to the garage and hooked it straight to the cable line where it comes into the garage then used wifi on the pc. This allowed the pc to connect to the internet but I still think it's not right and it's an issue on their end. I've did a bunch of speed tests the last few months and registered at speedtest.net so it keeps track of them. I went from 26.9 Mb/s in early July to ~8 Mb/s currently and I've seen as low as 1 Mb/s the last 2 days. I was just wondering if any of that speed drop can be attributed to going wireless instead of ethernet cable. I'm pretty convinced it's on their end though.

[KahanaReef]

How many wireless devices are using that one connection? The PC and you mentioned the phones (not sure if your home phone is voip or you are talking about the wifi on your cell phones too). What about tablets and lap tops, Direct TV receiver? The more things connected, the slower it will get.

I had a similar issue with Uverse last year. TV, phones and internet all on the same router. Plus, all my other electronics. It got really bad at times. Went back to a land line and Dish. Problem solved. It does slow down when I have several things connected to the wifi sometimes though.

[0rion]

yeah....phones over wifi. When I do the tests there are no other devices using the wifi. I'm just wondering if there's a difference between the ethernet cable and wifi as far as the speedtest is concerned. I know there may be some drop between the modem and pc because the cable will be faster but if I'm thinking about it correctly that shouldn't effect a speedtest right because the test is for the transfer of data between the modem and the server?

[raynor139]

Also depends on how many people in your area the cable company puts on the same access point. The farther out from the city the more they will put on one point some times. If you got a close by neighbor using the same company test their speeds. Plus time of day can affect speeds. Afternoon and after dinner is when mine is the slowest since everyone around me is on too.

But with the speeds your getting im thinking you have something more going on.

There will be a difference between the cable and wifi but it shouldnt be too significant unless your router is pretty old tech.

I had an issue with time warner once were the speeds would be fine for a while then slow down. I would call and magically they would go back up. Did this several times over a couple months. Finally told them if it kept happening I was going to the BBB and cancelling my service and so on. I let the rep know I constantly did speed tests and would be monitoring it. Still fluctuates but nothing like it was.

[NE-Firebird]

You need to get a baseline.
Having a zillion things in the path won't help you find the issue.

1) Start at the modem! Use an Ethernet connection. Have that be the ONLY thing connected to the net. Have the Modem connect as close to where the cable comes in the house as possible.
Do your speed-test there. Do it 3 times.


Now, start adding things

2) The splitter. Splitters before a modem is always bad - it may or may not effect performance. Most of the time, it does effect performance!
Do your speed-test there. Do it 3 times.

3) Add ONE wifi router/device/bridge what ever. Have only ONE wifi device even powered on.
Heck, I have a phone that has a ******** up wifi design that will knock out even my external wifi USB device on my desktop!
In general, you don't want wifi devices more than a few feet near each other - and that's especially true for any wifi bridge/router!
Do your speed-test there. Do it 3 times.


Imho, unless you can prove that #1 is a problem, the cable company has every right, and likely will, to charge you to come out for a service call. If the home/apartment resident has a screwed up setup, that's not the cable companies fault.

FWIW, setting up a home network can be hard! Many people do very wrong things and GET LUCKY, and then tell their friends or the interweb that "it's fine to run 50 splitters, 500 miles of low cost coax, have 10,000 wifi bridges all stacked on top of each other"! Heck, I do it, and I get 500000 PetraBytes/Second over basic comcast cable!!!!


During the Networking boom, I spent over a dozen years doing hardware design for networks. I did everything from twisted pair Ethernet, coax, fiber, to wireless. And, I'm still amazed at what some people do and their home network "works fine". I've seen 3 wifi routers stacked on top of each other on the same band, and it somehow worked! Wow! I put 2 of my wifi routers within a foot of each other, and my wifi network throws fits! It all depends on the routers/software/protocols/bands/devices/etc/etc.

So, again, be very careful of any advice you read on the interweb. And, make sure you can show and prove that the "#1" setup has issues before you call your cable company, or spend money to switch.

Good Luck!

[0rion]

I get what you're saying but I still think it's on their end....could be wrong though and they can charge me to come out but it'll be the last dollar they ever get from me .

I just did a speedtest. Keep in mind that 7/10/13 I did one when it was in between shits. Meaning I was having connection problems and out of the blue it cleared up for a while. On 7/10 it tested 26.91 Mbps down and .97 up. Just now when I did one it was 4.82 down and .94 up. That's a huge difference when there's even less things factored in versus on 7/10.

The way it's set up now is the cable comes into the garage from the pole and I have my modem right there where it comes in so no wires in the house or splitters are effecting it at all ( on 7/10 it was going through the house with the splitter that I assume is under the house). The wifi is hooked up to the modem in the garage and there is nothing else in the house using wifi right now....just this pc.

I am a ways outside of the city so there probably are quite a few people using the same line but you also have to understand that between me and the city there's not that many houses.....couple dozen probably. Even then that doesn't explain why the service will come and go like it does. It's 4am......not what I would consider a high usage time and in the past it could be 6pm and my service would be fine. As a matter of fact that 7/10 speedtest was done at 5:49pm. Last year when I had this problem they came out and put in a new line from the pole to my house. Service got better for a short time but within a couple weeks it started taking a shit every now and then. This time when I called, well everytime when I call, they tested the line from their end and say that there are lost packets. I'm just convinced it's on their end. If ATT ever offers internet out here my ass is a memory to time warner. I dropped their cable service 2 years ago and as soon as I have any other option for internet it's gone too. Hate that company with a passion.

[NE-Firebird]

The way it's set up now is the cable comes into the garage from the pole and I have my modem right there where it comes in so no wires in the house or splitters are effecting it at all ( on 7/10 it was going through the house with the splitter that I assume is under the house). The wifi is hooked up to the modem in the garage and there is nothing else in the house using wifi right now....just this pc.

That's fine. But realize that wifi speeds have a lot of dependencies. The weather, temperature, humidity, etc all effect the "radio" waves. With walls between the wifi devices, they walls also differ depending on the time of day (heat/humidity/etc). None of that is important with a strong wifi signal. But, if the modem or PC have a weak signal, or are slightly out of calibration, then it all matters.

I still remember spending weeks hunting down a "time of day" failure dependency. Of course, it would often only happen after 6-7pm. Then, it was trying to figure out "WTF" is going on. It ended up being because of two marginal designs - one with the power supply, the other with a pull-up resistor. The output of the power supply would go up as the AC voltage went up. In a big company, after ~5-6pm, the AC voltage will increase a few volts because of the light load. The pull-up resistor was "pulling up to much". So, as the DC voltage inside the device went up, the pull-up resistor could be too strong for the signal. And, the heat of the devices effects their performance. So, many factors involved.

The point is that often, there are many factors involved. For some people, they are never an issue. For many others, they are an issue.


I'm very pretty familiar with cable modems. But, now, I'm sure there now are many non-engineers that know way more about the current cable modems than I do. It's been a number of years since I've done pure networking.

So... how old is your cable modem, who makes it, what "DOCSIS-level" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS ) does the modem support, and what DOCSIS-level does your cable company support? The DOCSIS should be able to be found by doing a google on the modem, and by a google on your cable company.
Ex google:
Comcast DOCSIS Boston
ex:
http://www.google.com/search?q=comcast+docsis+boston

Another problem with modems and routers is heat and life expectancy. Imho, 3 years is good. Sorry, many modems and routers today are not built to last a long time. Most of the issues are due to heat, and how that effects the life expectancy.

Also, get a higher-end new modem. Not only do they have better DOCSIS support (important for voice or video), but they often have better s/n (signal to noise) ratios to better capture weak signals, and have better transmitters. Today, there is pre and post signal equalization done at both ends, in both directions. There are protocols and methods for each device to calibrate their settings.
The point is that the newer, better modems are better with weaker/marginal signals. So, again, some people get along fine with a 10 year old modem in a cool basement and being close to a distribution hub. Others, need newer modems, to make sure the modem has plenty of "air space" (don't put it in a corner on a self and buried), and so on.

First check with your cable company on what modem they suggest and what is required for you to switch to a new modem.
Some companies, a person goes to BestBuy/Walmart, gets anything, plugs it in, a web page comes up, they sign in with their info, and it's super simple. Other companies make it a huge effort!


I'm not a huge fan of any cable modem now. But, I still think that Cisco and Linksys are the best bets for "worry free" devices. I still lean towards Cisco. Yea, like any major product that sells millions of devices per year, it's very easy to find people that hate that company and product.

[0rion]

The modem is supplied by time warner and it's new....well....they swapped my old one out when they were here about 2 months ago so I'm assuming it's their version of "new". It's a motorola but I'm not sure what model. It's out in the garage and I'm feeling pretty lazy right now. I'm gonna let them deal with it really. I'm not trying to hack ATM machines or the pentagon. I just want to surf the web and send some emails here and there. As long as I can do that I'm good to go. I went years and years with no problems and then last year or the year before it started randomly giving me problems. They come out and make an attempt to fix it and it goes away for a while and then comes back. Oh well.....I'll find out something Wed. when they come out. I'm not doubting your knowledge on the subject though as it's pretty obvious you know your shit........I'm just saying that my shit was fine for 8-9 years and out of the blue I start having problems. Hell....it ran on that same splitter for all of those years with no issues. The last tech said something had changed and the signal was less tolerant of that kind of stuff now which I don't doubt and I've always known you shouldn't run a splitter in the line but the fact remains that I pay for a service that sucks balls right now and if it's on their end it needs fixed. My PC is less than 6 months old and like I say....I'm not doing any heavy duty shit on it. Car forums, shopping, email, and some youtube here and there. That's about it. I could almost go to phone only and put our tablets on there. 2 problems with that. I don't know how, or if you even can, print shit from a phone and some youtube videos won't let you view it with a mobile device.

[wileyCoyote]

...your setup is, i'm assuming cable (coax in house) to modem to wireless router?...

are you saying it's slow when you plug the ethernet cable into the router directly, ...or to the modem directly?... if it's slow here, it's quite possible that the problem is the interface from the cable companys line to your house... i've had problems where my internet slows down and intermittently goes out, ...turned out it was loose connections in the interface...

[0rion]

...your setup is, i'm assuming cable (coax in house) to modem to wireless router?...

are you saying it's slow when you plug the ethernet cable into the router directly, ...or to the modem directly?... if it's slow here, it's quite possible that the problem is the interface from the cable companys line to your house... i've had problems where my internet slows down and intermittently goes out, ...turned out it was loose connections in the interface...

no....the way it is now is I have the modem connected directly to the cable companies line coming into the house and then to my router. I just did that to see if the line in the house is the problem. I'm sure it's not helping but it's not the whole problem because I just did a speed test today and it was a whopping 10 Mbps down and 1 up.

Just did another one......2.3 Mbps down and .67 up.

[wileyCoyote]

no....the way it is now is I have the modem connected directly to the cable companies line coming into the house and then to my router. I just did that to see if the line in the house is the problem. I'm sure it's not helping but it's not the whole problem because I just did a speed test today and it was a whopping 10 Mbps down and 1 up.

Just did another one......2.3 Mbps down and .67 up.

..this is referring to the speed when direct connected to the router via ethernet cable, ...or over wi-fi??? i guess, i'm trying to figure out what you need to isolate,.. first, are you getting a good connection into your house? try using a different ethernet cable, ..a different coax from modem to wall, direct connect computer to modem (bypass router altogether), or if you have a different computer at hand try that as another variable ...could be a bad cable limited BW/speed... or it could be the cable companies issue, ...a bad connection in a nearby junction box...