Speeding up net connection...

[Eric Perry]

Hey all..

I have a 5 Mbps broadband connection at home... But everything seems sluggish. It seems to have worsened recently. And sometimes I'll try to load a page, and get an error, only to try again and have it load right up.

Anyone have any clues what the deal is, or what I can do to help?

The system is completely clean of clutter, spyware, adware, etc. using System Mechanic, Registry Mechanic, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Kaspersky, and PandaSoft. I'm pretty religious about keeping it clean and organized. It's also defragged weekly using Diskeeper.

My recent speed test yielded 4693 Kbps download speed. It's not so much a speed issue, I guess, as it is initiating transfer of web pages... If that makes any sense at all.

I posted a thread recently about Google, asking if Google was slow or sluggish recently, and the responses proved it wasn't Google, it was me. Grrrrrr!!!!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all!

 

[jkritchey]

What kind of hardware you using? Which OS? My main PC is 7 years old, and it does get sluggish, but if you have new stuff that's different.

BTW, I think has been a little sluggish recently as well. Last few months, as they have expanded their services.

 

[Eric Perry]

My OS is XP SP2

Hardware is a Motorola SB4200 modem, and a Netgear WGR614 wireless router.

I don't seem to have the same problems on this ISP with my laptop, however.

 

[Jeffrey A-Bomb]

Could be the wireless connection, swap space, virtual memory, or perhaps your harddrive needs a defrag. *shrug*

 

[Eric Perry]

It's a wireless router, but this system is wired through the router. No wireless here.

System defrags automatically weekly.

2MB of RAM, so I can't see virtual memory as being an issue either.

 

[jkritchey]

Does System Mechanic have an easy way to delete your index.dat file (If you use IE) and the pagefile.sys? Sometimes that will help if your machine is paging out quite a bit (mine does).

How old is the PC? P4? Memory? Edit,( never mind on the memory)

 

[Eric Perry]

I use Firefox 2.0.

The CPU is an Athlon 2200+. It's a 1.8Ghz processor.

Not lightning fast, but not a dinosaur either.

 

[naja]

I use Firefox 2.0.

The CPU is an Athlon 2200+. It's a 1.8Ghz processor.

Not lightning fast, but not a dinosaur either.

Did the slow response start after a hardware or software change? Firefox 2.0 hasn't been out very long....might need to do some config tweeking on it if you had tweeked your previous version.

Fastfox is an awesome plugin too, if you don't already have it.

Dave

 

[Eric Perry]

The problem seemed to be there before 2.0.

I've been using Fasterfox as well.

 

[ChenNuts44]

You could have horrible routing. Or a lot of latency/packet loss. Perhaps neither, perhaps both. Post a traceroute to chi.speakeasy.net, nyc.speakeasy.net, and lax.speakeasy.net and let's see if we can eliminate those two things as the source of a problem.

If you're running XP, go to start > run. type "cmd". Once the command prompt is up, type "tracert <ip/domain name here>" and see what it gives you. I'll include an example of what you should see (this is for DSL, which is why there is added latency on the 1st hop from interleave).

C:\Documents and Settings\*username_removed>tracert chi.speakeasy.net

Tracing route to chi.speakeasy.net [64.81.159.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.0.0.1
  2    46 ms    45 ms    44 ms  desm-dsl-gw03-195.desm.qwest.net [216.161.116.19
5]
  3    45 ms    47 ms    92 ms  desm-agw1.inet.qwest.net [216.161.116.125]
  4    45 ms    44 ms    45 ms  des-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.159.33]
  5    44 ms    44 ms    44 ms  des-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.159.14]
  6    59 ms    58 ms    58 ms  cer-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.205.78]
  7    58 ms    58 ms    58 ms  chx-edge-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.139.166]
  8    66 ms    59 ms    59 ms  63.150.27.98
  9    74 ms    84 ms    67 ms  dns.chi1.speakeasy.net [64.81.159.2]

Trace complete.

 

[Sonic_Death]

I don't want to hijack this thread but I was interested since I have a similar problem I was just wondering, when I ran those 3 traceroutes, a bunch of the ms's were in the thousands, some were normal below 100. Not sure if that means anything.

Edit: After looking at Eric's, his look great haha. Seems normal as far as I can tell, whereas as I said, some of mine were in the thousands. Meep.

 

[vindy500]

i got the same problem

 

[Eric Perry]

Here's my three... Thanks much for the help...

I had a hell of a time even uploading these. Trying to get Photobucket to open was a nightmare... Had to constantly refresh to get anywhere.

 

[RWP]

As a point of interest I noticed a slow down after going to Fire Fox 2.0. Hope that is not it as I love FF and can not find a way to revert to v1.5.

 

[Sonic_Death]

I had a hell of a time even uploading these. Trying to get Photobucket to open was a nightmare... Had to constantly refresh to get anywhere.

For future reference, im cmd you can right click mark, and then you can highlight and copy things, and then just paste them. You have to use ctrl+c to copy though, right clicling will take you out of mark and you can't copy that way.

 

[Eric Perry]

For future reference, im cmd you can right click mark, and then you can select and copy things, and then just paste them.

Grrrrrrr!!!

Thanks!!

 

[Brad Maestas]

Ah, you beat me to it ChenNuts44!
That was exactly what I was going to suggest.
Also, try tracerouting Talkbass itself. Online tools like visualroute and mapulator can also be helpful.
Some tools don't accept URL's. For your convenience, Talkbass' registered IP's are:
69.20.95.4
65.61.188.4

Latency over 120ms could be considered long so that might be adding to your troubles. You must also take into consideration your particular neighborhood and its coverage by your service provider. When I lived at 110th & B'way in Manhattan, I was using RCN DSL. For a little while I tried out their premium 7Mbps service and it was crap. It commonly performed at 4Mb or lower because of the user density and ISP router conditions. So I went back to the standard service and it was fine. Now I'm using Cablevision (Optimum Online) in Brooklyn and their cable service (rather than DSL) combined with the lower user density in my 'hood makes for speedy loads.

Another thing that helps me out whenever it seems a little sluggish is to reset my modem and router(s). In extreme cases I'll simultaneously restart the computer as well. Be patient and good luck ironing this out!

 

[Brad Maestas]

Here are my results with Mac OS X's Network Utility app.

Traceroute has started ...

traceroute to talkbass.com (72.32.131.249), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  ool-4572c75e.dyn.optonline.net (69.114.199.94)  15.064 ms  0.742 ms  4.26 ms
 2  10.18.160.1 (10.18.160.1)  17.146 ms  8.218 ms  8.003 ms
 3  dstswr1-vlan2.rh.nyk6ny.cv.net (67.83.222.161)  7.925 ms  8.068 ms  8.977 ms
 4  r3-ge0-0-1.mhe.hcvlny.cv.net (67.83.222.129)  8.443 ms  10.384 ms  12.298 ms
 5  65.19.111.203 (65.19.111.203)  9.831 ms  10.011 ms  10.538 ms
 6  451be0a4.cst.lightpath.net (65.19.96.164)  12.708 ms  9.734 ms  9.959 ms
 7  pos5-2.pr1.lga1.us.mfnx.net (167.206.8.154)  11.513 ms  17.791 ms  10.536 ms
 8  so-5-0-0.cr2.lga1.us.above.net (64.125.27.138)  11.433 ms  11.527 ms  9.45 ms
 9  64.125.27.241.available.above.net (64.125.27.241)  10.07 ms  10.692 ms  11.583 ms
10  so-1-0-0.mpr2.iad1.us.above.net (64.125.28.65)  16.633 ms  14.745 ms  16.228 ms
11  so-1-0-0.cr2.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.28.129)  15.807 ms  15.911 ms  15.684 ms
12  so-2-3-0.cr2.dfw2.us.above.net (64.125.29.13)  43.315 ms  47.319 ms  43.32 ms
13  so-1-0-0.cr1.dfw2.us.above.net (64.125.29.189)  43.785 ms  43.304 ms  45.173 ms
14  64.124.12.181.cus-rtr.rackspace.com (64.124.12.181)  47.723 ms  47.014 ms  46.326 ms
15  vlan903.core3.dfw1.rackspace.com (72.3.128.53)  49.242 ms  47.05 ms  48.169 ms
16  aggr114a.dfw1.rackspace.net (72.3.129.104)  49.458 ms  47.759 ms *

 

[Sonic_Death]

This doesn't seem good to me.

Tracing route to ns.rackspace.com [69.20.95.4] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1     1 ms     1 ms     2 ms  core-firewall.oneonta.edu [137.141.2.254]
2    58 ms  2964 ms     9 ms  gateway-internet.oneonta.edu [137.141.1.254]
3  1993 ms  2952 ms    64 ms  rrcs-24-97-70-21.nys.biz.rr.com [24.97.70.21]
4  1996 ms  2967 ms   107 ms  srp0-0.bnghnyplz-rtr04.nyroc.rr.com [24.94.34.14
7]
5  2056 ms    29 ms   133 ms  srp8-0.bnghnyplz-rtr02.nyroc.rr.com [24.94.32.90
]
6  1955 ms  2974 ms    85 ms  srp8-0.bnghnyplz-rtr01.nyroc.rr.com [24.94.32.89
]
7  2028 ms    62 ms    56 ms  son0-0-0.syrcnyspp-rtr06.nyroc.rr.com [24.92.224
.57]
8  1860 ms   147 ms     *     so-7-1.car4.newyork1.level3.net [4.78.166.237]
9   233 ms   152 ms  2968 ms  ge-7-0-0.mp2.philadelphia1.level3.net [209.247.9
.253]
10   184 ms  2835 ms    47 ms  as-1-0.bbr1.chicago1.level3.net [64.159.0.237]
11  2035 ms  2939 ms    55 ms  ae-12-51.car2.chicago1.level3.net [4.68.101.3]
12  2083 ms    85 ms    77 ms  unknown.level3.net [166.90.208.206]
13  1792 ms    65 ms    88 ms  dns.chi1.speakeasy.net [64.81.159.2]

 

[Trevor.A]

are you sure the router is... erm... routing? I have the same problem and almost eh same router as you, and when i bypass the router and plug directly into the modem, things are lightning fast.
probably not it, but it may be worth a shot.