Internet slower than it's supposed to be.

[marik]

I have Comcast as an isp, and i am supposed to have at least 3mb/s download speed. but when downloading, the highest i've ever seen my download speed go is 900 kb/s. is there something on my computer that is bottlenecking my speed, or is comcast not giving me all of my bandwidth that i paid for?

[mjc]

Umm...

Maybe.

What/how/where are you downloading and what are the results of some 'speed tests'...like the one at www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/?

[PrntRhd]

Mutiply your observed 900 Kilobits/sec by 8 to get the Kilobytes/sec. The number is 7200 so you are getting 7.2MB/sec down, which is about what you would expect.
Comcast's current tiers are:
4MB
6MB
8MB

From mjc's speed test site for me:
Download Speed: 9850 kbps (1231.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1622 kbps (202.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

Another test:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/227791355.png

[marik]

oh. dang, so i am getting all my bandwith. i guess then it's just megaupload thats giving me slow speeds like 200 kb/s.

ok with the speed test, here are the results:
Download Speed: 3282 kbps (410.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 328 kbps (41 KB/sec transfer rate)

so either they are giving me around 4 megaBITS per second, or i'm still getting ripped off.

[PrntRhd]

Are you connected to the cable modem directly?
Are you using a software firewall?
Do you use Comcast for your TV?
Even loose cable connections to TVs and the quality of the connecting cables themselves affect speed.

You can check how your PC is tuned for network transmission by using the BBR Tweak utility to see your settings, it makes a report on how your connection is set up:
http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

[marik]

Are you connected to the cable modem directly?
Are you using a software firewall?
Do you use Comcast for your TV?
Even loose cable connections to TVs and the quality of the connecting cables themselves affect speed.

You can check how your PC is tuned for network transmission by using the BBR Tweak utility to see your settings, it makes a report on how your connection is set up:
http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks


No
Yes
Not anymore (they hiked up the prices to ridiculous levels.) However, after we disconnected the tv(s), the speeds did not improve.

I will try connecting my mom's computer directly to the modem, as it is right by it. However, that computer uses windows 2000, which comcast says they do not support even though my mom is still able to get internet.

My computer uses xp, but it connects to the router by means of like a 20-30 foot cable. would that possibly slow it down? I could try connecting that directly to the modem and see what it does.

I have gone to broadband reports and did the tweaking with that "Dr. tcp/ip" program or whatever it's called, but the speeds did not improve, in fact it got even slower.

Both computer are around like 8-10 years old. Could these computers be so old that they are not designed to download at such speeds?

[Variable]

PrntRhd said:
Mutiply your observed 900 Kilobits/sec by 8 to get the Kilobytes/sec. The number is 7200 so you are getting 7.2MB/sec down,

It's the other way around, you need to divide not multiply. 8 bits to a byte. 1 kilobit = .125 kilobytes

Marik said:
Download Speed: 3282 kbps (410.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

That is 3.2 megabits per second

I have Comcast as an isp, and i am supposed to have at least 3mb/s download speed.

It appears you are.

Remember download speed is a *possible* speed. If you have a 3Mb pipe, you can download that fast, but the far side may not *upload* that fast all the time or ever. Imagine how much bandwidth they would need to give all their downloads 3Mbps.

[PrntRhd]

Variable's numbers are the correct formula.
The reason I asked about the TV is Comcast will only give you 3MB/sec if you do not subscribe to their TV plans, and you pay more per month for HSI if paying ala carte.
They upgrade HSI to 4MB if you have any form of TV: analog basic cable/digital cable/HD.

[marik]

I think I have a possible speed of 6mb/s because i did several speed tests and got a high of around 5.8 mb/s. So either this is what i subscribe to, or its the "powerboost" kicking in, but i'm not sure that I'm in a tier with pwrbst enabled.

Well anyways thanks for everything.

I used to have another little annoyance, but i don't think I ever posted a topic on it here to try to get a solution.

I've heard from several sources like pcworld, that comcast has been sending some RST packets to people d/l-ing "Certain" stuff. basically it's like "the operator of a telephone company cutting into a conversation and telling the 2 people on the line 'sorry i have to hang up', and disconecting both people" (the quote was from some article, but i don't remember the site). i guess it just tells your internet protocol to shut down.

When I had my "Ancient" Hp pavilion with Win 2000, I started noticing that my internet would cut out only when i d/l "certain" files, and it would act like the cable went down, and i had to restart my computer to get my internet back. At first I thought something was wrong with my computer. But I always had sneaking suspision that comcast had something to do with it. Well it kept happening intermittently, sometimes it would happen, and sometimes it wouldn't, so i thought it had to be comcast doing something. After a while, it escalated to trying to do anything from d/l-ing a picture, to simply accessing Google.

Luckily i found a rather simple solution to getting my internet back while d/l-ing and having the d/l resume: Hibernation. I found that if I Hibernated my computer immediately after my internet shut down, and then resume windows as soon as my computer turned off, my internet would miraculously come back up, and the d/l would pick up where it left off. No d/l accelerators or anything of the sort.

After a while i saw a story about comcast allegedly blocking certain traffic. A couple weeks later, i saw several more articles about Comcast "impersonating" someone on bittorrent, and whenever someone would try to seed or d/l or anything, comcast would send rst packets to both people the seeder and the d/l-er, while impersonating both people. A month later there were quite a few articles on PCWorld about comcast interfering with bittorrent and other apps, and now i knew why my internet would go screwy.

But I had, and still have this question: if comcast was sending an rst packet that basically told my tcp/ip to terminate the connection, why would Hibernating my computer and then immediately resuming windows bring my internet back up, and how would the d/l resume where it left off?

[Ghost_Hacker]

....But I had, and still have this question: if comcast was sending an rst packet that basically told my tcp/ip to terminate the connection, why would Hibernating my computer and then immediately resuming windows bring my internet back up, and how would the d/l resume where it left off?

When a computer goes into hibernation mode it is saving its memory contents and then shutting itself down. The shutdown resets all your internet connections, so when the computer "wakes up" (IE: turns itself back on again and reloads its memory with the saved data) the file download, and everything else, resumes where it left off.

Almost all file transfer programs will resume transfers that are only partially completed. You should see the same thing if you just turn off and on your computer then just restart your file transfer app.

The "reset" of your internet connection should also put you back beneath the trigger of Comcast's traffic shaping application at least till you hit what triggers it again.

[marik]

oh, i see. well thanks alot.

[hewittinspain]

did you know that microsoft take an automatic 20 percent from your bandwidth that has been preset into Windows? You need to go into the windows settings and take it off.I cannot remember how to do it but here is a guide.

http://www.lockergnome.com/news/2006/06/01/how-to-take-back-20-of-your-bandwidth-from-windows-xp/

I changed mine and did run faster after that.

[mjc]

http://www.theeldergeek.com/qos_bandwith_reserve_setting.htm

As in Windows 2000, programs can take advantage of QoS through the QoS APIs in Windows XP. One hundred percent of the network bandwidth is available to be shared by all programs unless a program specifically requests priority bandwidth. This "reserved" bandwidth is still available to other programs unless the requesting program is sending data. By default, programs can reserve up to an aggregate bandwidth of 20 percent of the underlying link speed on each interface on an end computer. If the program that reserved the bandwidth is not sending sufficient data to use it, the unused part of the reserved bandwidth is available for other data flows on the same host.