Cable internet speed

[croixflats]

Is anybody having problems with there cable internet speed when it gets cold out like 5 degrees and below.

Ive been having this problem all winter. Some times it gets so bad it takes up to 20 seconds to go to another page. And sometimes I get cut off. My phone even cuts out, same provider.

The cable TV is fine though.

I even had them come out 4 times to fix it. Had modem replaced and all lines replaced and they still wont go look at the lines and connections outside the house. I even had the phone cut out when talking to them, that realy ticked me off because I had to go through the same shpeal of explaining my problem.

Tonight its up to 5 seconds a page.

Seriously thinking of swithing to other options and telling them to go you know where.

[harvey lee]

No temp related issues at all. In fact its flying from page to page tonight.

[upnorth]

Here is a way of looking at internet connections. Your ISP has a huge pipe coming and then they branch it off into smaller pipes to end users. If you get everyone on at the same time filling up those smaller pipes, you eventually fill up the big pipe and can't squeeze any more traffic through it. Then the smaller pipes can't fill up anymore and things on the end users side slows down.

Why would it matter at 5 degrees or colder? More people bored and surfing the Internet!

[Sandmannd]

That's what I was going to say UN, more people surfing when it's cold out so less bandwith for you.

[upnorth]

You have to work around this stuff a little before you get a good understanding of it.

[LakeDocktor]

It could also be more than just a bandwidth problem though. It could be a signal issue as well. If your drop from the tap to your house is aerial, you could have squirrel chews in the cable. I would request them to hang or run a new drop from the tap to your house and see if that makes a difference. If you are having problems when it is cold out, then the tech has probably been there when it is cold as well. If he is lazy, he doesn't want to necessarily do that much outside work and rehang a drop, therefore leaving marginal signal levels within your system.

[theoilman]

I have Comcast cable TV and internet. Yes, you can have crappy internet while TV is still great. While on this, my Comcast cable went down, but TV is still on. Cable internet speed varies with number of people on your line. Is anyone else in your neighborhood experiencing the same problem? What is their speed?

A speed test I use (got from Geek Squad at Best Buy when they were testing my computer for other problems: www 'dot' speakeasy 'dot' net 'slash' speedtest . I just tested - on Comcast on wifi on laptop got download of 8150kbps and upload of 3150kbps - better than normal for me.

My connection backup - my Alltel cellphone digital - I have software and cable to use as a ditital modem connection 115kbps phone connect speed, got 136kbps download and 78kbps upload (not bad for 115kbps connection) and this is seconds per page most of the time.

Knowing the speed you are actually getting can be good to know when calling your cable service.

[BoxMN]

I have cable as well, and we kept having connection problems for internet only EVERY time it got to exactly 4 degrees above zero or colder. I even told Comcast that and they came out many times, only to find no problems.

Well, when one guy was out on the line, ready to go, we (me and neighbors who had same problem) went and talked to him, and told him it was just when it was 4 degrees or colder... he scratched his head, smiled, went back up the line and fixed it. They never had told him about the temp issue from our reports.

When it got that cold it was just enough to contract one of the pins in a connection. He bent it slightly in and now we have not had that problem in two years.

So it totally can be something related to the temp and not bandwidth. Besides, bandwidth from other users will cause a noticeable slowdown but not a stopage or near stopage like you are noticing.

[Big A]

I have 3 computers and an XBox360 connected to the internet practically 24/7 in my house..

NEVER have any issues regarding weather.. thats why I switched to cable. I got tired of the Satellite carp..

[croixflats]

Thanks for the replies. Its working great today. I understand about the amount of people can slow things down but when I cant get into my email or back to home page and at times Ive had to wait up to a minute, even when I was talking to the rep on the phone, from page to page I really don't think that's there is that much traffic 2 in the morning. Got to say these reps on the phone are really nice to deal with.

I'll get them back here again and insist on hanging a new drop like lake doctor suggest and talk to the technician about any connections that can be worked on the pole line as BoxMN had experienced.

[LakeDocktor]

croixflats, I'm not sure if Comcast has a test page that their technicians use to verify the forward and reverse signal levels on the modem, but I would ask what their exceptable guidelines are for signal levels and then have the tech pull up the test page and show you the results. As you have cable TV service as well, have the technician dedicate your internet on the highest signal leg in your house. All he has to do is determine the line coming into from the house and the line going to your internet, put a two way splitter before your main splitter with one leg of the two way going to the main splitter and the other leg going to the cable modem. This will insure the highest level of signal going to your internet.

[Dave S]

If a tech had to bend a pin to improve the connection, then it's an equipment issue (poor quality product) and/or workmanship during the installation. If the connections aren't assembled correctly, condensation will also affect the connection. Had it happen with both cable and telephone lines in the past.

Malware, Spyware, internet history (cookies) will also bog down your computer as well. Computers require some routine preventative maintenance to keep operating efficiently. If the processor over heats, it will also bog down. Make sure you don't have any dust build up around the intake for the fan.

I picked up a can of compressed gas duster and blew out some of the build up from the past 2 years. That helped a lot.

[croixflats]

Just this winter when we started to get the below zero temps. And it always correlates with 5 degree or below weather. Never in warm temps.

[croixflats]

croix flats, I'm not sure if Comcast has a test page that their technicians use to verify the forward and reverse signal levels on the modem, but I would ask what their exceptable guidelines are for signal levels and then have the tech pull up the test page and show you the results. As you have cable TV service as well, have the technician dedicate your internet on the highest signal leg in your house. All he has to do is determine the line coming into from the house and the line going to your internet, put a two way splitter before your main splitter with one leg of the two way going to the main splitter and the other leg going to the cable modem. This will insure the highest level of signal going to your internet.

I have the leg coming out of the box on the house going directly to the modem 12 ft away. 1 splitter in the box.

Ive had them show me the test results and they even gave the link to the page. Funny thing is by the time the get tome to check things out its a warm day and things are working fine.

They did every thing they could in the house and on the computer.

Reinstaled this and reinstaled that switched this out and that out. We now safely can say its not in the house, I even have a good laugh with the techs as I know these things can be hard to track down.

[Whoaru99]

Generally, you can type 192.168.100.1 into your browser address bar and pull up the information pages for your cable modem.

You can usually find the upstream and downstream signal strengths, signal to noise ratio, and a few other things.

It's sometimes helpful to know these things when you have to talk turkey to the cable guy.

[LakeDocktor]

Whoaru, let me guess, Netgear? This isn't the site that I am talking about. When I worked as a cable tech for Charter, we used the Eqa HSOforum to let us know what the signal levels were at the time as well as the history of signal issues. I agree with LEP7MM, you shouldn't have to adjust the connection to improve the signal. If the fitting wasn't properly installed, it will cause signal loss or corrosion. This can also happen with fittings not tightened or you could have a bad splitter. If the signal levels are in spec, you shouldn't have that much flucuation to see a difference in performance. Have they replaced your modem? Sometimes, if the problem is constant, you can as for a special request order to be created and do a complete reinstall.

[croixflats]

Whats a complete reinstall every thing has been replaced in the house except the comp and moniter(12 ft of wire and motem and wire to phone). If one says its the ladder I will be bald and that will not take much.

I guess the drop cable as mentioned before and those pesky connects.

Dont mind me this cold and medication maken me loopy and unable to sleep. Did I mention the cold and medication

[upnorth]

OK here is some of my inner geek coming out. But if you really want to find out if it local connections or a bandwidth tapped out at the ISP issue. Try this.

This same info will apply to DSL and I have no idea where the routing info I used resides on devices other than a linksys, Nortel and Cisco routers.

This is going to compare response times between the default gateway for your router/wireless device, a server that is on your ISPs network and a server(I used yahoo, you can pick whatever site tickles your butt) that is off the ISPs network and compare the response times.

Here is a summary of what I got:

Router Gatway.

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 8ms, Maximum = 11ms, Average = 9ms

DNS server on the cable company network:

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 41ms, Maximum = 46ms, Average = 43ms

And a server completely off the cable company network.

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 51ms, Maximum = 52ms, Average = 51ms

Notice the difference in round trip times? That is because the gateway is close to direct connect to your router, the DNS servers are on the Cable Companies network and www.yahoo.com is on a different network and has to traverse the line coming into the cable company. And is affected by 2 things, how many routers it has to go through and how congested your link to the cable company and the incoming line to the cable company are.

Here is how and where I got this info.

Go to start, run, key in cmd, hit enter, it will open a new command window.

In that window key in ipconfig /all it will bring up some info for you that looks similar to this.

C:\Documents and Settings\Scott>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : xxxx2006

Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :

Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Peer-Peer

IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter lOCAL:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : 3Com EtherLink XL 10/100 PCI For Com

plete PC Management NIC (3C905C-TX)

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0A-5E-59-C0-41

Ethernet adapter Varian Private Network:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Cont

roller

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-12-3F-58-5C-DA

Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.106

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 12.207.234.29

12.207.235.32

Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Friday, February 20, 2009 4:49:02 AM

Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Friday, February 20, 2009 10:54:02 A

take the IP address for your gateway(that is your router) and enter that in a web browser IE, firefox or whatever you use for web surfing. Find the routing table. One my Linksys router it is under Setup - Advanced routing - and there is a button that says Show Routing Table, click on that and it will bring up another window. Look for the line that says:

0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 173.16.204.1 WAN (Internet)

That is the gateway or where your router send packets to.

C:\Documents and Settings\Scott>ping 173.16.204.1

Pinging 173.16.204.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 173.16.204.1: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=254

Reply from 173.16.204.1: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=254

Reply from 173.16.204.1: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=254

Reply from 173.16.204.1: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=254

Ping statistics for 173.16.204.1:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 8ms, Maximum = 11ms, Average = 9ms

Go back to the ipconfig info and look for the lines that says DNS servers make note of the IP address.

Next key in ping then the IP address of one of the DNS servers. Should look like this.

C:\Documents and Settings\Scott>ping 12.207.234.29

Pinging 12.207.234.29 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 12.207.234.29: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=247

Reply from 12.207.234.29: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=247

Reply from 12.207.234.29: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=247

Reply from 12.207.234.29: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=247

Ping statistics for 12.207.234.29:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 41ms, Maximum = 46ms, Average = 43ms

Then key in ping www.yahoo.com

C:\Documents and Settings\Scott>ping www.yahoo.com

Pinging www-real.wa1.b.yahoo.com [209.191.93.52] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.191.93.52: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=52

Reply from 209.191.93.52: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=52

Reply from 209.191.93.52: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=52

Reply from 209.191.93.52: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 209.191.93.52:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 51ms, Maximum = 52ms, Average = 51ms

[Whoaru99]

Whoaru, let me guess, Netgear?

No, 192.168.100.1 should (usually) take you right to the internal webpages of your cable modem. In my case it's an Ambit modem and this is what some of the information shows.

The typical specs for Charter are:

Downstream power level (Receive): -12dbmV to +12dbmV

Upstream (Transmit): +35dbmV to +50dbmV

Downstream SNR: greater than 33dB

So you can see I'm sitting pretty good on all three accounts.

Other cable companies may have different specs for what they consider acceptable, but probably not too far different.