Internet Speed Issues....New House

[goodlookin1]

Hey Guys,

I just moved to a new house and chose Wave Broadband for my internet service. First day I got it, it seemed very zippy. I ordered the top tier service @ 110Mbps/10Mbps. While I dont recall testing on servers outside the "Wave Broadband" speed test, I could tell it was fast because my PC was fast. Downloads were fast, etc.

Now, all of a sudden, the net seems sluggish. I power cycled my cable modem/router (it's an "all-in-Wonder" Netgear deal). If I go to Wave Broadband's speed test, they tell me that I'm getting about 90-100Mbps. Great, not far off of what I'm supposed to get. Plus it's primetime, so it should be slower. But then EVERY OTHER speed test server I try, I get anywhere from 2-10Mbps.

WTF??!?

I called Wave and they said that while my signal connection appeared to have a "slight" issue, it isnt to the point that it is severely affecting speed. Test to Wave proves it. Tech is coming out to fix it on Thursday anyway.

What I'm curious of is, why is this happening? Wave claimed "We cannot control what happens to your connection once it gets past our servers". Okay. I understand that. But out of any other ISP I have ever used (And I've had a lot of them), I have NEVER had this issue. I dont care what the tech says.....unless my connection is going to Kazakhstan, I just flat out cannot see my connection legitimately going from a slated 110Mbps to a mere 2Mbps (Yes, that is MegaBits, not MegaBytes). At one point I was downloading iTunes from Apple servers at 250KBps. Weak Sauce.

Anyone had an issue like this where there ISP said they were getting pretty much full speed but nowhere else on the planet....even close by....could you get close to the slated speeds?

[d4v0s]

The whole 110/10 has me puzzled, what is the second number for?

110 on waves network, 10 to the outside world? Also the only thing that could cause this is them throttling you.. OR connection issues on the line. If they sent a tech and "saw a slight issue" then chances are they can see packet loss or retries on your line, heck might even just be jitter or a latency issue. Usually caused by bad cabling from pole into your house.

Also this is the only speed test I use anymore. Too many issues with Java and Flash latency with others. This one is HTML 5 and rocks. http://speedof.me/

[Ninety]

See if you can log into your modem.. and check for packet loss and signal strength..

is this cable internet?

try 192.168.1.100 or .0.100 or 100.1

[ldsnet]

Try a different DNS server from your computer (instead of dynamic assigned, maybe they are sub-routing you through someone else (to make them more ad money). Try 8.8.0.0 and 8.8.4.4 (those are Google DNS direct) and see if that makes your speeds more consistent.

You can also try an old-fashioned ping:

ping -n 10 www.google.com

your results will be in mili-seconds. They should be consistent and very short, and will tell you if there were any lost packets.

[FromTheGrave]

The whole 110/10 has me puzzled, what is the second number for?

110 mbps download and 10 mbps upload.....

I'm just spitballing here lol

[funk_drum]

Could be throttling. Also, I believe cable internet is like a pipe everyone shares. The more people in the area with it, the slower it could be for everyone.

[FromTheGrave]

BTW Google DNS is 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

[goodlookin1]

Thanks for the responses. Couple things:

1) Yes: 110 Download, 10 Upload (receiving data vs sending data)

2) Yes, it is a Cable/coaxial connection

3) Correct me if I am wrong, but the DNS shouldn't have anything to do with the speed of my connection, right? DNS is simply resolving the domain name (website name) to the webserver's IP address so you can begin downloading the website's content (HTML, pictures, Javascript, etc). I would think that if this process took a long time, then the ping may go up, but once your DNS has resolved the IP of the domain, then it would seem that the download speed would simply be a matter of A) The backbone connection of the server, and B) The server's load, C) Your connection speed.

4) Pinging anything local to me gets about a 40-50ms ping time.

5) I doubt it is throttling at this point because I tried it at 5:30am this morning when basically no one is using the connection. Time's were a bit better, but still low.

Is there any chance this is a router issue? Seems weird that it goes fast to Wave, but beyond that I get 25% speed at best. I've never had this problem before. My work connection (Comcast Cable) is slated to give 180 down and 24 up, and testing all of the same speed test servers results in pings that are twice as fast (in the 20ms range) and and getting 160/23 on ANY local server I test, Comcast servers and private. That is more in line with what I would expect. You would think that if my issue were normal, then Comcast would exhibit the same slowness going outside of their "direct line" of servers. But no, it is consistent just as every other ISP I have used was.

Except Wave.

Still at a loss......I'll give the DNS servers a try later today, but I'm not optimistic

[pluke the 2]

40-50 ms ping latency is terrible. if youre on a wireless router not hard wired then you may have someone leeching the wifi.

but if youre hard wired and you are seeing 40-50ms ping, then you do infact have some issue with your cable line.

the problem is, i don't see them (your isp) running you a new line any time soon.

[pluke the 2]

the only thing you can do is complain once or twice a day until they swap your line. its a residential house, so they may be able to plug your cable into another port out at the street (at their box).

[klewan]

Bet money the speed test at the ISP is rigged. Verizon or ATT were selling phones that always showed you were connected to a 4G signal; even if you weren't. It was cheaper to do that instead of actually installing a 4G network. There's such a huge incentive to cheat with tech, since no one except a total geek will have any way to check....but the ISP is correct about not having any control once your packets get out on the net. This is like back in the dial up days, you can't connect, call the ISP, they blame the phone company, the phone company blames the modem, modem company blames Microsoft, and you can't talk to Microsoft, so you have to fix it yourself.

[NYT]

i have wave and their performance numbers are pure bullsh_t.

i would totally believe they were lying to you about their download speeds. my recommendation would be to try downloading a large file (1GB or over) and time how long it takes. an example would be downloading an ISO from microsoft or another application vendor. you can try it in the afternoon (6ish) and then after midnight. this will be your baseline.

[AJAX22]

If it's fast to wave and slow to the outside world it's likely a function of waves network. They are probably oversubscribed and the ports to which they see the outside world are Congested.

Run a trace route

[Baeleron]

I had this problem, and when I logged into my modem and looked, it's gain setting was maxxed out. That implies you have a lot of impedance in the path between the modem and the cable box. In my cable box there were a bunch of signal splitters all cascaded together in series, and each one degrades the signal. I re-ordered them so that the coax cable to my modem was closest to the source, and completely disconnected the ones that I wasn't using. Problem solved.

Check out this for more detailed info:

http://www.speedguide.net/articles/cable-modem-signal-levels-1197

[NoNOS67]

If it's fast to wave and slow to the outside world it's likely a function of waves network. They are probably oversubscribed and the ports to which they see the outside world are Congested.

Run a trace route

This!