Internet Speed Problem - Phone company says it's on my end

[duckydan]

I have a problem with my internet right now. I'm currently getting 3.2mb on a speed test. They tell me my modem is responding back with a line speed of almost 8mb. If that is the case then where am I losing nearly 5mb of connection between the modem and the pc? I get the same results with and without a router with different cables. Is there a TCP/IP setting or something else on my pc I should check. I have no firewalls running and no antivirus (I'm a brave soldier... had to uninstall AVG last week as it was detecting a program I was running as a virus and I refuse to use anything else. That said I can guarantee no spyware or viruses are on the pc at this time)

 

[charper1]

What O/S?

What make & model of ethernet card or is it on board the mobo?

Make sure you have the latest drivers and / or firmware for the mobo and the modem itself.

You can also try DrTCP and checking your RWIN value; depending on the O/S.

DrTCP windows tcp tuning and tweaking - dslreports.com

 

[iwc5893]

A lot of it can be how the speed test is measuring your traffic, too. Have you tried other speed testing sites?

 

[cparker]

When the phone company told me, "It must be your house wiring", I ran a direct line to their interface box outside. When they AGAIN told me, "it must be your house wiring", I responded, "I'm tapped direct to your interface". There was a tech here within 2 hours. Turns out there was a bad cable from the pole to my house. So #1 don't believe whatever they tell you if you think they may be wrong.

#2, as iwc5893 suggests, it can have a lot to do with what you get connected to for the speed test. If that remote computer OR ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN YOU AND IT is slower than your rated DSL connection.... then you'll only ever go as fast as the slowest link.

 

[duckydan]

I am using Windows XP
My network card is the Broadcom 802.11g Network Adapter when using the router, 1394 Net Adapter when using wired

As for my motherboard I do not see anything listed in system except my processor is AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+

The PC is the Acer Aspire L100

as for speedtests I have tried members.cavtel.net/speed, speedtest.net, and dslreports.com and I max out at 4mb with the best test.

Now my pc was made for Windows Vista so I'm not sure if that's the problem. I'm sure it could be possible.

I downloaded Chipset, Processor, and Network drivers from the acer site with no change. Same with the DrTweak (no difference in speed)

I average 700k on bitorrent with downloads though which is 5.6mb/s so none of this is making very much sense at all.

 

[navychop]

Wireless is too variable IMHO to depend upon for max speed. And Firewire? Can't you connect an RJ-45 and test?

 

[duckydan]

I'm getting the same speed with both. Currently I am using RJ-45. I just gave all network configurations figuring maybe something would pop in someone's head and say "that's why"

 

[boomerang]

I am using Windows XP
My network card is the Broadcom 802.11g Network Adapter when using the router, 1394 Net Adapter when using wired

I average 700k on bitorrent with downloads though which is 5.6mb/s so none of this is making very much sense at all.

1394 is firewire. You should be listing a Marvell 88E116 GigaLan adapter. Does that show up?

Are you running your BitTorrent client when you do your speed tests? If so, kill it.

I would first make sure your Marvell adapter shows in device manager correctly. Disable your BitTorrent client. On a fresh reboot, hard wire directly to your modem and do your speed tests. Multiple speed test sites is good, but it should also be done during different times of the day. Average out your results and see what you get.

I had a laptop over here last week that was running AVG. It was running Vista and was doing some very strange things. For one example, no drives showed up in Computer (My Computer in XP). I ran one single piece of malware removal software on it and it detected and cleaned up 477 pieces of malware. Now, most were cookies, but there were 87 trojans, 18 viruses and two rootkits.

On reboot, the drives were present. The owner wanted it back with no further work done. He felt if the drives were visible, it was fixed. There is no one single piece of software that will eradicate every trojan, virus, backdoor, key logger, rootkit, etc. That laptop is not fixed, it's still infected and the infections left are inviting their friends back.

I don't want to get off on the wrong foot, but I have two issues. If you're Torrenting the chances are extrememly high you are infected with something. Secondly, he was"protected" with AVG. How did all that bad stuff get in?

 

[duckydan]

Well I ran a few online tests and my torrents are well protected blocking out p2p and non-local connections (allowing only from the sites I go to which are very safe.) But that's beside the point. My speed tests have all been run while all programs are closed.

That said I do not see the Marvell 88E116 Gigalan Adapter anywhere.

AVG and Vista have known issues so that may be the problem your friend had. Having used AVG for about five years now I've never gotten a virus, and I used to do a lot more than torrenting in the past. The problem with AVG is that it detects everything as a virus so it's possible your friend bypassed it once and then it just detects nothing at all.

All of that said I did find a small short in the phone line that took me up to almost 5mb... not where I want to be but it's slightly better.

 

[boomerang]

That said I do not see the Marvell 88E116 Gigalan Adapter anywhere.

I picked up this information right from the Acer site for your computer. They list that as being the network adapter for your system. It's the only connection you would have available to hard wire to either the modem or the router unless you added in an additional NIC and you do not list that.

How you could connect to anything hard wired without an NIC is a mystery.

Humor me and go to malwarebytes.org and download and install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. It's free. Choose to update after installation and run a scan. See what you come up with.

Take a gander here: Virus Bulletin : News - AV-Test release latest results

Look at the results for AV tests. There is no one single piece of software out there that is capable of detecting everything. Malware is a moving target and by nature the bad guys are always one step ahead of the good guys. When someone says they are not infected because their AV software has not detected anything, it could be the case, but could just as easily not be the case. It's a false sense of security.

I was not aware of problems with AVG and Vista. I thank you for that information.

 

[duckydan]

For Anti-spyware I have Spybot Search and Destroy and AdAware (i'm not completely stupid)

That said when I get home from work today I'll humor you and run it

 

[boomerang]

For Anti-spyware I have Spybot Search and Destroy and AdAware (i'm not completely stupid)

That said when I get home from work today I'll humor you and run it

Thanks. Be sure to post your results, regardless of the outcome. I can take it if I'm wrong.

You really need to explore that NIC issue. I know I've deviated off into malware issues, but what's going on with this NIC? I can't imagine why you would not have a network adapter showing in Device Manager and yet the port is usable. I'm really curious on this one.

 

[cparker]

For anti-spyware, anti-virus and anti-malware.... I have linux.. heheheh

Seriously though, my kids have windows machines and they run spybot and adaware at least once a week. Windows can get "dirty" amazingly fast. They also have a corporate version of Symantec antivirus (courtesy of Dad) with lifetime updates. (Legitimate work perk..... nice, huh?)

 

[duckydan]

Ok Boomerang I ran the scan

Objects Scanned: 73573
Objects Infected: 4 (registry keys that had no files attached to it), 1 of which was for my daughter's Disney Online so I question if it was actually spyware.

Overall I say that's good for not having antivirus or firewall installed

As for the network card I have Nvidia nForce Networking Controller (the reason I didn't see it initially was I disabled it when I ran the speed test using the wireless card to make sure it didn't interfere.)

 

[boomerang]

Ok Boomerang I ran the scan

Objects Scanned: 73573
Objects Infected: 4 (registry keys that had no files attached to it), 1 of which was for my daughter's Disney Online so I question if it was actually spyware.

Overall I say that's good for not having antivirus or firewall installed

As for the network card I have Nvidia nForce Networking Controller (the reason I didn't see it initially was I disabled it when I ran the speed test using the wireless card to make sure it didn't interfere.)

Yeah, that's great! If the computer was mine, I'd uninstall the Nvidia controller from device manager, reboot and let it be redetected. Obviously, you'd want to make sure you have the drivers on hand in case they're needed. It may pick them up and reinstall the device automatically.

Then I would get into the driver configuration. There will be a parameter called Speed and Duplex or something similar. You're going to want the highest numerical setting and full duplex, or if there is Auto Negotiation or something similar, choose that. Feel free to experiment. This should be the default setting, but sometimes these things get discombobulated for reasons that cannot be determined.

If that doesn't work, I'm out of ideas at this point.

 

[darren_s]

Duckydan,

Did WinAmp start crashing on you due to AVG?

 

[iwc5893]

For anti-spyware, anti-virus and anti-malware.... I have linux.. heheheh

Same here...the only protection I'm running is a firewall and a couple of things in Firefox (adblock and no script).

 

[Van]

You really gotta watch bit torrent, it'll still run even when you think you have it disabled, I swear that program is bad joojoo.

 

[duckydan]

Ok I posted last night but then everything went down again. It appears I had a pretty bad short in one of the cables at the house which was causing some of my problems. I re-wired the whole house (literally... it was a fun thing to do at 1am) and it was doing much better... still not as fast as they say I can get but pretty good. (I got as high as 1.2mb for a split second before it dropped back to 740k)

First, Darren, I never used winamp so I'm not sure if that would be affected by AVG.

As for Bittorrent, I typically only use it on one site that I've been a private member of for years so i don't worry about getting anything from there.

In response to you, Boomerang, it appears my NIC is on the Nvidia board... which makes no sense since nvidia to my knowledge is a graphics card but what do I know. However, I did have the wrong wireless driver installed. My current driver is dated 2007 whereas my old was 2004 so that is a big help.

In the advanced sections of the driver I did not see anything that said speed. I did see something that said RTS Threshold but nothing else that you mentioned.

At this point I'm pretty sure that my problem may be with the fact I'm using Xp on a vista machine which does not have all of the drivers available in XP. I'm not completely sure but it was nice to see that 1.2mb for a second before it died. I tried maxing it out after that to see if I could go higher but no luck.

 

[Van]

Nvidia does have its hands in alot of pc componants these days since its chips are being used more and more throughout the industry. The chipsets are now found on motherboards and Ive heard on sound cards as well.

[ame=http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS265US265&q=nvidia+nforce+networking+controller]nvidia nforce networking controller - Google Search[/ame]

Just a simple google brought up the above results so the company does have its hands in network area's as well.