How to improve internet connection

[Latrobe]

I have a really really crap internet and ISP. Graded F- and slower than 99% of rest of the US based on some internet speed test sites. On a good night my net status to the servers look like this...



I have 1.32Mb/s download, 0.32Mb/s upload on rare occasions. For the most part its well under 1Mb though. My ping to the LW arena varies greatly anywhere from 80-900.

I've done the ping plotter test before and apparently my connection is going through 2 bad routers along the way. I have many many instances where I see people's tracers falling well behind my plane but they are getting hits on me. How can I fix this because it's start to really drive me crazy! Do I need a new router? Is there a program I can download that can fix it? Going to a new ISP is out of the question since I only get 1 to choose from out here. They have said they are going to be upgrading the internet around here to better speed, better everything but that was maybe 5 years ago so I'm guessing they lied and are never doing it.


How can I improve my internet? 

[Bizman]

Now that's really bad. Not the speed but the variation! Unfortunately there's really not much that you can do outside your house.
There are things that you can do, though, listed in the order they pop my mind:

• Check your cables. The one from the wall to your modem and the one from the modem to your computer.
• Speaking of cables, cut off excessive length especially in the cable between your wall and modem. Use good quality cables.
• Make sure the cable between your modem and computer is rated at least cat5e. A shielded cat6 would further eliminate problems, worth a couple of bucks to try!
• Modems don't last forever, after changing the cables that would be the next on the list. Your ISP might lend you one for testing purposes.
• I noticed your cursor is kind of non-standard. Hopefully it doesn't include a truckload of crapware phoning home during your gaming.
• Referring to the previous, make sure your computer is running only the processes that are needed.
• If you at least suspect there might be some unwanted software, run Eset Online Scanner. Check the the two boxes under Advanced settings for Potentionally Unwanted and Unsafe programs.
• If there's lots of crap, take further actions to get rid of all of them.
• Remove your network card in Device Manager, reboot and and let Windows reinstall it. Also reset Winsock. How? Type cmd in the search box. Right click and run it as administrator. Type "netsh winsock reset" without quotes. Reboot.
• New network drivers from the motherboard download site
• After making sure everything is perfect at your end, show the ping plot results to your ISP and ask if they would like to get better service from the problem spots. Making it look like they get poor service for their investors' money would probably work better than saying that one player over there has problems...

There's software that claim to improve your network performance. Don't use them! It's true that your download speed may improve but with a cost of instability in gaming or somewhere else. Windows default settings is what online games work with - or any online service for that matter. If you have tried some of that kind of software, reinstalling and resetting your network settings may work. If not, a clean reinstall of Windows would solve both malware and settings problems.

Last but not least: Remember that there's been a lot of bad weather in several areas in the USA, dropping down lines. If your problems have popped up recently, check the conditions in the areas Ping Plotter gives poor results.

[Latrobe]

Thanks for the advice Bizman! I'm going to try some of these and see if it fixes my issue. I've had this problem for as long as I can remember. The bad weather may be adding some more problems but it's had plenty of problems even before that.

 

[olds442]

Now that's really bad. Not the speed but the variation! Unfortunately there's really not much that you can do outside your house.
There are things that you can do, though, listed in the order they pop my mind:

• Check your cables. The one from the wall to your modem and the one from the modem to your computer.
• Speaking of cables, cut off excessive length especially in the cable between your wall and modem. Use good quality cables.
• Make sure the cable between your modem and computer is rated at least cat5e. A shielded cat6 would further eliminate problems, worth a couple of bucks to try!
• Modems don't last forever, after changing the cables that would be the next on the list. Your ISP might lend you one for testing purposes.
• I noticed your cursor is kind of non-standard. Hopefully it doesn't include a truckload of crapware phoning home during your gaming.
• Referring to the previous, make sure your computer is running only the processes that are needed.
• If you at least suspect there might be some unwanted software, run Eset Online Scanner. Check the the two boxes under Advanced settings for Potentionally Unwanted and Unsafe programs.
• If there's lots of crap, take further actions to get rid of all of them.
• Remove your network card in Device Manager, reboot and and let Windows reinstall it. Also reset Winsock. How? Type cmd in the search box. Right click and run it as administrator. Type "netsh winsock reset" without quotes. Reboot.
• New network drivers from the motherboard download site
• After making sure everything is perfect at your end, show the ping plot results to your ISP and ask if they would like to get better service from the problem spots. Making it look like they get poor service for their investors' money would probably work better than saying that one player over there has problems...

There's software that claim to improve your network performance. Don't use them! It's true that your download speed may improve but with a cost of instability in gaming or somewhere else. Windows default settings is what online games work with - or any online service for that matter. If you have tried some of that kind of software, reinstalling and resetting your network settings may work. If not, a clean reinstall of Windows would solve both malware and settings problems.

Last but not least: Remember that there's been a lot of bad weather in several areas in the USA, dropping down lines. If your problems have popped up recently, check the conditions in the areas Ping Plotter gives poor results.

I agree kill it with fire.

[guncrasher]

is there a different is you can try?  in my area there's 3.  trust me they will fight to bring you back, you may not get a better isp but at least you will pay a few bucks less for all the aggravation.



semp

[XxDaSTaRxx]

I have 1.32Mb/s download,

With that internet?! I have (on a good day without anybody hogging up the wifi) download speed of .5Mb/s with this connection on AH:


 

[Auger]

Latrobe, what is the advertised speed of your Internet connection?  Bizman addressed the networking side rather thoroughly, but he didn't mention the cable side.  One trick that not too many people know about is how to see the signal performance of their cable modem.  Point your browser at 192.168.100.1.  That should take you to the status page of your cable modem.

Check your send and receive signal strengths.  The receive strength should be 0 dBm optimally.  If it is less than -5 dBm or more than 15 you're not going to get your best speeds.  The transmit strength should be above 30 dBm.  If any of these are way off you could have problems.

If the receive strength is too low, check all of the cable connections and make sure the cables are firmly attached to the connectors and the connectors are tightened.  Also make sure that there aren't a bunch of splitters between the cable modem and where the cable enters the house.  Ideally there should be only one splitter between the modem and where the cable enters the house.

If the receive signal is too high you can get a splitter with a bigger signal drop.  Most splitters have a 3.5 dBm drop, but you can find them with higher values.  Whatever you do, don't put an amplifier in between the cable modem and where the line enters the house.  That will cause all kinds of grief.

[Bizman]

Thanks for the addition, Auger. I didn't actually think about the connection could be via the TV cable. Especially your comment about the splitters is very valuable. Someone once said that each joint - splitter or extension - can cut as much as 5 dB from the signal! People here have had problems with the splitters going bad. When cable came to my town, the ISP warned about cheap splitters, but now the better quality splitters they used to recommend and deliver are causing issues. Now instead of the traditional Y-splitter recommend ones with some built-in filter, having dedicated outputs for data and TV.

[Latrobe]

Latrobe, what is the advertised speed of your Internet connection?  Bizman addressed the networking side rather thoroughly, but he didn't mention the cable side.  One trick that not too many people know about is how to see the signal performance of their cable modem.  Point your browser at 192.168.100.1.  That should take you to the status page of your cable modem.

Check your send and receive signal strengths.  The receive strength should be 0 dBm optimally.  If it is less than -5 dBm or more than 15 you're not going to get your best speeds.  The transmit strength should be above 30 dBm.  If any of these are way off you could have problems.

If the receive strength is too low, check all of the cable connections and make sure the cables are firmly attached to the connectors and the connectors are tightened.  Also make sure that there aren't a bunch of splitters between the cable modem and where the cable enters the house.  Ideally there should be only one splitter between the modem and where the cable enters the house.

If the receive signal is too high you can get a splitter with a bigger signal drop.  Most splitters have a 3.5 dBm drop, but you can find them with higher values.  Whatever you do, don't put an amplifier in between the cable modem and where the line enters the house.  That will cause all kinds of grief.

That's something I'd like to confirm myself. I think if I remember correctly we were promised 2, maybe 3, Mb/s download speeds but I have never seen it higher than 1.32. Where exactly in my router status page can I look that up?


BTW, I did a complete uninstall and reinstall of my network adapter yesterday. The game "seemed" to play a bit smoother but from past experiences I am not going to get my hopes up thinking it's going to stay that way for very long.

I also checked the cables and it's running cat 6 from the router to the wall, and cat 5 from the wall to my computer. It's not very far from the router to my computer either, less than 20 feet into the other room.


EDIT: Ah! I think I found it.

Down Stream Path Transmit Power is 6.2 dBm, Up Stream Path Transmit Power is 9.9 dBm.

Is Margin (dB) or Line Attenuation (dB) something I should be looking at too?

[715]

The transmit strength should be above 30 dBm.

I'm not certain but I don't think you want the transmit power to be really high.    30 or 40 dBM is fine, but if it is high (like up near 50 dBm) it means that the cable company's CMTS cannot "hear" your modem very well and has told it to "shout".

[Bizman]

Change the cat5 to cat6, too. Doesn't cost much but may help a lot. I didn't quite get what you meant with the cabling description. Do you have the modem in another room and built-in data cables from one room to another? If so, how is the built-in cable rated? Most probably your computer has a gigabit nic and so might your modem, but cat5 can't handle that speed. You might also want to try a direct cat6 cable from the modem to your computer.

[Latrobe]

We have an ethernet cable (cat 6) plugged into one of the ethernet ports on the router. That runs from the router in the other room to the wall of my room and into an ethernet wall port. Then we have another ethernet cable (cat 5) plugged into the wall port and running into my computer.

[Bizman]

So there's a double joint in the cable from the modem to your computer both sides of the wall? Router to wall - inside the wall - wall to computer? If the length of the cable inside the wall is only that of the thickness of the wall, the category doesn't matter, I guess. But it definitely does matter to change the cat5 cable in your room to a faster category, cat6. The cheapest cat5 cables won't even work at all with gigabit connections, better quality may work but cause instability. Cat5 is specified to 100 MB connections and below, and while it is far more than your Internet connection speed, it can't handle the faster connection between a modern router and a modern network card.

[Latrobe]

I'll change the cat 5 out for a cat 6. We might even have some left over from when we built my room!  

Hope it fixes it at least somewhat.



EDIT: Ok, so just as I predicited reinstalling the network adapater did not fix the issue. Still getting spikes in the net status, still getting kill from shots that are clearly missing me by several feet. Hopefully changing to a cat 6 cable will have a better effect once i get one.

[Bizman]

While shopping for cables, get one long enough from the modem to your computer in case there's something in the cabling and connectors between the rooms. After all, the Ethernet cable will work up to 100 yards lengths without losing signal strength, so you may even go the one long cable way if you wish, even if you still end up using the wall plugs between rooms. A long cable is also a must if you ever go to a LAN party - we'll be probably having a con again sometime between March and April...