The Letterville BullBoard: A cable modem speed question ..........

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Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :

I think I'm getting screwwed by my internet cable service Time Warner. I was a bit confused between the difference between kilobytes and kilobits. I disabled my Norton Personal Firewall and ran the speed test provided by TWC. It shows that my connection is running at about 60 kilobits. I called tech support and they said that my connection was only slightly better than a 56k modem, but that when they pinged my connection they got a 10 milisecond ping response. The technician said that they suspect that there is a problem with either the RJ cable that runs from the modem to the computer or that the ethernet card is bad.

My computer is an AMD Athlon 850 with 256 megs of ram (if that makes any difference). Also, my original 56k modem is still connected so that I can send faxes from my computer only.

Any suggestions or insights would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Posted by Amy Brown (Member # 1963) on :

Glenn,

Go to www.toast.net

You can do several different speed tests from there. I have Time Warner for my provided as well and my connection smokes most of the time.

Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :

Thanks Amy.

I just tried it. I tested the various sites and my speed was anywhere from 48k to 65k.

Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :

I found the problem and the solution!

It seems that there was something in my Windows Registry that was throttling back my connection speed. I found a site that had some suggestions for tweaking cable modem connections....

http://www.newnan.cc/cable.html

My throughput went from an average 60k to an average 2872k!

I went back to www.toast.net and tried their tests. Depending on which site I chose, I got a throughput as low as 478k and as high as 2872k.

I feel like a kid who just got a new toy for Christmas!

Posted by Rick Sacks (Member # 379) on :

Here in rural America I get 26,400 usually, and on occassion we get up to 28,800. I'd love to get one of those fast connections, and I'm thankful for what I have.

Posted by Dave Grundy (Member # 103) on :

Rick..I live out in rural Canada...Used to be lucky to connect at 28.800 with a 56K modem. Terrible phone lines, too much noise in the line.

All of a sudden the local rural independant phone company, that is also an ISP, decided to get into DSL. I was their first DSL subscriber.

Bottom line...Same phone lines...DSL consistently connects from 300K to 500K. I don't know how it works but it does.

I just checked my speed on a test site..tonight I am geting a connection speed of 430K and that apparently translates into a download speed of 52.5k/second. With my old dialup I never got above 3 k/sec download speed, so that is about 17 times as fast. I am, after 18 months on DSL a VERY happy camper!

Glenn....a bit of advice...I used to have NetZero installed for the odd time when my DSL connection went down in the early days of it's availablility here. BIG mistake..NetZero is known to change the registry settings for "packet size" and will dramatically reduce DSL or cable speed. I had to do what you did...use a speed checker and re-set the packet size in the registry to take advantage of DSL. Just thought I would mention it Glenn.

[ November 11, 2001: Message edited by: Dave Grundy ]

Posted by Benji Mcentire (Member # 2442) on :

I have DSL as well here at the shop and I can swear its slowed down , how does one chech his packet size and throttle up his max band to the DSL router.....

Posted by Dave Grundy (Member # 103) on :

Benji...check out...

http://www.dslreports.com/stest

You can do a speed check and then you can also go to their "FAQ" and "tweaks" pages to apply the correct "fixes"... AND they DO work!

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