Question about computer and internet speed

Our internet speed seems to have gotten slower just in the last few months. When I had some vacation time in December, I talked to our internet provider about this. They told me how to do a speed test which I did and according to them was at the level it should be. Then they told me I should replace all of the DSL filters on our system which we did. It seems to me like the problem has gotten worse than ever more recently. When we run a speed test, we still get what they say is the correct speed but when you load a website sometimes you wait for a couple of minutes for it to load. We tried bypassing our wireless router and still have the same speed according to the speed test. I talked to the provider yesterday and they said they would increase our speed effective as we were talking on the phone and we could try that for a few days to see the difference.
I have done a speed test several times since they told me they increased the speed but it still shows the same speed that we had. The speed we are paying for is 3 Mbps which they say should be fast enough to not have to wait for websites to load. To complicate things we did some experimenting today and if we bypass our wireless router it SEEMS like the websites load faster, but when we run a speed test we get the same speed whether we are going through the router or not. I have seen a few posts here about computer issues and hope that someone can provide me with some info or advice on this subject. To keep this tractor related, I have an old tractor and I like tractors.

The slowdown can be anywhere in the web, Not just with your ISP.
It might also be malware/spyware in your pc eating up cpu time and bandwidth.

How do you ship cats?

I work in a Caterpillar facility and do shipping
and receiving.

We are lucky to have a retired next door neighbor that did computer maintenance for a large insurance company. He "cleans up" this thing for us once in a while and once he ordered a computer board from the internet, installed it and doubled this thing's capacity. All I know is how to turn it on and off.

I agree that the internet seems to be slowing down over time. However, I highly doubt the speed it is capable of sending to you is slower. What's happening is the sites you visit are getting more and more complicated, loading more and more stuff now to bring you the same info. It's things like sites adding more ad links and interactive content. Once upon a time you got an ad--the same one everyone got. That was easy display ad as part of the page. Now when you load a site it has to check the cookie it left on your PC and get the info on your past visits then from a database pull ads targeted to you. You probably still ignore them but they're trying to get you. Instead of showing you and ad for Birds and Blooms magazine they show you one for Vintage Iron--that kind of stuff. And lets not forget the "analytics" that they are loading or processing each time a page is requested or a button clicked. They are tracking everything. It's not like they are spying on you but they are keeping track of everything. They want some day to make use of all this data by saying we see a higher correlation between people who click this button vs those who chose this menu item when it comes to buying these items. And this extra "stuff" happening not creates more traffic on the internet but makes their servers work harder to provide the information to you--slower response time. Again once upon a time you requested to view product X and the server sent the page with product X specs and some generic ads or links. Now you request to view product X. The server asks your computer to send the info in the cookies stored on it. It does. The server now examines the data checking databases and building a page just for you that shows product X's specs along with other suggested purchases/ads/deals even irritating little videos on the side that you hover over to hear all packaged together and sent to you.

And lets not forget that if your taking updates for Windows, IE, Firefox, Java, media players etc that they aren't making those programs faster they are adding code to them. Code to close loopholes that may be exploited. None the less with each update those programs have more code they have to run in order to do their jobs--hence a gradual slowing of their performance. Of course they figure you also update your PC every year or so--thus with a faster PC running the now blotted larger programs the end result will be suitable performance.

You may need a new modem as it is an electronic piece of equipment and they will degrade over time. Also you mention that you hve several filters, if your modem can be isolated to a stand alone phone jack (not daisey chained with other jacks) you might want to request a "whole house filter" to be installed in your NID (Network Interface Device). That would direct the dsl signal straight to your modem and not degrade it by going to all the jacks which in effect is considered bridge tap.
Good luck

I do not know if this applies to your situation, but this may give you something to think about. We are "hicks in the Sticks"just over a mile from a fiber optic DSL line, and have several neighbors with kids. I like to do my web surfing between 4 and 6 in the morning when it seems to be faster. I have noticed that on "snow days" off from school, the web is much slower. Plus, it seems slower in the evenings. My theory is that with neighborhood kids listening to music, streaming movies off Netflix, and uploading pictures to Facebook, the neighborhood DSL maxxes out. It is still bunches better than dialup.

(quoted from post at 19:29:01 03/15/14) I work in a Caterpillar facility and do shipping
and receiving.

Click to expand...

AHHH I was visualizing trying to stuff a cat in a box...

(quoted from post at 16:13:57 03/15/14) Our internet speed seems to have gotten slower just in the last few months. When I had some vacation time in December, I talked to our internet provider about this. They told me how to do a speed test which I did and according to them was at the level it should be. Then they told me I should replace all of the DSL filters on our system which we did. It seems to me like the problem has gotten worse than ever more recently. When we run a speed test, we still get what they say is the correct speed but when you load a website sometimes you wait for a couple of minutes for it to load. We tried bypassing our wireless router and still have the same speed according to the speed test. I talked to the provider yesterday and they said they would increase our speed effective as we were talking on the phone and we could try that for a few days to see the difference.
I have done a speed test several times since they told me they increased the speed but it still shows the same speed that we had. The speed we are paying for is 3 Mbps which they say should be fast enough to not have to wait for websites to load. To complicate things we did some experimenting today and if we bypass our wireless router it SEEMS like the websites load faster, but when we run a speed test we get the same speed whether we are going through the router or not. I have seen a few posts here about computer issues and hope that someone can provide me with some info or advice on this subject. To keep this tractor related, I have an old tractor and I like tractors.

Click to expand...

One of the most noted problems is band width. Lets say a site you are trying to access can handle 99MBSS and 33 users are on all capable of 3MBPS. The entire band width is being used. If another 33 users try logging in theory all 66 users will get cut down by the receiving (web site) server to 1.5MBPS. Your 3 MBPS will also be adjusted by your server depending on load. Try it at 1AM and see what you get.

Rick

Your perceived internet speed is determined by two things: throughput and latency. Traditional speed tests only measure throughput, which is the rate at which data flows through the network. Latency is the delay it takes for a single packet to travel through the network. Ideally, the only latency should be that imposed by the speed of light. In practice, many other things in the network can add latency, such as routers. There is always latency in the website's response. And your ISP's DNS server can add substantial delays as it looks up IP addresses.

One thing that is adding to internet latency is "buffer bloat". Telecommunications companies add buffers in their networks to reduce packet loss and improve network utilization. But when the size of a buffer gets too big, it can add significant latency.

You can test network latency using the command-line program "tracert" ("traceroute" on UNIX/Linux systems.) For example, "tracert ytmag.com" will give you a report of the roundtrip latency from your PC to each of the devices between it and ytmag.com.

While researching buffer bloat, I came across another diagnostic tool, ICSI Netalyzer. I gave it a whirl and it gave a very thorough report of the state of my internet connection. Highly recommended. <a href="http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/">http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/</a>

You may need a new modem as it is an electronic piece of equipment and they will degrade over time. Also you mention that you hve several filters, if your modem can be isolated to a stand alone phone jack (not daisey chained with other jacks) you might want to request a "whole house filter" to be installed in your NID (Network Interface Device). That would direct the dsl signal straight to your modem and not degrade it by going to all the jacks which in effect is considered bridge tap.
Good luck

Do you use Internet Explorer? I have seen it so bloated that it took forever to load pages. Where I work we have two computers on the sales counter. I have Firefox installed on the one I use most of the time. We can start to access the same website on the two and the Firefox browser gets there first nearly every time. Just my take, your problem may be something else entirely. I agree with what some have suggested that web pages are more complicated now and have more data on them. More data means more time to load pages. From what you describe you have DSL. There are times it's not much better than dialup in my opinion. We had that at work for a while and it was not at all reliable. I am using a wireless provider with a modem inside the house. I pay for "up to" 3MB down and 1MB up. Most of the time it's about 2 up and surprisingly 1.5 or a little more up. That being said, sometimes I'll think it's going pretty good and check it, only to find it's even slower. At four in the morning it's usually right on the 3 mark or a little more. Again, as suggested, the total bandwidth available is divided among the total number of users at any given time.

As to the answer to your question: I would restart everything, make sure you don't have anything running in the background that's hogging computer usage. Run some kind of spyware type software that will detect and remove same. I bet your hardware is just fine.

Which one??

Download and install the Firefox browser and see if it is still slow.

I would suggest you download CCleaner and run it at least once a week. It cleans out all the crap that surfing the web leaves behind. I have seen up to 450mb of junk deleted in a week. And,I would also switch over to Google Chrome as your browser. It's definitely faster than MS Explorer.