road runner wtf?

ok in my last place i had road runner with 1 tv split into the line and it was awesome. but the place i am staying now has road runner with 3 tv's split into it and me and my buddies computer. the problem is is that sometimes it will be fast like its supposed to be and then 2 seconds later it slows to a slow crawl, i mean slower than dial up. it only seems to do this at night, when everyone is online but when i was at my old place it didnt matter it never slowed down. there is a new cable running from the box to the house so what do you guys think?

Could be a few neighbors running file share. When they hook into a fast downloader the speeds drop.

The biggest drawback to cable is you share the pipe in the area. I get slowdowns right after 4-8PM and during the 5-8AM hours.

On the rare occasion I drop below 4Mbps I know someone is really pounding torrents or serving files on their lines in my area.

well when it starts to slow down the task manager still shows it to be connected at 100mbps and network usage stays around 5% watching the task manager when its going slow.lmao i just read your sig. love the network thing never thought of that

That has nothing to do with the line outside your computer. You could do a line check with an external speed tester.


http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
http://www.testmy.net/

ok the speed test got me 4797 download and 352kbps upload

ok it started slowing down on me and wouldnt even run the test again. now what i notice is when it slows down if i click to go to a website the loading bar does nothing and i can watch the network usage in task manager and it will be at 0%. after a while of watching it it will jump to like 0.02% and then load the page.

Normally when I test my closest hub that my ISP pprovides to test. I get this:





This what I get from testmynet:

:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Connection is:: 4560 Kbps about 4.6 Mbps (tested with 2992 kB)
Download Speed is:: 557 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net (server1)
Test Time:: Mon Jan 23 2006 22:55:49 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
Bottom Line:: 81X faster than 56K 1MB download in 1.84 sec
Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 35.51 % faster than the average for host (adelphia.net)
Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-3RA0PECMO

I am unsure how far testmynet is from me. I know that my isp test server is about 1500 feeet from me if not less. I am unsure how the route the cabling. Try and find the closest test server you cna for a good run on a test. That will be the closest you can get for a true reading. My line is rated for 8000/1000. Since there is buttloads of users in my area on cable it is really slow here at times.

well when i ran the test the first time it was from atlanta ga and thats the closest to me. i am in north carolina

Try and find a closer server. Some sites offer mirrors. Your ISP may provide a line bandwidth test for its customers. I know Adelphia does and offers many states in the test regions.

If the test servers are bieng pounded, the results will be low or erractic.

ok i know there is a way you can enter you ip in the address bar but everytime i try it it wont work

Have you run a spyware scan and virus scan to rule that out? Sometimes they can give intermittent activity. Not saying it is so, but that can rule out that.

Easy way.. Does everyone in the home get the same slowdown? Or is it just the one rig getting slowdowns?

A good online scanner
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

It likes IE and uses ActiveX. As of yet it has treated me good for a online scanner.

it slows down the other computer as well. also i use firefox

It could be a pounded line. You could call your ISP and have them ping you during the slowdowns. Or have them do a line check. It could be normal for the area, due to high usage.

You can even do a ping yourself. I like to ping either,

www.yahoo.com or www.google.com

To get a ping going:

Open Run in the start bar(or hit Windows key+R)
Type CMD(cmd works also)
Once the cmmand promt will pop up then type the ping command

example ping www.google.com

You can add switches so it goes longer.

ping www.google.com -t

This pretty much makes it run ntil you stop it.

There is a host of tools in the cmd

netstat
type netstat /? (for the switches you can add to it)

ipconfig
type ipconfig /? (for extra switches for this one too)

I forgot to add one ...

tracert

like the others add the help switch(/?) for the extras you can do with the commands.

traceroute is kind of cool to find out where and addy is leading and how many hops it makes along the way. There is more to it then that though. You can find slowdown along the route also.

thats pretty neat ill try that when it slows down again. i knew i could ping myself but i didnt know you could ping www.yahoo.com
cool

You can ping any site that will allow it. Yahoo is very easy on that though. Google seems faster though for ping.

If you ping my site it will time out due to the firewall disallowing it. It helps prevent DoS attacks me thinks. My host is anal about things like that. You can tracert just about any addy or IP though. If it is not masked. Then you will lose it along the way.