DSL- Web sites slower than dialup; other files fast

[SnowCker]

Hope someone can help. I have an Inspiron 8100 866 mhz/192 mb RAM/Windows ME. I've got a DSL line through SBC PacBell. My problem is that websites download at a snails pace. My 56k dial-up connection brings up sites faster. But downloading files like mpegs are no problem (the dialog window will read 100-145 KB/sec).

I sat on the phone with SBC tech support for 2 1/2 hours the other day. We reloaded their software and the TCP/IP network components. Made sure no boxes were checked under the LAN Settings. Enabled the DNS Configuration. And we tried a couple other things. Of course none of it helped. They ran some tests from their side and pinged me a couple times. Everything came up normal, so they kicked it up to their advanced solutions. Advanced solutions looked at the results and couldn't find anything so they sent a tech out to check my line.

The tech comes out and the line was getting a good signal outside my house and inside. The tech hooked his laptop up to mine and the speeds while browsing were good. Nothing like mine. So I'm sure the problem lies in my computer.

I also called Dell's tech support. With the help of Dell's tech support, I loaded the latest driver for my network card. Still having the problem. He said their had been a problem with the NIC on the 8100 consuming to many system resources but said there was a windows patch that took care of that. He directed me to where to get it but I apparently had the patch installed already. We did somethings with the msconfig to minimize programs started when windows starts to minimize system resources used but that didn't help either so we returned it to the old settings.

Each one of these people also told me that reloading windows might solve everything. Of course that is always a standard tech support response when they can't figure it out. I'm hoping that it doesn't come to that.

Thanks

[mnosteele52]

Welcome to Speedguide SnowCker:D, don't ever call tech support for getting your connection up to speed, just come here ;). Please read here (http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85224) so that we can properly help you.:)

[SnowCker]

I'm not sure I'm dealing with a "tweaking" problem here. It's not that it's working and I'm trying to make it faster. Many times I get time outs trying to load pages. To give an example of my problem: it took me about 95 seconds to bring up the downloads.com website, it took me 75 seconds to download Mozilla (9.8 Megs) with a transfer rate that averaged 144 KB/sec. It seems like when I am downloading a site, the connection will get a spike of activity for a split second every three or four seconds.

Running Windows ME. I have DSL from SBC PacBell. Advertised speeds are up to 1600/128. Running Enternet w/Efficient Networks PPPoE Adapter. Currently using IE 6.0.26

I downloaded the optomizer. Current settings are Windows Defaults.

TCP options string = 02040586

MTU = 1454
MTU is not fully optimized for broadband. Consider increasing your MTU to 1500 for better throughput.

MSS = 1414
Maximum useful data in each packet = 1414, which equals MSS.
MSS is not fully optimized for broadband (although it might work well for slower connections). Consider increasing your MTU value.

Default Receive Window (RWIN) = 16968
RWIN Scaling (RFC1323) = 0 bits
Unscaled Receive Window = 16968
RWIN is a multiple of MSS
Other values for RWIN that might work well with your current MTU/MSS:
520352 (MSS x 46 * scale factor of 8)
260176 (MSS x 46 * scale factor of 4)
130088 (MSS x 46 * scale factor of 2)
65044 (MSS x 46)

bandwidth * delay product:
Your RcvWindow limits you to: 678.72 kbps (84.84 KBytes/s) @ 200ms
Your RcvWindow limits you to: 271.488 kbps (33.936 KBytes/s) @ 500ms
Consider increasing your RWIN value to optimize TCP/IP for broadband.

MTU Discovery (RFC1191) = ON

Time to live left = 20 hops
TTL value is ok.

Timestamps (RFC1323) = OFF

Selective Acknowledgements (RFC2018) = OFF

IP type of service field (RFC1349)= 00000000

Having problems with the speedtests. Unless it's common for the test to take over 5 minutes, they look to me like they're timing out. When I monitor the connection, it's active for about 15 seconds. Then there is little to no communication and I get no results. The test running message stays up and there is no communication on my line. I've tried at least 10 times between last night and today and always get the same response.

[$46BENEFITS]

I've found that if it has been a while since I have cleaned out my temporary internet folder that things run very slow. This seems to happen especially when it has been a long time since I have reinstalled my OS. The easiest way to accomplish this is (running Internet Explorer) to click the menu labeled tools, then click "internet options" then click the general tab / under "Temporary internet files" click "delete files" and check the "delete all offline content" box, then click and "delete cookies". and OK. This should clean out a lot of the junk that clutters up your internet experience. Hope this helps.

[SnowCker]

I've cleaned out my temp files, internet cache, and cookies all within the last two days. Also, I do have Norton Personal Firewall installed but it is disabled.