Terrible, Terrible Internet

[Mythyc]

Howdy folks,

I'm in need of some assistance. I've been well aware that my internet is bad for quite some time (several years) but it was tolerably bad in the past. The quality of my internet, however, has been steadily declining over the past few years and this particular year it has reached all new all-time lows.

To put this into perspective, the service which I am supposed to get is a 1 mbit/100 kbit line. Also, if it has any significance, my ISP (and entire building) uses fiber-optic technology, and I live in a residential complex with many other college students, the majority who use the same ISP (to my knowledge). However in the past, during "peak" hours (you'll understand why I put peak in quotations later), that rate quickly dropped down to 500kbit downstream rates (upstream remained relatively stable). My pings would skip from a reasonable ~50 ms to most gaming servers in the US all the way up to 300 ms at "peak" hours. Note that this was roughly what I achieved last year, and previous years before that.

However, this year, my downstream rate has dropped down to sub-100kbit rates during "peak" hours, and my pings are having uncontrollable seizures, ranging from 450-1600 ms at any given point in time during these so-called "peak" hours.

Now this would all be fine and dandy if I was living in the middle of the Sahara desert, but I'm not living in the middle of a desert. These "peak" hours that I talk about used to range from 6:30-11:30 PM every night, which was frustrating but reasonable considering that those are standard operational hours. This year, however, these "peak" hours have magically extended themselves to encompass all hours between 11:30 AM all the way through 12:30 AM (over 13h of non-stop terribad lag).

It is essentially impossible to do anything, anywhere, on the internet, at any time, for me. The only times I can seem to get a half-decent connection are in the mornings, or occasionally on weekends (although this makes the exception, not the rule).


I have already used SG's TCP/IP optimizer and set it to optimal settings. I have already patched in the registry tweak for windows 7/vista. I have Avast as an antivirus, use a variety of anti-spyware tools (including malwarebytes and spysweeper), and am fairly certain that this issue has nothing to do with my computer.

I would like to know if there's anything within my power that can be done to alleviate the lag, even slightly, thereby making it possible to do...oh you know, anything? on the internet. If not, I would like to know, at the very least, what is the cause of this terrible lag. I do plan on switching ISPs very soon, as I have grown tired of patiently waiting for pages, such as the one you're reading now, to load in under 3 minutes.

Here are some diagnostics for you:

TCP/IP Analyzer

« SpeedGuide.net TCP Analyzer Results »
Tested on: 09.26.2011 18:20
IP address: 206.162.xxx.xxx
Client OS: Windows 7

TCP options string: 020405a00103030201010402
MSS: 1440
MTU: 1480
TCP Window: 66240 (multiple of MSS)
RWIN Scaling: 2 bits (2^2=4)
Unscaled RWIN : 16560
Recommended RWINs: 63360, 126720, 253440, 506880, 1013760
BDP limit (200ms): 2650kbps (331KBytes/s)
BDP limit (500ms): 1060kbps (132KBytes/s)
MTU Discovery: ON
TTL: 57
Timestamps: OFF
SACKs: ON
IP ToS: 00000000 (0)

**Note that I have PPPoE broadband, and for some strange reason, setting my MTU to 1492 (or anything above 1480) results in multiple sites (hotmail in particular), as well as chat programs such as MSN/Yahoo to not load**

Some trace routes

click image to view full version

SG speed test

click image to view full version

Please hit me up if you need any additional information. All I really want is to find the source of the problem and hopefully troubleshoot it. If anything it will be a learning experience

[Sava700]

Sounds like your connection is over saturated as in too many people sharing the same connection (MAYBE) I really don't know the full details as to what you sub too. But I'm curious as to the package your paying for with TELUS (I assume this is the ISP). It might be advisable to increase the package and see what happens a few months. The High Speed Lite they have is the 1Mbps which sounds like what you have....try going to the High Speed Turbo that is 15Mbps and see what happens or even the High Speed Turbo 25...they seem to be offering a intro price around what you pay per month now if I'm reading their web page correctly.

[Sava700]

Click Start Menu

Open Control Panel>>Network Connections

Right click on your Local Area Connection and click on Properties

Now on the General tab and uncheck all the checkboxes of all the protocols except tcp/ip.

Press OK.

This would enhance your Internet connectivity speed.

umm why? Also its a 2 month old thread, he either got it working or just gave up...also why are you spamming?

[Sava700]

Hey,
Mythyc is facing the problem from many years. How can you say that, "he either got it working or just gave up...." ? And if it is like that, why he didn't say thanks to you to solve the issue. I am just trying to sort it out.

Well 99% of the time I've seen they either get the answer they want and don't come back or just forget and something fixes it self.