Anyone knows what may cause my lan connection to be so freaking slow?
 

I got a 1mbps broadband package that is shared a by two (maybe 3, i'm not sure) pcs. However, most of the time, only my pc access the internet. The prob now is the internet connection never had come close the 1mbps speed. In fact, i think it might be around 100kbps.Browsing media files is almost impossible, and my mozilla browser frequently shows "the connection has been reset" sign, and needs to be reloaded a few times before it actually connects to a site albeit slowly. Downloads are crap slow, never ever reached more than 100kbps. The fastest would be around 60-70 kbps, and even that only happen occasionally.
And one more thing, for some unknown reasons, the local area connection status window indicates my internet speed to be 100mbps, which is very unlikely.

Any sort of help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

what does it say when you try running a speedtest?

who's your provider?

ask to be switched to a different circuit if possible.

when i moved about 20 minutes away from where i was previously i saw a decrease in my download speeds. i changed my modem and problem solved. i dont know why but hey, it worked. i was using an older modem. been using it for a few years w/o any problems but when i moved to a different area i saw a decrease in my speeds. so i decided to just rent one from the cable company and its all good now.


another thing you can do is call your cable provider. i remember when the cable company around here used to do a few different tiers of speeds. you were able to pay different amounts for different speeds. i was paying for 5 mbps but was only seeing 3 max. i gave the cable company a call and they did what ever it was they did and they got the problem fixed.

I've ran a speedtest...its shows that my connection averages around 200kbps, and that sometimes falls significantly, which kinda happens regularly. Here there's only 1 single broadband providing company( called Streamyx), so i guess that might be a reason why the service is crap...anyhow, regarding the modem, i think it may be a part of the prob. When i turn off the modem, and then, turn it back on, the internet for a short while, becomes fast again. However, the speed i'm talking about never actually go near the 1mbps speed promised with the package. Can the modem cause such significant lag of speed of my internet connection?

First things first - are you comparing 1 megabit-per-second rated speeds with 100 kilobyte-per-second speeds? There may be a bits-vs-bytes disparity there.

Secondly, the rated speed is only one measure, you may also have contention ratio issues if you have large numbers of users connected to the same exchange.

Thirdly, I don't claim to be an expert on these things - for all I know I may be quoting random mumbo-jumbo here.

Bingo!! You are describing your downloads in kbps when actual file download speeds are measured in KBps. What do your actual downloads go at? 100 kilobits per second or kilobytes per second?

Couple things:


Do you not control this setup? If not, why aren't you asking the person controlling it what the issue is? For all you know, that third machine could be a zombie box downloading massive amounts of pr0n on your connection.

Have you had Broadband internet before? 1 MBps is quoted speed under very specific conditions, and you will never-ever reach that, I promise you. Mine is 6 MBps, and I don't even come close.

Do you have a proxy server? Is this wireless or wired? If it's wireless or you have a proxy, this is either a weak router / distance issue, or a proxy configuration issue.

You could have a 15TBps connection and still get 100 KBps downloads. Keep in mind that a download is affected not only by your available bandwidth but also the bandwidth of the host. If the site you're connecting to is on 56K or even 1MBps cable, they won't be able to push it fast enough for you to get it.

This is true. Ethernet runs at 10/100/1000 MBps in a LAN configuration. That means that in IDEAL conditions, the cable is rated to handle 100 MBps of transfer between computers in your LAN (Local Area Network), not to the Internet. You probably won't hit this either, as it's the theoretical maximum of the cable, in ideal conditions (distance, STP, etc.)

Lastly, as posters above have mentioned, make sure you are comparing apples-to-apples.
1 bit = 0 or 1.
1 Byte = 8 bits (e.g. 10101010)

Thereby,
1 KB = 1 kilobyte = 8,192 bits
1 Kb = 1 kilobit = 1,024 bits

The same thing happens with MB and Mb, so be careful when specifying. Common convention uses B for Byte and b for bit.