December 09, 2004

• If a connection test shows good bandwidth, but you're seeing delays in web surfing, it's very possible that your problem is in DNS resolution.
• kmellis probably knows more about your problem that I do, but here's my $0.02: 1. Don't turn your firewall off! 2. SBC should have a cute little utility that diagnoses your network connection, and can also roll back your network settings. I've had to do this a few times after making some small adjustment or download or whatever. Open up the SBC utility, and click Repair. Hopefully that does the trick.
• DSL Reports Helped greatly when I had a similar problem (before I got a Mac, that is...)
• Have you checked for spyware and viruses? I've seen connections crawl because all the bandwidth is in use by hidden programs.
• I'd recommend the tools at DSL Reports. There's a lot of good, basic information there on tweaking your system parameters to improve performance. There are a lot of possibliites and they can help you understand what changes may help you.
• Since you just got it, is it possible that windows update is downloading stuff int eh background? Just a shot in the dark. The easiest thing to check is if something is using up the bandwidth. Then you can move on to the more arcane networking settings to see if that is the problem.
• Go to the command prompt and do a traceroute to monkeyfilter, like so:
  c:\tracert monkeyfilter.com
  If there's a long delay before it does anything (that is, while it's connecting to your DN server to resolve "monkeyfilter.com" to 67.18.58.18) then it's a DNS problem. If there's a bottleneck somewhere along the way, it'll show up in the traceroute results.
• I see you're using SBC. Are you on the "384 plan" or the 1500? The former is slow as hell. You may find a fix here.
• I'll second the traceroute suggestion. This will not only tell you if there's a delay, but where. My only additional comment would be to do both a traceroute to a named address and to a numbered address. If the named address and numbered address timeout at the same point and have the same ping times, then your DNS server settings are okay. It the named address has noticeably longer ping times than the numbered address, then your DNS server could be a source of trouble.
• This is all very helpful so far. I won't be able to get home and try any of it out until this evening, so I'll be fidgeting for the next six hours or so. badonkadonk: I'm not on the base plan, but the next one up. And this connection speed problem wasn't an issue on my old POS computer, which was running WinME on a Celeron with 64MB of RAM. You guys are being a huge help. As I said, I know next to nothing about networking. Thanks. Meantime, if you got more advice, keep posting.
• Get a mac and install Linux on it Yes, I have no self-control. Nor shame.
• It's part of your charm. I love you.
• Okay, nothing's working so far. Traceroute showed no serious delay, and running tracerout for monkeyfilter.com and 67.18.58.18 produced nearly identical results. I tried running the tweak test on DSL reports -- it says I should change the MTU to 1500, but when I did the manual ping test they described, I came up with an MTU value of 1006, which probably means I entered some information wrong on the connection. It also recommended choosing RWIN between 14520 and 37752, but I have no idea how to change this or the MTU. The moral of the story? I'm a frustrated idiot who knows nothing about networking or doing serious system tweaks to WinXP.
• Okay, here's something really funky. I just ran a couple of different test downloads. I tried downloading *.exe files from two different sites, and got slightly different download speeds, but nothing faster than 50kb/sec. Then I downloaded two *.mp3 files from forksy's blog. VROOOM. 5-10 times faster, literally, about 300kb/sec.
• Okay, the good speed on forksy's blog must have been a freak occurrence. I tried two other blogs he listed and got slow connections.
• I also ran the network diagnostics tool, and it failed when pinging the DefaultIPGateway
• I have no clue, but give me a couple of hours and I'll see what #2 has to say.
• He says you could try checking cnet's download page, they have a "clock your download rate" page. Otherwise, sorry. So select something to download, and you'll see a wee "Clock it!" link amongst the options.
• The forums on DSL Reports are abuzz with DNS problems with BellSouth. Why not try changing your DNS servers to something else? Speakeasy.net (DSL Reports' ISP) advertises the following DNS servers in their whois info: NS-NOC.SPEAKEASY.NET 216.254.0.173 NS-SEA.SPEAKEASY.NET 66.93.87.8 Try them.
• Windows Firewall. Which one? The do you have the 'security center' (aka service pack 2) if not then you have the older windows firewall. Both the 'security center' and older firewall are on by default. If you have the older firewall then it isn't going to do much good anyways since it doesn't monitor outgoing traffic. To be honest I'd ditch the windows firewall and try either sygate or zone alarm (both have free firewalls available - sygate is my personal favourite). Other option is if you have service pack 2 installed there might be a problem there. I haven't kept abreast of all the sp2 stuff recently but some had a real problem with it.
• ps: reason why I mentioned firewalls is they can be the source of slow internet speeds as well, if not configured correctly. hope you get it sorted out
• No, I tried running a download with the firewall down, and it maybe kicked it up about 5kb/sec. Someone had said it might be something with AVG, but AVG is saying no, and I don't see any setting where it's scanning all of my downloads. So I guess the next step (which comes in about ten hours) is to scan for spyware. I can tell you I'll be pissed if I find out they've loaded up a brand new computer with that much spyware. Really can't wait until I take that networking class...
• a good AV / Spyware scan is essential, check the CTRL+ALT+DEL "Task Manager" for the processes and see if anything's munching on the CPU. if nothing changed on your DSL connection, we can be sure it's something on the new system, correct? Crappy/broken ethernet card? I don't want to go there for awhile though since (a) it's hardware and (b) costs money to find out.
• See, I'm wondering if they put a shit NIC card in there. I've got a spare Linksys card that's all but new that I can yoink out of the old pc, so I may try that if all else fails.
• The simplest way to tell if it's spyware or not is to get the nearest hobo with a laptop to test out your connection. You can usually pay them in food.
• If your firewall was down and you haven't already visited windows update more than likely you'll find a few virii on your computer. Most common problems with speed are: firewall, router, ISP, Anti-Virus programs, Service Pack 2. Don't rely on your ISP's speed test - its like have an express lane all to yourself and not accurate. Do some of the speed tests at DSL Reports and check their forums, they have ISP specific ones. check out speedguide.net (I believe) for a few tools that will improve some windows setting - TCP Optimizer comes to mind - it's in the broadband tools section. There are registry tweaks available as well.
• No no, let me clarify: I took the firewall down for about thirty seconds to test download speed, then put it back up. I've subsequently done a thorough virus scan, and there ain't nothing. I did stupidly install and setup ZoneAlarm, forgetting that Windows has its own firewall (and that it was at that point up and running), then removed it. I wonder if that could have screwed something up.
• Windows' firewall is notorious for being problematic and not particularly effective. Maybe try re-intalling ZoneAlarm then turn off the Windows firewall and see if that helps. Also, do you have a router between your DSL modem and your computer?