Networking - My Shit is Wack! - NOW WITH VIDEO!

powerss

Okay, so about 5 days ago (when new neighbors moved in... more on that later) my Comcast connection when to shit. My Cable internet, which I'm paying for the high-speed 8MB (extra surcharge) was giving me... oh, 500kb (yes, kb - not KB) /sec. Speedtest was showing 400ms ping to a server 20 miles from me, and dysmal speeds. It was highly erratic as well - sometimes I'd get high speeds (but never anywhere 8MB) and sometimes I'd have website timeouts and the dreaded Mac Network 304 error.

Anyway, let me give you an idea about my network:

Cable Modem > D-Link DIR-615 Router > WiFi Only:

Connected Typically to the Network (least load)

- 2 TiVos
- iMac
- iMac
- Xbox 360

Max Load:

- 2 TiVos
- iMac
- iMac
- Macbook
- MacBook Pro
- Xbox 360
- 2 iPhones

Now, my network was working fine-and-fucking dandy until some new neighbors moved in, the cocks (not that I'm blaming them yet)

ANYWAY - I call Comcast, and a tech comes out. He runs some tests (after I show results from Speedtest.net that are abysmal) and he then proceeds to ping yahoo.com from his wintel laptop connected directly to the cable modem, and shows that the responses are okay (20ms-45ms) - fine, but not a bandwidth test.

He does something with a handheld unit and says "hmm" and proceeds to replace every split and filter in/on my house.

We re-run the test - all better now. I have a feeling the tech that hooked up my neighbor fucked everyone else, but that's just me. ANYWAY, after he left I was like "sweet, I can get some fucking work done! yay!" - I'm a web designer/developer.

I sit down at my iMac (new iMac) and start browsing. What the fuck, CNN loads halfway and sits there (Safari) - and again... and again. I launch my Xbox and the NXE takes 10 fucking minutes to load (!) - I enable Netflix streaming and I get 1 bar - shit picture - and it stutters.

Now, I noticed when my neighbor's moved in a new WiFi Network popped up - called "Homer" - unlocked. I tried to connect to it to see if the connection was better, if they were Comcast as well, but I can't.

Anyway, thoughts/advice are appreciated. I can't deal with this kind of bad connectivity.

I'm willing to replace my router, and I can spend up to $500. Is there something just epic, professional-grade that will knock everyone's shit back?

powerss

Here's a speed test:

powerss

And another:

TechBoy

Uh... the first speed test reads 5500 kb/s. That's 5.5 Mb/s. The second one reads 7.6 Mb/s.

I guess you're not quite getting the 8 Mb/s you're paying for, but these speeds are not abysmal by any stretch of the imagination. Seems like the technician did fix your problem ;-)

powerss

It's not my bandwidth, sorry - it's that I'm getting lag/bad connectivity (not dropping the wifi signal, but websites not responding) timeouts, dropped packets, etc.

TechBoy

Have you spent some time just wired into the router through ethernet?

If there's no issues when you do that, then its probably a wireless conflict and a router update may be called for. If the issues are still there then your beef is still with Comcast.

I also had pretty crappy internet from Time Warner when I first moved into my apartment. Turns out the issue was the cable modem. It was an old beat up POS that the tech replaced with a newer one. Problem solved.

tsmvengy

1. Is your wireless secured?
2. Try connecting with wired/ethernet to see if it works better
3. Switch the channel your router is using for wireless to 11 or 1 (or anything else that doesn't have other networks clogging it)

bowen

tsmvengy wrote: »

1. Is your wireless secured?
2. Try connecting with wired/ethernet to see if it works better
3. Switch the channel your router is using for wireless to 11 or 1 (or anything else that doesn't have other networks clogging it)

Do these.

Sarcastro

Yah dude, just run straight up for a while, see of you still have issues when hardwired. Macs can do some really interesting things to modems and routers. I've dealt with a few macbooks that, when accessing the admin to a specific kind of wireless router, turn the whole unit into a useless lump of slag.

There is no documented reason why this occurs, but it sure as fuck does.

Ruckus

Probably the people who moved in have their Wifi on default channel 6 and you have your wifi on default channel 6. Change your channel.

Evil_Reaver

bowen wrote: »

tsmvengy wrote: »

1. Is your wireless secured?
2. Try connecting with wired/ethernet to see if it works better
3. Switch the channel your router is using for wireless to 11 or 1 (or anything else that doesn't have other networks clogging it)

Do these.

Yes. Do these.

Also, in the OP, you said you're paying for 8MB/s down... and I'm sure it was a typo, but you're paying for "up to 8 Mb/s down." You will never, ever, get the full 8 Mb/s down because cable companies hate their customers and fucking us is what they do.

Thanatos

Are you torrenting?

DeShadowC

Try bypassing the router completely and see if you have the issues. It sounds like that's what the tech did and didn't have any problems.

powerss

Not actively, no... meaning, the last thing I downloaded from a torrent was an episode of Entourage about 3 weeks ago becuase my Comcast connection went to shit when my TiVo kicked in.

DeShadowC

Let me know if problems persist after bypassing your router. If so I have a few more steps you can take.

bowen

Yeah your up and down are astronomical.

Also note, that 8 MB/sec are estimated throughputs at no load.

Take 35% of that on a normal load and you'll have what you'll get normally. (Roughly 5.2)

You'll also be surprised to find that there might be a faster connection to say Dallas, than there is to a data center 20 miles up the road. Mainly because the one to Dallas probably has 2 hops and is on an OCXXXXXSUPERFAST line and the one 20 miles up the road has to hop through 50 routers and residential networks to reach it's destination.

For instance, I get a ~60ms ping to NYC (I'm in central NY).
When I do the same test to Dallas, TX I get a ~20ms ping

powerss

DeShadow: Gonna try that in a few... I will update the thread accordingly.

powerss

I also get a lot of these (pages fail to load or pieces of pages fail to load: kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork error 302)

bowen

302 means the content has been moved/redirected.

You might be having DNS errors.

Thanatos

Try manually entering your DNS servers. I had to do this with a router I had that was dying.

Sarcastro

yeah, hardcoded DNS servers are the way to be if you can grab them from your provider.

powerss

ARRRGGGG. It's back again.

Here's a video of the problem I uploaded to Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/2302811

I changed my DNS servers to OpenDNS.

DeShadowC

Did it happen when you bypassed your router?

powerss

Trying that now.

powerss

Shit, the problem is gone now. ARG.... how can I test this?

I want to I think get a new router, and somehow jam everyone elses.

Just kidding. How about this, guys? http://www.bountifulwifi.com/

DeShadowC

Did the problem stop after bypassing the router?

powerss

Nope, just stopped on its own. Now I think it's back though... checking.

powerss

Yeah, it's back again. Fuck.

Someone on twitter said it's a DNS problem... really?

Infidel

Since they all are slow as hell to start downloading, and then seem to catch up just fine, it's definitely a possible culprit.

If it takes several seconds to resolve the domain name to an IP, it will sit there doing nothing and then when it finally has an IP to talk to it downloads everything just fine it seems.

Thanatos

Try using the Comcast DNS servers. That pretty much solved all of my problems when I was having the same issue.

powerss

Hrm. Now I'm thinking it's directly isolated to my iMac. I can't prove it yet, but... seems that way. When my Mac was terrible, I opened up my new Macbook Pro and it worked fine... then works fine on here...

Router? Settings on my Mac?

My Macbook Pro is a direct time-machine clone of my iMac... UGH.

I'm just wondering if I should pay a guy on Craigslist to put ethernet jacks in the house.

FF

I'd (echoing a few others) go with DNS weirdness. Especially when it came to the Macs. For whatever reason, the newer Intel iMacs love to have their DNS settings put in manually. Not sure why, but even Apple's server training folks say that most OS X Server issues usually end up being improper DNS setups.

DeShadowC

primary 68.87.74.162
secondary 68.87.68.162

Natsus

Maybe I missed it, but did you bypass the router at all? Your reply was a bit vague and could mean that the problem disappeared and came back while on the router. Please confirm whether bypassing the router works or not.

Ruckus

Also was the problem only occuring on wireless connections or was it wired as well?