Help with a MAJOR broadband slowdown

XPletive

bbbb-ring...
Joined
4 Dec 2001
Messages
237
Well... I'm brand new to broadband, so any answers will
have to be at the noob level. :)

I have cable internet access through Time Warner. They're
using a Motorolla cable modem, and I installed a NetGear router.
I also use the free version of Zone Alarm.

I've had the broadband service for about two weeks, and
everything has been great. It was incredibly fast up until
last night.

Wednesday night I fired up Kazza Lite, and set it up to download
some files, along with sharing a bunch of files that I had. Things
were downloading at a pretty good rate. Thursday morning I noticed
that some of the larger files hadn't finished yet, so I left Kazza up
while I was at work.

When I got home, I shut down Kazza and attempted to surf
the web normally. I couldn't get ANYWHERE. Every page took
five minutes to load, if it would load at all. I'm talking DOS attack
slow.

I removed my router, no difference. I tested my NIC, it tested
fine. I called Time Warner, they said the line looked fine, "maybe
it's just net congestion..." Yeah right. I shut down Zone Alarm, no difference.

Zone Alarm doesn't seem to be reporting any abnormal behavior.

So... What else can I check for? How do I check to see if someone
is attacking me, if that's even possible since I have
the router and Zone Alarm.

If you don't think it's an attack, what are the symptoms of a failing
modem, or NIC? Do they simply fail, or do they slow WAY down like this?

By the way... my dial-up access works just fine.

Sorry about the length... thanks for the help.
 
Noone is attack you (why would they?). This is definately an ISP problem as I see it. Do this:

- Ping:
Open up the console and ping something.
ping www.google.com -n 10 (10 pings to google)
How do the times look? Many above 100ms? Very random?

- Trace:
Open up the console and trace something.
tracert www.google.com
How do the times look? Any stars (*)? Are they random looking?

If you answer yes too several of these questions, there is definately an outside problem. Pings to the first router (hop) should be < 20ms at worst (if you use the Netgear, the second router). If any stars (*) appear that indicates a packet loss. This is bad. ISP:s usually want pings and traces when you report a network problem.
 
Thanks for the info. Zedric. I thought maybe some Kazza user
got pissed when they couldn't download a file they wanted, so...
:)

I tried to Ping Yahoo last night. Got a 'Connection timed out' error.
Not surprising since I can't even get my e-mail. I think my
pings times to Yahoo used to be around 36ms.

Didn't know about the tracert command... I'll run that
tonight and let you know what happens.

The Time Warner guy did ask for packet loss info. when
I called, but I didn't know how to supply him with the info.
 
Cut'n'paste a trace and some pings into a mail and send it to them (or the guy you're talking to is even better).
 
man this is too similar to my problem to be a one off i started a thread with the same problem go here :mad:
 
Well... after another phone conversation with Time Warner, they thought it might be a bad modem. The tech. came out this morning (not carrying a new modem in his hand) renewed my IP
address, and everything worked fine again. I asked him what the probem was (since I had renewed my address 10 times already) and he said that they had been having trouble with their equipment.

They could have saved me a lot of headaches if they would have admitted that three days ago, but... at least I'm back up to speed.

Thanks for the ideas though!
 
they sent a tech out to release and renew your IP?

waste of money!

one reason you might be noticing slow ass speeds is because people from kazaa are downloading from you..

i do tech support for an ISP.. people do that all the time, have kazaa open, and 3049343 people downloading from them... and they wonder why its slow..

limit it to maybe 2 people, if that.. or none at all.
 
doesn't your netgear router come with a built-in firewall? if so, wth are you running zone alarm?
 
Quick note to UK BTOpenworld and Freeserve Broadband users

These two ISPs and possibly others have monitoring software on their servers, so that if you are downloading and uploading vast quantities of data, they will reduce the quantity of bandwidth allocated to you, or disconnect you. This is because of sections in their license and acceptable use policies regarding file sharing.
 
Originally posted by koko
doesn't your netgear router come with a built-in firewall? if so, wth are you running zone alarm?
Probably because ZA can restrict traffic on an application level rather than port level which is the case in the router. Among other things. A firewall isn't just a firewall. There are very different kinds of firewalls.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
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Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
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