downstream dropping off

[bcuk]

Hi,
Been a lurker here for a while and had most of my probs cured by reading other peoples problems but I'm now stumped. Over the past couple of days whenever I'm downloading anything you can watch the speed drop down to nothing and then the whole system locks up. This is happening with bit torrent and emule and normal "save as..." downloads. I initially thought I had made a mess of my windows install so I wiped the whole thing at the atrt of the week but the problem persists. I am using the following

Windows XP Pro SP1 and all current updates
ZoneAlarm (Free version)
AVG Antivirus (Free Version)
NTL 600 k/b on a Motorola Surfboard 4100

This is the system I've been running for about 6 months now with no problems and suddenly it's all messed up. I used netstat to check this and it registered down to about 500bytes each way before the system locked.

I realise there may be a software problem but as this is happening before and after a fresh install I thought the broadband forums would be a good starting place. Any ideas are most welcome.

[Chris W]

are you using the usb or ethernet connection?

have you tried with zone alaram disabled? do you get the same problem?

[LenMackin]

Same here mate,
I know that I have downgraded from 1mb to 600kb but I find that many downloads, from big name sites such as MS, or crap. Currently downloading a Nero update at 26mb which is coming in at 14.1kb a sec and has taken 14.9 mins so far with 58% of the download complete. This is getting to be very normal for me now in the Coventry Warwick area.

[bcuk]

Discovered a similar thread to this in the internet section and most people seemed to think it was firewall related so I pulled zonealarm and installed sygate personal firewall instead and so far so good I'm running all 3 types of d/l concurrently and while it isn't on fire speed wise it's at least working.

[Chris W]

Discovered a similar thread to this in the internet section and most people seemed to think it was firewall related so I pulled zonealarm and installed sygate personal firewall instead and so far so good I'm running all 3 types of d/l concurrently and while it isn't on fire speed wise it's at least working.

good stuff :tu:

have a rep for having the nonce to do a search of the forums... you would be suprised how few people do ;)

MB :monkey:

[poolking]

good stuff :tu:

have a rep for having the nonce to do a search of the forums... you would be suprised how few people do ;)

MB :monkey:
Erm m8, I'd edit the nonce bit. ;)

[zovat]

Erm m8, I'd edit the nonce bit. ;)

:LOL:

[iklebrit]

just out of curiosity, are you using a nforce2 chipset and installed the latest drivers from nvidia? those 4.16 ethernet drivers can mess up the connection.
i had to drop back to older ethernet drivers, and it seems to of stopped the problems.

[Graham]

Have you tried using something like "Download Accelerator Plus"? It can be very useful for large downloads because it creates multiple links to the site (or mirrors) and gets the file in "chunks' meaning that even if one link is slow the others will take up the slack.

PS I think Monkey Breath meant "Nous" (ie intelligence), although when I first read I thought he was trying to say "for the nonce" (for the present time) but mis-typed, rather than using the word in its more modern use of a "nonsense crime". This has been a free English language lecture...! :)

[td444]

If the upstream is saturated, downstream ack packets cant get through in time - which means a chop in download speed. It could be just the sources your downloading from thats causing this.

[iklebrit]

well its not the drivers as ive tested them, me think its just ntl network, those upgrades theyve been messing with and still are.
when my connnection drops i have to disable then re-enable the network connection.
ntl support suggested it was the drivers or network adapter.
as the cable modem tested fine. oh well, shall soon see when they stop messing about.

[Retrovertigo]

having similar problems here (manchester) speed while surfing is dreadful. Downloading stuff doesn't seem to be affected?

I was worried because I built a new P.C yesterday and thought maybe that would be the cause. Strangely enough it uses the nforce2 chipset and I'd updated the drivers as part of a microsoft upgrade. I've reinstalled the drivers that came with the Mobo but still no joy. Terrible surfing speeds. yet doing a speed test shows everything as being pretty good.

why would that be?

[Chris W]

having similar problems here (manchester) speed while surfing is dreadful. Downloading stuff doesn't seem to be affected?

I was worried because I built a new P.C yesterday and thought maybe that would be the cause. Strangely enough it uses the nforce2 chipset and I'd updated the drivers as part of a microsoft upgrade. I've reinstalled the drivers that came with the Mobo but still no joy. Terrible surfing speeds. yet doing a speed test shows everything as being pretty good.

why would that be?

try specifying a proxy server.

IE- tools -> internet options -> connections -> lan settings
firefox- tools -> options -> connection settings

there is a link to all the proxy servers somewhere on here... i will find it in a second.

MB

[Retrovertigo]

There is something else I need to clarify. It's ok for me to just plug my cable modem into the ethernet socket and surf away? I already had a connection set up on another P.C so I don't need to install any software?
Thanks

[Chris W]

There is something else I need to clarify. It's ok for me to just plug my cable modem into the ethernet socket and surf away? I already had a connection set up on another P.C so I don't need to install any software?
Thanks

yep... absolutely fine... just make sure that you turn the modem off for about a minute before switching pcs. You will only be able to connect one pc at a time to the modem unless you have a router or are subscribed to the xbox or ps2 service.

hth
MB

[Retrovertigo]

I hate to be pushy, but where do I find the proxy server things? ta

edit: even my download speed seems to be dropping off to about 35kbs now..grrrr

[homealone]

I hate to be pushy, but where do I find the proxy server things? ta

hi

info on setting an explicit proxy & a list of the ntl ones can be found in this link

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/trancache.html

- try setting your existing one, found here (http://www.nthellworld.co.uk/?page=proxy) as explicit first, if that doesn't improve things then try another in an an area near to you. It is a bit of trial and error at this point, I'm afraid.

[Chris W]

I hate to be pushy, but where do I find the proxy server things? ta

edit: even my download speed seems to be dropping off to about 35kbs now..grrrr

oops sorry forgot to put the link in!

thanks homealone for doing it :tu:

retrovertigo, has this made any difference?

MB

[Retrovertigo]

It's hard to say. I can do the speed test and it can show up as being ok. but then i surf or download something and it slows down to about half the speed I should be getting.

I assume there's no hardware problem that could cause this? otherwise the speed test would show it as being slow as well yes?

is this a known problem at the moment by the way? Or is it just "one of those things" - as i say I have just built a new P.C and would hate to think there's anything wrong with my hardware. cheers

This is the readings from the speed test:

1st 128K took 1953 ms = 67113 Bytes/sec = approx 558 kbits/sec
2nd 128K took 1969 ms = 66568 Bytes/sec = approx 554 kbits/sec
3rd 128K took 1890 ms = 69350 Bytes/sec = approx 577 kbits/sec
4th 128K took 2079 ms = 63046 Bytes/sec = approx 525 kbits/sec

not quite as fast as I'm used to. But an improvement on what I've had all day.

This may be a silly question, but on my old system I had 2 hard drives in it. One that I used for all my downloads. So I'd download to one drive while the other drive had I.E on it etc. would me now downloading and surfing from a single hard drive affect my speed?

[DbzDP]

I am having the same problem, I was watching something on my PC then it just froze, I thought overheated CPu, but it was at normal Temp, then when I restart my PC 10mins later freezes again while I am just surfing, the only thing I can think of that is doing this is NTL.

I got WinXP Pro SP1a
ZoneAlarm
Norton

I thought maybe something I installed is making it act this way, and tried to restore my pc to the saved settings a week ago, it wont do it. I think the NTL Upgrades are causing all this problem, I guess we got to wait till they finish with there upgrades see if our pcs still freezing up.

[iklebrit]

just found another possiblity if using nforce chipset, i havent had many dropped connections atall for along time, but just relised id decided to plug my usb keyboard into the one of the extra usb ports, and noticed that that actual usb hub is using the same irq as the ethernet adapter. so i put the keyboard back into the ps2 socket, so far so good, no dropped connections. im still testing using edonkey. to see if speed keeps up. this maybe why zonealarm is causing crashing etc.
but it doesnt seem to fix the problem installing old drivers so the problem must of been there for alongtime & just become relavant now.
probably why zonelabs asnt had many faults reported for zonealarm crashing, if you dont use those extra usb ports you wont have a problem.

ill report back in a few hours. too see if it disconnected or not.

well it did just disconnected, this is definately an ntl thing. i suspect its to do with ip addresses, should you have a lease of just 1 hour?

[iklebrit]

well im in sutton-in-ashfield and theres a problem with my what seems like the dhcp server im connected too as it gives me a ip lease of 1 hour, then the ip will not give me access to the internet after that period, until i disable the ethernet connection and get a new one. ie its still connected but blocked.

which is 62.254.0.53
is urs the same?

[Paul]

well im in sutton-in-ashfield and theres a problem with my what seems like the dhcp server im connected too as it gives me a ip lease of 1 hour, then the ip will not give me access to the internet after that period, until i disable the ethernet connection and get a new one. ie its still connected but blocked.

which is 62.254.0.53
is urs the same?

Sounds more like you have a problem locally - something blocking your dhcp renewal requests - if the Nottingham DHCP was having problems then an awful lot of people would be affected.

Also - as far as I am aware all the Nottingham dhcp servers lease their addresses for 24 hours, not 1 hour.

Are you using some sort of router ?

[iklebrit]

well been on the phone with ntl support, they said it could be the onboard nic has been messed up somehow, as the cable modem was working correctly and had a lease of 24hrs for an ip, but the nic on the computer said 1hr lease but would drop out before the hour was up. Im currently trying my olde 3com 3c905b-tx nic i had in the spare computer i used to run this nic when i got the cable modem about 4or5 years ago. and it seems fine so far, 24hr lease showing etc.
They did say there was a problem in this area, but not my part.

update:- my connection isnt dropping out anymore and its running like a charm!!! :)