Internet problem - pretty sure of what it is, what do you guys think?
3 replies, posted
Ok, so I've been having this problem for a WHILE now, and I've contacted my ISP MULTIPLE times and they are finally coming out to "look at my connection." What happens is my internet will begin to lag at some point between 4-6PM all the way to around midnight before it stops. It's not a huge lag, I'm still able to play some online games without it bothering me too much, but my god does it completely destroy the speed at which I load videos/livestreams. I can't even load a 360p stream without it freezing every 3 seconds for 2 seconds. My step-dad who plays Xbox Live also starts getting very bad lag at these times. It has become very frustrating and my ISP has been out here before to see what the issue was, but their answer was that "somebody on the network had a virus and we disabled his connection." I didn't really believe that that was the cause of my issue, but because my connection was working I didn't really care, I was just happy to be able to actually load a youtube video at 360p without it buffering. Sure enough, after about a week, the problem started again.
I'd also like to clarify that I am CERTAIN it is nothing on my end. The main reason being that when my ISP came out the first time they connected THEIR OWN LAPTOP directly to my connection and experienced the same issues that I was having, so it can't be anything on my end.
Also you can rule out the option of going to a different ISP. I live in an area where this ISP is the best that I can get (think king of the shit pile) which really sucks as I would have dropped them months ago for even AT&T DSL.
I'm supposed to be getting 3Mbit/s up and down but many times it can drop as low as <1Mbit/s down and 1-1.5Mbit/s up. This is accompanied with packet loss of 10-20% total.
My conclusion of these issues is that something is wrong in my ISP's network (which wouldn't surprise me) and I'm strongly leaning towards a bottleneck somewhere, such as a 100Mb/s router being used as the gateway for the ENTIRE network (though it may not be THAT extreme, it feels like that sometimes). I assume they have at least 500 customers, and even then I could be low-balling it.
If any of you have had experiences similar to this issue and know of something different that it could be or if you agree with my thoughts, please let me know. I really want to tell my ISP what the problem is but I want to be fairly certain that I know what the problem actually is.
Thanks.
around 5PM to midnight is usual "peak" times. It's the time when most people will be online having just got home from school/work/etc.
Sounds to me like your ISP is either shaping your traffic (which sounds pretty stupid given you're on a low speed connection as-is) or their infrastructure isn't capable of handling the load it is being put under.
Uploading is known to cause packet loss as it congests the download stream as well, at least on DSL connections.
I had a somewhat similar problem a few years ago, but instead of high latency my connection would just drop at peak times for 5-10 minutes. After messing around on the phone line with the ISP they told me there was nothing they could do. So I told them I would leave and go for a better ISP. Magically that same day the problem stopped and hasn't come back since.
[QUOTE=cdlink14;39664827]around 5PM to midnight is usual "peak" times. It's the time when most people will be online having just got home from school/work/etc.
Sounds to me like your ISP is either shaping your traffic (which sounds pretty stupid given you're on a low speed connection as-is) or their infrastructure isn't capable of handling the load it is being put under.
Uploading is known to cause packet loss as it congests the download stream as well, at least on DSL connections.
I had a somewhat similar problem a few years ago, but instead of high latency my connection would just drop at peak times for 5-10 minutes. After messing around on the phone line with the ISP they told me there was nothing they could do. So I told them I would leave and go for a better ISP. Magically that same day the problem stopped and hasn't come back since.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for your reply. I wish I could throw the "I'm going to leave for a different ISP" card, but unfortunately there is no ISP for me to leave to. :( I'm hoping they figure out what the problem is when they come in on Friday, but I'm not going to get my hopes up TOO high.
[QUOTE=Chief Tiger;39665406]Thanks for your reply. I wish I could throw the "I'm going to leave for a different ISP" card, but unfortunately there is no ISP for me to leave to. :( I'm hoping they figure out what the problem is when they come in on Friday, but I'm not going to get my hopes up TOO high.[/QUOTE]
Then just pretend you're not interested in being a customer any longer, or act out that you get better coverage with your mobile internet and may just use that full-time.
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