IT/Internet Know-It-Alls...Help me

I just moved into a new apartment.  I bought the 12 MB/S internet access for 12 months and it's dirt cheap.

I ran a speed test and got great results


(If you can't see that image is 12,323 kb/s down and 2267 kb/s up)

But the problem is once I click a website, 30-45 seconds goes by with no result then the page times out... if I click it again a few seconds later it opens up in no time at all.  What's the deal? How can I make it faster?

BTW, I'm using the cable modem and wireless router I own and used as recently as 2 weeks ago in which I had no problems at all.  This is the same thing that happens on every computer in the house (2 laptops and a pc). 

what operating system? Ive had problems like that with vista ultimate x64

You cant make is faster.   You're faster than the network the website is part of.   Your download speed is too fast for their upload speed.    I have cable and cbrforum stills takes a sec to load a page.

1. Who is your isp? Someone (Comcast) may be "throttling".

2. What program do you use to surf the internet? If you have a pc, and are using internet explorer, stop it. Right now. Shame on you. Get Mozilla Firefox, http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/  

Firefox has so many little add ons that you can use to tweak how fast you can view pages, such as my favorite "adblocker" which blocks all ads on pages which significantly reduces load time. Also, once you get it, go to www.metacafe.com or youtube and search "make firefox faster" and there are so many videos that show you how to tweak the program step by step, helped me out a lot.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ta8218

what operating system? Ive had problems like that with vista ultimate x64

ta8218, there is your problem, Windows.

To the OP, do you have only the one computer connected to the cable modem or do multiple computers connect through a router? If it is the latter then resetting the router may help.

Are all sites you go to that slow?


ETA: blawjr is right, if you are running Internet Exploder, dump it and get Firefox.

quote:

ORIGINAL: blawjr

Firefox has so many little add ons that you can use to tweak how fast you can view pages, such as my favorite "adblocker" which blocks all ads on pages which significantly reduces load time. Also, once you get it, go to www.metacafe.com or youtube and search "make firefox faster" and there are so many videos that show you how to tweak the program step by step, helped me out a lot.

Or you can download the FasterFox add on and do nothing.

yea, you could, but i like tinkering 

Nice speeds.  I get 10/1 and I have the turbo package, but I'm not complaining.  I would love to have 2Mb up.  Resetting the router will help, but conditions will typically return after time.  Make sure you let it sit powerless for about 10 seconds too.  Also, as others have stated due to advertisements it requires your browser to retrieve data from several different servers and/or networks so this also slows down connections and page loads.

i get 19k down here on a wired connection on campus..shits insane. Then wireless in the dorms where everyone is i get what...300?..lol

Well, I got Comcast cable.  I have Firefox already and have been using it for years.  I've downloaded lots of updates for it, etc. I tried reseting the router, but still got the same problem. 

It seems like initially whenever you try to connect to any website there is a huge lag that eventually gets caught up and then you're in business.  The problem is that is happens periodically throughout the hour so sometimes you're fine and then sometimes there is that huge lag that stops you in your tracks. 

The modem has a button on top that says "standby"... I remember people using that on Halo to cheat and glitch around...does that have anything to do with it?

Like for example, I was just browsing through some thread in the for sale section... everything was working fine for like 30 minutes... and when I clicked the Page 2 link it just sat there ... the loading bar opened on the bottom and the spinny circle was going on the top but it never connected.  I hit CTRL+N after about 15 seconds to open a new page and it opened right up in .2 seconds.  

I have that issue with charter. I have their 10/1. Being that its cable, any cheap dick in the area leeching cable for free may have done something to mess the signal up. You would be amazed by how many db loss ya can get just from bad connectors, etc.

a)  When this happens and your computer is idle, is the modem blinking like a mofo?  Extra port lights lit up on the router?  Could be people getting in on your signal.  You'd have dork with some of the security settings on your router if that's the case.

b)  Call Comcast.  It could be an issue in the area.  I lived at a place where the same exact thing was happening to our whole subdivision and they eventually found the problem.

VP, On your side, you can clear your cache and history and make sure it stays reasonably lean. Mostly likely that isn't going to fix your problem, but might improve things.

Now I've had similar issues in the past. My problem was a noisy line. There is a way to check with the cable modem, but it varies from modem to modem. The best thing to do is have a technician sent out from the cable company and check to see if new filters are needed. If you get a good technician, it will be fixed in a couple hours. Otherwise, you might need about 5 phones calls to the cable company at which point you can get them to comp you some premium channels or free internet for a few months.

wow. I work for an ISP, if your speedtest ran at that then you are trained at 13/3. We have connections trained at 28M, but the upload only gets 768k...

are you having problems with any other websites? b/c this website always gives me problems no matter where I connect its the slowest website. I have times where it takes a min to submit a post..I usually have 2 tabs open when I browse the cbr forum, b/c it almost always runs very slow, never have any problems from any other websites.

The problem is not with your browser or with the OS or your computer most likely. Even if the speed was so fast that other sites couldn't download at max speed, your pc would take whatever data it could and slowly fill in the screen. It would not time out iunless there was no answer. It really sounds like the servers or connections at the cable company.
 
To be honest I had Cox Communications (cable) for a few years as they offered me a great price. I had the same freaking problems day after day. When it would work right the speed was blazing fast. (fastest at that time was 3 meg down)However there were lots of times I would have to keep re-starting the damn modem. I finally got tired of the hassle and went with DSL from AT&T $25 a month and 3 meg download, more than fast enough for anything I do. They've been trying to sell me 6meg, bt I see no use for it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Richdoggg

a)  When this happens and your computer is idle, is the modem blinking like a mofo?  Extra port lights lit up on the router?  Could be people getting in on your signal.  You'd have dork with some of the security settings on your router if that's the case.

b)  Call Comcast.  It could be an issue in the area.  I lived at a place where the same exact thing was happening to our whole subdivision and they eventually found the problem.

The modem is another room... but the wireless router just blinks on and off every 10 seconds or so... seems normal since my cell phone is connected VIA WiFi for UMA. 
I'll try calling comcast back again this week. 

quote:

ORIGINAL: N8 Dawg

wow. I work for an ISP, if your speedtest ran at that then you are trained at 13/3. We have connections trained at 28M, but the upload only gets 768k...

are you having problems with any other websites? b/c this website always gives me problems no matter where I connect its the slowest website. I have times where it takes a min to submit a post..I usually have 2 tabs open when I browse the cbr forum, b/c it almost always runs very slow, never have any problems from any other websites.

It happens all the time, no matter what website I am going to.  Same problem on all computers at all websites.  Just periodically loses the connection for about half a minute, then resumes as if nothing happened.  It's taken me 3 copy+pastes to get this post to work

quote:

ORIGINAL: vpsophmore

But the problem is once I click a website, 30-45 seconds goes by with no result then the page times out... if I click it again a few seconds later it opens up in no time at all. What's the deal? How can I make it faster?

I didn't read all the replies so this may or may not have anything to do with your issue;
I use comcast and firefox (no where near the speed you're getting though) and don't have the same issue but once in a while it loads everything fast and then gets stuck like you mentioned .. when i look at the bottom of the screen at what it's trying to load, 95% of the time it gets stuck on something the google.syndication.ad thing is trying to load dynamically (which can't be blocked AFAIK) that it's having problems locating (since it's something different every once in a while) so i'm guessing the reason it loads fast the second go round is because your browser already has it cached. do you noticed this mostly happens when pages are trying to load that have ads on them, or all the time no matter what?

It has absolutely nothing to do with the content on the page... it's gonna happen periodically no matter what

It sounds like something (spyware) may have infiltrated some of your settings.  Specifically when your machine makes a TCP/IP request.  You can disable some of the firewall settings your computer has because unless your using either machine as your DMZ host, you would be somewhat protected by the NAT technology built into your router/gateway.