Internet Problem

[MRG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronstar I had a similar problem when an animal had partially chewed through the cable line

Yes. We had issues every time it rained. The cattle grazing in the new fresh grass also stepped on the cables. The place was built 30 years prior. The cable was just laying on the ground on top of a neighboring pasture.

The phone company said our 30 year service was a temporary connection!

Actually I miss living in Hooterville, but Internet stunk.

Al, I'm guessing you don't have cattle in your yard, probably not your issue. A wet, broken cable might be, or any sat. connection, even the ones you don't see.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

[TromboneAl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 Al, Is this a continuation of this problem? http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...p-73896-2.html

No, that was different. I think.

[TromboneAl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 Your 'very slow' is about all I get on my connection. That absolutely does not result in 'pages not loading'. For example, the er-org portal refreshes for me in less than one second. A highly customized google news page loads in about 2 seconds, reliably. I suspect DNS issues. Try the google DNS or open DNS. -ERD50

The pages not loading and the slow performance tend to occur at the same time.

Thanks for all the things to try. It's easy to put this on the back burner, because things work in general. Also, I've learned that ignoring a problem that might be on the ISP side is often a good strategy. It can get fixed without your wasting time with tech support.

[Closet_Gamer]

Al, are you on a Mac?

There is a known Mac bug where the Mac will lose aspects of its connection to the wifi router. (Amazing how long it's been going on that Apple hasn't fixed it. It's all over their help boards.)

The challenge is that it doesn't show that the wifi connection is totally dropped. It will report a "connection timeout." What happens is that it cycles connecting and dropping the connection to the router...during the brief window it stays connected, you get the page your loading. When it's down, you get errors like you describe. Maddening.

The steps to temporarily remediate are straight forward, but sort of long. If you're on a Mac let me know and I'll post them.

[eytonxav]

Here is a pretty reasonable list of things to try:
Fix a Slow Internet Connection | Delete Computer History

[ChiliPepr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl >Did you try restarting? Yes, multiple times.

Did you restart the modem and any router/switches you have?

I would try turning off everything for a minute and then turn on devices starting at the wall and working toward your computer.

[Car-Guy]

Could be lots of things as you might guess. I've seen this more often recently with my DSL service but it never seems to last very long (a few minutes). It seems to be worse with my W8 PC rather than my W7 PC's but both have the problem on occasions.

The two things that seemed to work best for me is to restart my PC, which I try first. The second is to reset my wireless router. I've gotten in the habit of resetting my wireless access point about once a week since I'm convinced it contributes to slower performance if I let it run continuously. If I let it run continuously for more than 3 or 4 weeks, I can run a speed test that indicates my through-put has been reduced as much as 40 to 60 percent. Resetting the wireless AP, gets me back up to full speed in about 30 seconds.

Someday I'll probably upgrade the AP, but for now, a simple power reset once a week keeps it working just fine. Who knows, it could be the root cause of webpages failing to load on occasions. To be honest, the problem hasn't been bad enough to motivate me to trouble-shoot it any further.

[BBQ-Nut]

Did the OP ever actually describe his home setup?


I have been having slow to stalled page loading on my laptop in my usual kitchen nook using the inhouse wireless wifi.


The laptop shows 4 full 'bars' of signal strength - yet pages will take FOREVER to load or I get the "This Page Cannot be Displayed" messages.


Yet if I walk the laptop to the living room - which is a bit closer to the wireless router - BAM - pages load quickly and the laptop still only shows 4 bars.


Go figure....

[target2019]

Without knowing what all the equipment is, it's difficult to comment.

So many thoughts go through my mind with a topic like this.

Problems could be related to hardware device, cables, wireless channels, firmware, interference, mis-configuration, and so on.

So, try to eliminate possibilities with your troubleshooting. Try another browser, computer, OS, etc.

One of the simplest ways to eliminate a bunch of things is to plug a notebook into the wireless router. If it works perfectly, then you need to spend time with the wireless router configuration and one of your wireless devices.

You also need to get some type of wireless activity app, like inssider. These apps let you walk around and watch what happens to your signal as well as the other wireless devices and routers in the area.

[TromboneAl]

My neighbor is having exactly the same problems.

I need to do a little work to be able to present the problem to the cable guy in case everything is fine when he gets here. Of course, there's no reason to send someone to my house, but that's the way Suddenlink handles things.

Right now, it's working fine.

[TromboneAl]

I've found that I get 20 MB/s download speed over Wifi, and 30 MB/s if I plug into the router. I conclude that I should buy a newer router.

But, even when plugged in, I have problems with "server not found" error, dropped packets and slow performance. This suggests to me that Suddenlink is the source of the problem.

Can someone explain this to me:

Sometimes Lena and I will both get "Server not found" errors. However, those errors occur for some web sites and not others. What does that indicate?

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl I've found that I get 20 MB/s download speed over Wifi, and 30 MB/s if I plug into the router. I conclude that I should buy a newer router. But, even when plugged in, I have problems with "server not found" error, dropped packets and slow performance. This suggests to me that Suddenlink is the source of the problem. Can someone explain this to me: Sometimes Lena and I will both get "Server not found" errors. However, those errors occur for some web sites and not others. What does that indicate?

DNS problems?

Did you ever try pinging your DNS directly, as mentioned previously?

You could set up a terminal to just do that continuously, and then when you have problems, look at the history.

ping -D 8.8.8.8
provides a timestamp

-ERD50

[rbmrtn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl I've found that I get 20 MB/s download speed over Wifi, and 30 MB/s if I plug into the router. I conclude that I should buy a newer router. But, even when plugged in, I have problems with "server not found" error, dropped packets and slow performance. This suggests to me that Suddenlink is the source of the problem. Can someone explain this to me: Sometimes Lena and I will both get "Server not found" errors. However, those errors occur for some web sites and not others. What does that indicate?

Wifi speed is generally slower than a wired connection, usually by about half. I don't see anything from what you posted that new router would help.

Server/page not found can be several things. The site could be down, or the DNS connections upstream could be having problems. DNS relies on multiple relays to determine the route to a site, problems somewhere along the way could cause it. You can get to some sites and not other because a different route is taken. Another issue is an upstream DNS relay is stuck in a routing loop because of configuration/hardware issues.

Try different DNS servers on your computers, like OpenDNS or googles

OpenDNS IP Addresses 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220
google IP addresses 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

Traceroute the sites the don't load, see how many hops and if they are stuck at one.

[Lsbcal]

To check for many hours where an intermittent might occur, I've done the following from the command line window. This redirects to a text file you can read later:
ping -t 8.8.8.8 > tst_ping_Jan29.txt

This does one ping per second. After you hit control-C some hours later, view the text file with a something like Notebook. Look for something like:

Quote:

Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=56 Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=56 Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=56 Request timed out. Request timed out. Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=56 Request timed out. Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=56 Request timed out. Request timed out. Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=56 Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out. Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=56 Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=56 Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=56 Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=56 Request timed out. Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=56 Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out.

At least this gives something to show someone or to document your frustrations.

[BBQ-Nut]

Way cool! I may have to try that as I suspect upstream issues with my ISP (Crime...uh sorry Time Warner).


How big does the file grow after say 4 hrs, though?


And is the default path to the test file directly under C:?

[Lsbcal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBQ-Nut Way cool! I may have to try that as I suspect upstream issues with my ISP (Crime...uh sorry Time Warner). How big does the file grow after say 4 hrs, though? And is the default path to the test file directly under C:?

My file after 14 hours was only 2.3 MB. At the end one will see something like:

Quote:

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8: Packets: Sent = 39927, Received = 39856, Lost = 71 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 191ms, Average = 16ms Control-C

Also forgot to mention, one should check one's router firmware update. Then maybe check with the ISP to see if the cable modem firmware is up to date.

[Rick_Head]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBQ-Nut And is the default path to the test file directly under C:?

Probably not. When you open the command prompt it will display the default directory. That's where you look unless you enter a full path as in:
ping -t 8.8.8.8 > C:\tst_ping_Jan29.tx or
ping -t 8.8.8.8 > C:\x\y\z\tst_ping_Jan29.tx

[sengsational]

Rather than pick a random DNS server, you can see how many of them perform, then use a good one. Freeware from one of my heros:

https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl I've found that I get 20 MB/s download speed over Wifi, and 30 MB/s if I plug into the router. I conclude that I should buy a newer router. But, even when plugged in, I have problems with "server not found" error, dropped packets and slow performance. This suggests to me that Suddenlink is the source of the problem. Can someone explain this to me: Sometimes Lena and I will both get "Server not found" errors. However, those errors occur for some web sites and not others. What does that indicate?

What router?

[BBQ-Nut]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lsbcal To check for many hours where an intermittent might occur, I've done the following from the command line window. This redirects to a text file you can read later: ping -t 8.8.8.8 > tst_ping_Jan29.txt This does one ping per second. After you hit control-C some hours later, view the text file with a something like Notebook. Look for something like: At least this gives something to show someone or to document your frustrations.

So, I could set two simultaneous pings one external to my router (to the IP for Google you provided) and one to router.

If I see dropped packets only on the external ping - then I've got those rats at "C"WC.

If I see dropped packets on both - then the issue is internal and needs further isolation.

Guess I have some snooping to do tomorrow.

Thanks for the tips!