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I've tried to contact my ISP about this issue that I've been having for the past year and a half.
In short, my internet connection gets DRASTICALLY worse throughout the day, even to the point of it being barely usable. AT&T support has said everything is fine on their end, and I've gone through countless measures of trying to fix it, trying different modems, closing all internet using programs and whatnot.
As an example, at 7 AM, using speedtest.net, I have 30 ping with my local server + 2.5mbps down and 0.5mbps up, however as the day goes on, the connection with my local server can easily be 200 ping + 1.2mbps down and 0.2 mbps up. The connection is bad more than it's actually good, I can easily say its like that for 4/5's of the day.
Is this just something I have to deal with using DSL? I know internet usage will get worst at peak times just in general, but to the extent of what I'm experiencing it doesn't seem viable..
I'm wondering if any of you have had similar experiences and possibly a fix.
Thanks for reading!
Cannon Sloan
Posted 2015-12-19T18:33:22.000
Reputation: 15
I have similar experiences; the whole block is on one exchange/router/whatever-the-technical-term-is, and if several of your neighbors use Netflix or watch porn or YouTube, that uses up the common total bandwidth. I don't have your numbers of course, but imagine there is a 1Gb/s line to your exchange, and if you are alone, you get the full (capped) speed you pay for, but if 200 households with 5 devices each share it, you get only a share of 1Mb/sec (in average), and if they use more, you get less. – Aganju – 2015-12-19T18:38:19.060
oh, and the 'fix' was their box got hit by lightning and they were forced to replace it with state-of-the-art pieces, and since then it got much better. Actually I get now 14 Mb/s even though I pay only for 3Mb/s, cause they cannot limit it that much anymore... so: pray for a lightning strike. – Aganju – 2015-12-19T18:40:23.890
Does it improve if you power off the DSL modem, wait 15-20 seconds, and power the DSL modem back up? – Ecnerwal – 2015-12-19T21:22:21.057
Instead of speedtest.net results (which the ISP cannot control), you should monitor the ADSL modem statistics, esp noise margin. Also how's the quality of the POTS voice service? Telcos seem to be more responsive to bad voice lines. I had a flakey DSL service for a few years, and then it really started to get bad most evenings. And voice quality also got worse, with a lot of background static. Even the customer service operator noticed it. A tech did a thorough line check, and removed a bridged tap. It's been very reliable since that repair.
– sawdust – 2015-12-19T22:42:27.6371You have "wireless networking" as a tag. How do you know that the issue is the DSL connection as opposed to a wireless issue (or some other problem on your premises)? – sawdust – 2015-12-19T22:48:33.817
! agree with @sawdust. You need to investigate the wireless first to confirm or eliminate it a s the problem since it is the first hop. What you describe sounds a lot like wireless interference problems. You need to start with the closest possible problem (wireless) before moving on to problems farther away. It would almost be like blaming the remote servers first, which, by the way, could also be a problem as they get busier during the day. Anyway, you should always start troubleshooting network problems at layer-1 which is closest to you. – Ron Maupin – 2015-12-19T23:40:14.047
@sawdust I added the tag as a mistake, I'm very sorry for that. The voice service seems to be fine. – Cannon Sloan – 2015-12-20T06:23:20.340
@Ecnerwal The connection does get better after restarting the modem for a bit, I dont think the modem would be the problem as I've tried others. – Cannon Sloan – 2015-12-20T06:23:22.890
"I added the tag as a mistake" -- You still need to confirm that it's not on your end. Learn to log into the DSL modem's web server and obtain the ADSL statistics (like you did for the the speedtest.net results). – sawdust – 2015-12-21T00:39:42.917