PDA

View Full Version : Figuring out network slowdowns



Scott Shepherd
07-29-2011, 8:10 PM
I have a task at hand that I'm stumped on. I have family that has internet over satellite. They have no other choice, nothing else is available. It has a 300MB per day limit on downloaded data. Once you hit that peak, it slows down to a crawl until the next day.

They have a Linksys router plugged into their unit provided by the company. It's a .g router I think. At the time that was bought, I told them it was no need for the .n because they didn't own any computers that had .n cards in them.

So fast forward to now. They have 3 laptops in the family, an iPad, and several iPods. I keep hearing "our internet is SOOOOO slow we can't use it". I drive there within a couple of days of hearing that, I run speediest.net and it all looks good to me. It's running around 1.2Mbps. I plug directly into the router and check it, then I plug directly into the box from the satellite company and there is virtually no speed difference between the two. The open their computers and say "Yeah, well, it's fast now".

I leave, get a call a week later "Our internet is horrible, it's so slow we can't use it for anything".

I repeat, and it repeats. I'm not sure what to check or how to check it.

They are all gone during the day, so the use is from 5:00pm on, and they don't watch movies or download songs. They are using it for websites and email mostly. I know for certain they aren't actively downloading things that push it over the limit. I have a suspicion that it's actually downloading program updates, where the files can easily be huge, but that's just a guess. I have disabled the automatic update downloading on 2 of the 3 laptops, and I haven't caught up with the 3rd laptop yet.

Any ideas on how to track down this problem? Any tools that will show me exactly the amount of data being downloaded in real time by all computers? Or something that will help me trace this issue down.

At this point, I'm lost. It works every time I check it but they keep telling me it doesn't work later. They don't live close enough for them to call me when they have a problem and me pop over and check it. I'm always there after the fact.

Any ideas?

paul cottingham
07-29-2011, 8:15 PM
I would replace the router. The symptoms you describe usually mean something is wrong with it. There are, of course many other possibilities, but I would start there.

Lloyd Kerry
07-29-2011, 10:13 PM
It might also be a good idea to see what programs are running in the background- lots of things like hardware and software update monitoring programs (Java, printers, DVD burning programs, accounting software, etc. msconfig can usually let you get rid of most of those. They connect with their home site form time to time to check for updates, so that will definitely slow things down too.

Bill ThompsonNM
07-29-2011, 11:58 PM
Put A program like logmein. (log me in) on one of their machines so you can control it remotely. Easy to check from your end. Unfortunately, it's probably not the router nor their equipment. I'm connected via WildBlue satellite--and it varies in speed by about a factor of 100. When good it's fine when bad it's worse than dial-up. Of course for those of us in remote areas there are very few options. Logmein has a free personal use version which should work great for this and other support. I can even use it to manage my servers at work from my iPod !

Bill ThompsonNM
07-30-2011, 12:03 AM
Oh, and with logmein you should be able toLog into their wireless router. Most provides statistics. Note that most give tons more info and options thru a telnet interface. The ISP usually monkeys with the web interface to limit the options. You might also look on some of the speedtest sites for stats on their ISP

Thomas S Stockton
07-30-2011, 12:39 AM
if it is hughes net there is an unlimited download period of 2am to 7am eastern time. Another problem is that during high traffic times like in the evening it can get pretty slow. as you have found out things automatically downloading like software updates can be a killer and are hard to totally track down. One other thing is that you get a free token each month from them to restore download speeds when you go over the limit.
other things that have killed our system.
podcasts set to download automaticly
downloading all the emails from a gmail account
youtube
One fix that has worked for us is to unplug the router for a minute and plug it back in. Don't have to do this that often unless the power goes out or the power goes on and off quickly but it seems to help.
When your on their system go to www.systemcontrolcenter.com and look around for a while it contains some good info and a gauge to tell how much download you have left. they also have software (pc only) to schedule downloads and speed things up. I also thought they had a bit of software that would track usage by site visited but I'm not sure on that.
Satellite internet is pretty horrible but it is still better than the dial up we used to have and we have no other options.
good luck
Tom

paul cottingham
07-30-2011, 12:49 AM
If resetting a router restores network speed, the router is probably hooped.

Phil Thien
07-30-2011, 8:36 AM
I'd get a router with dd-wrt firmware, where you can monitor traffic on a PC by PC basis (plenty of scripts to do this on dd-wrt). Then you can figure out if you're hitting the 300 threshold, or if it is something else.

Scott Shepherd
07-30-2011, 8:42 AM
Resetting the router doesn't improve anything when it's slow. They had a wireless print server installed and last time I was there, I noticed they had a new printer that was network friendly, so I pulled that piece out of the equation and hooked the printer to the router, so that's all good now.

John Coloccia
07-30-2011, 8:42 AM
The next time it happens, have one of them plug into the satellite box directly. If it's still slow (and it probably will be) then you need to deal with the satellite folks....good luck with that. If everything speeds right up then at least you know that it's likely the router or a background download...something like that.

Bryan Morgan
07-30-2011, 11:36 PM
If you can put a old school hub between the router and the internet router or mirror one of the ports on the switch to a computer running EasyIDS or something similar you would see exactly what computer is sending/receiving data... what its doing, how much, where its connecting, etc. Just set it up and let it run until they complain and then you can log in and check it out.