Intermittent Slow Net Connection

[ryanbatc]

I've been having a problem with my internet. At first I thought it may be a fluke. But this is the 4th time it's happened this year.

The problem is my connection speed/ping. For instance, normally I run a 50ms ping to the Twin Cities site I use for testing. But four times so far this year it has jumped to 150-190ms. The bad ping/slower internet browsing won't go away until I've completely reset my modem and router (by that I mean unplug everything and slowly re-connect it all).

I have Charter cable, 5mbps down, 1.5 mbps up
I run a Motorola Surfboard 5120 modem
and a Netgear WGR614 v8 wireless router

Both my PC and my wife's PC connect to the router. Our Wii and PS3 also sometimes use the wireless connectivity.

So, is something broken on my PC? But if so, why does it only happen after some time? I've searched for spyware, viruses (NOD32), and nothing comes up, and the PC is behaving normally, minus the internet issue.

Suggestions appreciated.

|Vista x64 SP1|Foxconn SLI 590 MCP|AMD 6000+|MSI 8800GT 512MB|Creative X-Fi|4 GB Corsair XMS2|36GB Raptor|250GB WD Caviar|250GB Seagate|OCZ Modstream 520W|

[Evilization]

this has been happening every night for me
im using charter too
have called them a few times, got a technician
nothing they could do
they just said, maybe a lot of people are using the internet at the same time

[ryanbatc]

this has been happening every night for me
im using charter too
have called them a few times, got a technician
nothing they could do
they just said, maybe a lot of people are using the internet at the same time

Besides the fact that Charter as a company is crap, it seems something technical is going on with my system, or my equipment.

Or maybe it really is Crapper, ERRRR charter.....

[Evilization]

yea man
i thought it was a virus too
but then i formatted my drive and reinstalled windows XP
its the same thing, they said it might be the ethernet cable
i changed to a new one, same thing
it always happen in the evening to around midnight, which sucks....

[mapes]

Occam's razor the simplest answer.... The answer is most likely they over subscribed your neighborhood. Cable modem technology has come a long way but I generally still prefer DSL because no matter how many people are using only I still get my CIR (committed information rate). Nowadays the cable companies have been pretty good about not over subscribing but mistakes get made. I would start keeping a log of when large latency happens. Then if you can point to peak times being the issue give em a call and ask wtf?

[DougBob]

Occam's razor the simplest answer.... The answer is most likely they over subscribed your neighborhood. Cable modem technology has come a long way but I generally still prefer DSL because no matter how many people are using only I still get my CIR (committed information rate). Nowadays the cable companies have been pretty good about not over subscribing but mistakes get made. I would start keeping a log of when large latency happens. Then if you can point to peak times being the issue give em a call and ask wtf?

Agreed. Also ryanbatc, how familiar are you with you cable modem. I have the surfboard modem and occasionally I'll check my up and down link frequencies and see what DB and KV level they are at.

The most likely problem is what mapes said, another possibility is weather in case you modem is experiencing a little db drop you may encounter some slowdown indications.

Record everything during slowdowns, outside temp, is it raining, dry, local time, speedtest.net results, etc.