Internet is inexplicably slow

[Miek]

First off, I am 100% confident that my PC is free of malware and/or viruses.

 

Now, my problem: my internet, as of late, has been moving at a crawl at best. Restarting the router helps temporarily, but the internet slows down again within a couple of hours. Nobody in the house is downloading or uploading anything. I have a secure network and am certain that the only people using it are the ones living here. I can't think of any reason as to why my internet is running so slowly. All I can come up with is that SaskTel is just a really lousy service provider. I don't particularly want that to be true, because I've never had a problem before now. Any help determining the cause would be greatly appreciated.

 

I ran Speedtest.net and got the following results:

Edited January 11, 2013 by Miek

[Stonerboy779]

Call your ISP and get them to run some diagnostic tests and possibly send a tech. I had your exact issue a while back and turned out a bit of hardware had broken and needed to be replaced.

[SpeedCrazy]

First off, I am 100% confident that my PC is free of malware and/or viruses.

 

Now, my problem: my internet, as of late, has been moving at a crawl at best. Restarting the router helps temporarily, but the internet slows down again within a couple of hours. Nobody in the house is downloading or uploading anything. I have a secure network and am certain that the only people using it are the ones living here. I can't think of any reason as to why my internet is running so slowly. All I can come up with is that SaskTel is just a really lousy service provider. I don't particularly want that to be true, because I've never had a problem before now. Any help determining the cause would be greatly appreciated.

 

I ran Speedtest.net and got the following results:

I am afraid i can't recomend anything beyod what stoner did.

But i have to say, SLOW? Doggone it man, i would have to pay $70 a month for those speeds!!!

[sword_fish]

that's twice as much with my crappy net speed subscribed plan. what's yours Miek?

[the_dude]

What model router do you have and how old is it?  I had a netgear a few years ago that had to be reset constantly so my internet would work.  I replaced it and everything was great for a few more years until that one needed to be replaced too.

[Andrewr05]

He may not have specified.

 

Is it showing those speeds but you dont believe it is reaching those speeds?\

[Miek]

The speedtest results are misleading. According to them, my connection SHOULD be fast. However, it's not. Going to the OCC homepage, to the forums, networking, then to this thread takes me about five minutes due to load times.

 

My router is some router/modem combo made by 2Wire. I'm unsure of the model, but it's barely a year old. Perhaps replacing the router is the answer. Would I just be able to swap them, enter the new network key, and then be good to go? Admittedly, I've never had to change out a router before.

 

Do most routers nowadays also function as the modem? Or will I have to purchase a modem as well? I'm having troubles finding information pertaining to that on various manufacturer's sites. The slow internet deal just makes it all the more tedious and annoying. >.>

 

I tried calling SaskTel, and the number on their site led me to Bell's tech support. I find this confusing.

 

EDIT: I've made some headway. I called SaskTel (turns out the REAL number is 1-800-SASKTEL) and they said that everything appears to be functioning normally. There was a pre-recorded message stating that as of today internet services should be functioning normally, which implies to me that they were indeed experiencing problems. They also told me that they can replace my router/modem free of charge. All I need to do is take the router/modem combo with the power adapter to a SaskTel outlet and they'll give me a new one. I'm going to try waiting a couple of days to see if it actually was just a problem with the service. If my internet still refuses to function normally, I'll go replace the router.

 

Thanks for the help. This site is like my safety net. It's great.

Edited January 12, 2013 by Miek

[sword_fish]

some ISP would issue a modem(stand alone), or a modem/wifi router combo...it depends.

and there were cases that some models they provide turned out crap(having some sort of incompatibility issues) than the other what other subscribers had, yes it happens with my ISP.

 

or you may check your MTU settings and try to play with it. poor MTU settings may result to slow browsing though.

here's how to

[Miek]

Turns out my router's screwed. It went from being slow to no longer broadcasting a WiFi signal. Tomorrow, I will exchange it. If that doesn't fix the problem, I guess I'll be calling SaskTel again.