Slow download speeds

[lost-and-found]

Hey all, my cousin has DSL, running through a D-Link router to his Windows XP family computers (3 total). About two weeks ago his dowload speeds dropped down to less than 1KB/s (they were in the byte range). He can play internet games fine, like Natural Selection, etc. He gets 50ms ping and no lag at all. But when he surfs the net it is very slow. DSL reports.com said the speed is about 101kbps download....it used to be around 600kbps before the problem developed. It's not only on his PC, it's on all of the PC's in his house. He tried connecting the PC directly to the modem without the router, and used windowsXP PPPoE, and it did the same thing, he tried different cables, he went even as far as to format HIS computer. He called Earthlink, but they didn't know what to do.

Any ideas on what the problem might be?

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/main.htm

i believe mydoom has been effecting the internet.

do you have any p2p running?

[lost-and-found]

He does not, and my download speeds are unaffected, and we live in the same area.

[Jeordiewhite]

there is little to go on why he might be affected as we would need to know more, usually first stop would be to contact your isp about it, however since that didn't help and he reformated his computer, there wouldn't be much reason to flush your dns cache or virus scan.
Can you have the isp test the line and see if the line noise is operating in tollerable levels,?

[lost-and-found]

as I said, he did contact the ISP, the ISP told him it's not their problem, it's supposedly something on his end.

[Jeordiewhite]

Also have you tried removing all phones and other devices and remove the filters and only have the dsl on and see if that helps any, is it just any random site that you don't get fast speed? Try downloading something from microsoft.com and see how fast that will go, sometimes having too many things on the phone lines can cause this so it is best to test it out.
When the filters are removed and if there isn't any difference then forget that, if it does fix it then you could try replacing a filter.

[whitebeard21]

Removing filters will only make it worse. The filter is to keep line noise out. That is why they have to be on every outlet.

http://www.modemhelp.net/linenoise/noise.shtml
This will check from the modem to the redback.
Be advised that some peer to peer networks are tremendous memory leakers and after running for several hours your pc almost stops. Do a virus scan, and spyware scans A lot of spyware can kill speed. After a reboot go to www.dslreports.com and do a speedtest. after 2 hours do it again and compare the results.
Most isps only guarantee the average speed of the first 90 days so get it as high as possible.

Things that can degrade speed. stapled patch cords, use clamps specifically made for cat 5 cable wireless telephones,Even your neighbors, burgurlar alarms radio or tv towers, kids rc cars, ham radios,garage door openers, electric motors.
Do not coil the excess cable lay it in a figure 8 fashion. do not make 90 degree bends, always maintain a t least a 3 inch bend radius. Not over 6ft from the modem to the wall.
go to the demarc (the box the phone co has outside) plug the modem in there to test the internal house wiring and eliminate that if it tests good at this point do another line noise test, then call tech support with the results if they are bad.
There is only three ways to get slow speed/line noise problems fixed. 1-complain 2- complain 3- complain to a supervisor.

[Whitehawk]

im having the same problem - whats a dns cache?

[Jeordiewhite]

If you removed everything but the dsl and even the filters, then you know it's not a filter, with them off and nothing but the dsl on it wont hurt anything. It will just see if there is a problem with one of the filters, it helped one time a filter went bad on my line.
http://www.w3.org/Library/User/Archi.../DNSCache.html

An excessive communication with remote Domain Name Servers (DNS) can produce a significant time-overhead in requesting a document from a remote server which can result in degraded performance of the application. This is often the case in spite of DNS's own cache, as the request still has to cross the network. In order to prevent this, the Library has its internal memory cache of host names which is updated every time a host name is looked up in the DNS cache. Once the host name has been resolved into an IP-address, it is stored in the cache. The entry stays in the cache until either an error occurs when connecting to the remote host or it is removed during garbage collection. However, as the information kept in the cache is fairly small, it can contain a large set of elements.

How to clear the dns cache:
Go to start > run> type: netsh int ip reset null
Go to start > run> type: ipconfig /flushdns
go to proccesses and kill dllhost

Things that can degrade speed. stapled patch cords, use clamps specifically made for cat 5 cable wireless telephones,Even your neighbors, burgurlar alarms radio or tv towers, kids rc cars, ham radios,garage door openers, electric motors.

If that were the case you would probably have to look into shielded cable, are there any electronic devices nearby that could be effecting it?
If you could, maybe go out and buy a large spindle of cat5e shielded cable if you could afford or look into setting up your friends house with that?

[whitebeard21]

"If that were the case you would probably have to look into shielded cable, are there any electronic devices nearby that could be effecting it?
If you could, maybe go out and buy a large spindle of cat5e shielded cable if you could afford or look into setting up your friends house with that?"

Before you do that check it at the demarc, from the demarc to the pc is yours, from the demarc to the redback is the phone companys.
With SBC/Ameritech only an escilated call can authorize a service call to your home.