Student house - Slow browsing problems

Verbium · 2 Dec 2007 at 13:03

I'm currently living with 4 other people in my student house and its really starting to bug me that i can't fix an issue i'm having with the internet in general. Some sites timeout for no reason or don't respond for ages (including overclockers) but there are no errors on my line that would cause a problem like this, i've gone over everyones usage in the house as everyone downloads or games a fair bit but thats all well managed through the router. Slow browsing even happens when no one else is in the house too!

The router is a netgear DG834PN with 1.03.35 firmware and i've tried all sorts of methods to connect to the router. Wireless card, homeplug and now i've resorted to a linksys WRT54GL in a client bridge mode over wireless (the homeplugs couldn't sustain consistant data transfer).

Now i've checked everything on the router, and it seems fine. Our provider is BE* and we're on fastpath (the first thing i expected to cause the problem). I know we don't get any errors from that as all my downloads are fine and i haven't had a single corruption ever since we enabled it.

Ideas? :confused:

MAllen · 2 Dec 2007 at 18:53

Unplug everything except your PC. So it is just your PC, one cable to the router, and one cable to the wall. Also lose any spare telephones that are plugged in. (Ideally have the router in the BT Master socket).

Basically - to test, get your network down to the simplest setup. Then slowly build up the complexity from there.

Now try again... and if it is still crap, then you can blame Be. If it is better like this, then you may have some dodgy cabling in the house. I have see Phone Extension leads cause problems (by having too many). Also problems can be caused by damaged Ethernet leads. (And just cos your flatmates are out... doesn't mean they ain't downloading) And wireless is a nightmare in many houses (too many neighbourhood networks \ thick walls \ interference)

Verbium · 2 Dec 2007 at 19:34

MAllen said:
Unplug everything except your PC. So it is just your PC, one cable to the router, and one cable to the wall. Also lose any spare telephones that are plugged in. (Ideally have the router in the BT Master socket).

Basically - to test, get your network down to the simplest setup. Then slowly build up the complexity from there.

Now try again... and if it is still crap, then you can blame Be. If it is better like this, then you may have some dodgy cabling in the house. I have see Phone Extension leads cause problems (by having too many). Also problems can be caused by damaged Ethernet leads. (And just cos your flatmates are out... doesn't mean they ain't downloading) And wireless is a nightmare in many houses (too many neighbourhood networks \ thick walls \ interference)

Currently only have 1 telephone point in the house with no extentions.

I know when people's computers are on as i can see which devices are turned on through the router. I also block their IPs to test things too.

The ethernet lead may be a problem as one of my friends has a very long wire that was tapped in along the wall but we ripped it off a few times to change where it went round the house.

I'm pretty sure the wireless isn't the problem as i've tried with homeplugs and everyone is experiencing slow internet (wireless and ethernet users).

The only thing i've tried to avoid doing is plugging the Be box back in to see if that helps, its such a rubbish router!

Verbium · 3 Dec 2007 at 16:30

Think i've just solved our problems.

I've found after some fiddling that the netgear firmware is terrible at handling a lot of people on a network. So i've found a custom firmware based on the latest netgear firmware that fixes a lot of my problems.

Information about it can be found here, it supports the DG834G/GT/PN: www.emulesecurity.net/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1240

So fi you're with BE* you can finally fix your SNR to a certain number instead of using the telnet trick. This also includes a lot more flexibility with the firewall, check it out and see if it can help you

Furton · 3 Dec 2007 at 23:00

I'm assuming that would void your warranty right? Might give this a try anyway, was it the same procedure as installing a normal firmware, any issues?

hiroofheroes · 3 Dec 2007 at 23:15

have you limited the number of torrent connections?

Verbium · 4 Dec 2007 at 00:32

Torrents weren't the issue at all, i spoke to soon. The internet is back to being slow

Gaz1988 · 4 Dec 2007 at 09:27

what results do you get with a ping? to the bbc for example? also could you post a traceroute.

Verbium · 4 Dec 2007 at 10:41

I'll post some results later as i have housemates on downloading nonstop this morning.

In the mean time i've blown the dust off my Bebox and updated it to the latest firmware to see if it makes any difference when i try later on

MAllen · 4 Dec 2007 at 13:45

Try doing a test at a bizzarre time of the morning. For example - do a test at 3am. Lets see if it is your neighbours hogging the line with their downloads.

(I live in Brighton... my Virgin Cable Downloads are always the full 4Mbps.... but my girlfriend lives in the centre of town with more neighbours around... and her download speeds fluctuate a lot around the "rush hours". I put this down to heavy downloads from the neighbours as it seems fine in the early hours)

Verbium · 4 Dec 2007 at 13:53

From what i can gather, BE* don't have a contention ratio on their lines so i don't see how this can affect me. Downloads are also not the problem, we get full speed on those

Verbium · 4 Dec 2007 at 17:54

Ok quick update, switching back to the BeBox seems to have done the trick. Although not exactly what i wanted to do as its really a rubbish router i think i'll put up with it for now.

It seems that my netgear DG834PN has started to timeout randomly router side. So i suppose if the internet was slow then that would be the main issue. What surprises me though is that gaming has been fine and i haven't seen any high pings :S Any ideas guys?