Ok, so I'm an idiot. Sheesh.

[Jeff7]

Problem: REALLY slow cable modem speeds.
Clincher: it's on the PC's in the house, not the laptop.


Story begins: My main computer has been getting speeds in the 10KB/sec range, which is obviously not a fast cable modem hookup. Last night, I got on my laptop upstairs, and downloaded the same files from the same sites, and got 120KB/sec. Came downstairs, and hooked the laptop up right next to my computer. The PC was getting 2.13KB/sec. The laptop was getting 110KB/sec. I swapped network cables. The speeds didn't change at all.

I have changed the receive buffer and Tx Threshold (?) values on the PC, which doesn't do anything at all. The lappy and PC are set to autosense speed, and full duplex.
The laptop has a 3Com PCMCIA NIC; the PC has a PCI Realtek 8139B NIC with the latest drivers. They both can transfer files on the network itself at normal speed, but where the Internet is concerned, they are REALLY different.
Strangely, my main PC still gets good pings in CounterStrike - as low as 10 momentarily for more local servers.

Any suggestions, ideas? Or shall I call an exorcist?




Well, I made a change. Changed my RWIN value from 932 to 64000. Now approaching 90KB/sec. The public humiliation will be held in the OT forums 9-10AM Saturday.

 

[spidey07]

did you muck with any registry settings or driver settings on the slow performing PC?

 

[Hanpan]

What is strange is that you claim the pc can transfer files over an internal network just fine but not over external(internet).

This pretty much elminates some sort of hardware faliure...

 

[Jeff7]

I doubt it was anything I did. Even if it was something I did in the registry, then why are my dad's and sister's computers also slow with the Internet? (forgot to mention them)

 

[spidey07]

<< did you muck with any registry settings or driver settings on the slow performing PC? >>


Changes to any network card drivers or TCP registry settings can have GREAT impacts on performance. Working great on a LAN but not on a WAN are a sure sign of a mucked up IP stack.

But if you didn't mess with any of these settings then we can begin troubleshooting elsewhere.

 

[Jeff7]

Problem exists between keyboard and chair.

 

[spidey07]

DOH,

what was the deal?

 

[Jeff7]

Well, I made a change. Changed my RWIN value from 932 to 64000. Now approaching 90KB/sec. The public humiliation will be held in the OT forums 9-10AM Saturday


I edited the top post.

 

[spidey07]

Sweet. Glad you caught it.

ps - if you're running win2000 or XP their stack is WAY better than 9x. shouldn't need to change anything at all.

 

[JackMDS]

Spidy, remember the rule ?If plug fit the Jack, plug it?, well there is an extension to this rule ?If you can change setting change it?

The Internet is full of Proggies that claim to make your connection faster. The other day I saw a proggie claim to make your Dialup 400% faster, wow my 56K dialup is doing 7KB/sec. Download, I can make it into 28KB/sec Download. Wow, wow. There is also a lot of voodoo (like the enlarged size of the buffer to the IRQ of the NIC)

Most of this proggies don?t even tell you what they do.

However what they do is changes to the Registry, and in the process they mess-up other things, especially Network setting.

You want to change? OK.

Download DrTCP from DSLreports, run it and record the setting show by the program. Then change one at the time and always change back to the original setting if the change did not improve any thing.

Example for reading of an optimized Cable Internet system, that run NetBEUI for Internal uses.

Tcp Receive - 513920

Window Scaling - Yes

Time Stamping ? No

Selective Acks ? Yes

Path MTU Discovery - Yes.

Black Hole ? NO

Max Duplicate ? 3

TTL ? 64

MatMTU ? 1500.

Your mileage may be varying.

Download DrTCP: http://www.dslreports.com/front/DRTCP019.exe

 

[Garion]

Actually, I heard something about XP that it's "stealing 20% of your banwidth". I seem to recall it being something about the QOS Packet Scheduler installed by default..

OK, so it's not the stack that's taking bandwidth, but it is a "feature" installed by Microsoft. (Like MSN is a "Feature").

- G

 

[JackMDS]

Win XP - Modify bandwith reserved for QoS-aware programs