Very slow internet speeds

[Ariste]

After months of research and saving money I've finally built my own computer, but now I'm faced with the problem of horrendously slow internet. I have a cable modem which is hooked up to a router near the computer in the basement. I'm 2 flights upstairs, and I'm getting "excellent" connection status, but the internet still seems to run extremely slow. It also seems to get stuff done in "bursts." For instance, sometimes it'll take forever to get to a web page, but sometimes it'll go at somewhat average speeds.

Any idea what this might be from? I've got 3 computers hooked up to the router; one is wired to the cable modem and the other two are connected wirelessly. I'm pretty sure that its a crappy router and modem since when I bought it a few months ago I had no idea what to buy, but I think that I should still at least be able to get somewhat normal speeds on the internet.

Any ideas on what the problem mighyt be? Could it be that I have to reconfigure the router now that I connected this new computer to it? Is it that the router just sucks and I should get a new one? Thanks for any advice,

 

[n0cmonkey]

What speed are you expecting?

 

[imported_rhfactor]

What's the speed of the wireless? And are all your computers slow, including the wired PC?

 

[mehmetmunur]

Make sure that you have the latest drivers and firmware for your wireless adapters, on-board lan and router. I know that my netgear wgr614 had issues communicating with netgear MA 521 until I downloaded the latest drivers.

However, it is quite likely that the source of your problem not be your computer/router but your cable modem.

I have Time Warner cable around central ohio and I have had to change my cable modem multiple times because they were slow at times, packet loss they called it. Time Warner has a utility that you can use to check your internet connection speed. I bet you can do the same with your internet cable provider.

If that does not work out, you should check for viruses and adware, since that could cause the problem as well.