Slow Internet speeds

[DoYouKubuntu]

About once a week or so, I have to reboot my modem and router in order to get my speeds back up to what I'm paying for. My plan is 50/5, and when things are running at about those speeds, I'm very pleased. But they slow down...WAY down, like 0.72/0.17! The only thing I've tried is rebooting the modem and router, and since that brings it back to its intended speed, I've just been living with it. Until now!

I'm tired of rebooting, but I have no idea what else I can do or check to tackle this. Please, any ideas or thoughts will be appreciated.

[SpecialEd]

What does your service provider say?

[DoYouKubuntu]

My provider is Earthlink, over Time-Warner...er, Spectrum's cables. Testing at their end shows roughly 50/5 speeds, so the slowdown is at my end--and they're right, considering that rebooting the modem and router [temporarily] solves the problem. They've suggested replacing the modem and/or router, but since I do get expected speeds--between reboots--I don't think they need to be replaced. Plus, they're not very old, perhaps 2-3 years.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Come on guys...NO thoughts on this?!

[GreyGeek]

You probably have low end modems and/or routers with not enough memory.
Before I switched to Allo and 300Mbps of symmetrical fiber optic I was experiencing the same thing with my Spectrum connection. (My experience with Spectrum, and TWC and Earthlink (which rides on top of the TWC cable) is that they are not altogether honest, but that may just be in my area).

I had a Cisco Linksys E2500 wifi router. My wifi connection would drop to 1mpbs and appear to hang. I would disconnect and reconnect to get it going again. I replaced the firmware with DD-WRT and noticed a decided improvement keeping connected, but my speed was always 18/4 on a 60/10 service. When Allo came I was getting 50/5 on a 100/100. I decided to change wifi routers.

I bought a Buffalo 600N dual band router. WOW! The difference is amazing. Before, I had to run on the 2.4GHz band because our iPhones wouldn't connect to the 5GHz band from the Linksys, and the Linksys didn''t communicate well with my AR9462 wifi chip. With the Buffalo the connection is always up and my AR9462 speed always shows around 357 mpps connection speed. The only thing that limits my download speed now is the speed of the Internet servers I'm downloading from.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Very interesting.

I know I have a Linksys router, though its model info escapes me right now, and I have no idea what my modem is. I'll look them both up on Amazon later.

My connection is always there...it just slows down to a crawl. IIRC, that was not the case when the modem and router were new. So what could it be that's causing such dramatic loss of speed on relatively new equipment? They're not high end, but they do support my expected speeds...until they don't!

[Snowhog]

"I" would be suspecting your ISP is throttling your throughput speeds, even if they won't admit they are doing so.

[GreyGeek]

"I" would be suspecting your ISP is throttling your throughput speeds, even if they won't admit they are doing so.

I had those suspicions with TWC & Spectrum as well. The plot of download speed vs time shows the download speed flattening out after a few seconds and staying flat for the duration, usually well below the advertised download speed, not just 87% of it. The upload speed was always at 4mpbs.

[DoYouKubuntu]

But if they're throttling my speeds, why does rebooting the modem and router fix the problem?

[Snowhog]

'Potentially' because doing so renews your connection lease on the router. Just a guess.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Hmmmm...that makes sense.

[claydoh]

Have you tried connecting directly to the modem, to compare the speed there? If it is fine this way, it might be worth doing a factory reset and firmware upgrade (if available) on the router and going from there. You should be able to back up the router settings to a file, and restore them if necessary.


I don't think the ISP throttling you is all that likely, as (at least in my experience) they will tell you if asked. But who is to say that Spectrum isn't screwing around with Earthlink? I have experienced that back in my DSL days in Maine. The owner of the lines might be forced to sell service to third parties, but that does not prevent shenanigans from happening.

Another minor thought may be to see if this is consistently happening at a certain time of the day, perhaps there have been more subscribers on your line, or many getting new 4K TVs and upgrading to the 4K netflix service, or something?

[DoYouKubuntu]

Excellent points, Claydoh, and the next time the slowdown occurs I'll try connecting directly to see what happens. It's been a few days since the last reboot and, miraculously, I'm still getting good speeds (51/6 last time I checked). Perhaps all that was necessary was posting about it!

[GreyGeek]

Not only that, but Spectrum (as was TWC, RR and EtherLink) was/is notorious for over subscribing a trunk line. When everyone logs on at peak times (noon, after work and evenings after 9PM) they have to distribute the bandwidth across all the extra users. At other times there are fewer users and the fewer users get to use more of the bandwidth that truck segment supplies.

Smartphone ISPs do the same thing with regards to towers. It's often good to recycle the power on your smartphone so that it re-connects to the nearest tower. The increase in speed is often noticeable.

[DoYouKubuntu]

This is really funny: since posting about it, I haven't had a slowdown! Here I am, cable at the ready and...nothing. Speeds are holding in the 49+/5+ range.