Slow download speed.

I am using hawaiiantel with a b90-210015-04 modem and linksys wrt54g router and when doing downloads or speed tests i only get 45kBps on wireless connection when the average is 300kBps. Any suggestions?

 

you did not specify what kind of wireless card you have in your (laptop we assume) or how far you are from your router.

What gets 300kbps? A hardwired desktop?

connection performance degrades due to distance and interference

Suggestion--Move closer to the router. Make a difference?

 

actually my parents computer is i think plugged into the router and it is exactly the same speed.

 

you did not answer the most important question--what are you basing your 300 AVERAGE kbps on

If both you and your parent are getting the same download speed -- and one is wired and other wireless -- your issue is either the router, or your ISP, there are no other possibilities.

If it is your router, which i seriously doubt, it is malfunctioning in some way.

You also never described your connection....dsl, cable.....my guess is you are DSL and you are a long distance away from a switching station--probably borderline able to get DSL

 

I am basing the 300 average off of speedtest and we have hawaiiantel and we live in kaneohe. Would there be any chance it could be the modem(4 years old) or faulty wiring in the house?

 

I am not sure I follow you...you say you are "basing the 300 average off of speedtest", but then you say when you are doing downloads you only get 45 kbps

Does this mean that the speedtest shows the 300 kbps, but when you are downloading something else you get the 45kbs?

If that is the case, recognize that WHERE you are downloading from makes all the difference in the world.

Does speedtest have a server in Hawaii to test it from (normally highlights the closest one)?

And then, let's say, you download a file from Filehippo.com, whose server is in Texas.

you might get a screaming fast connection from you to the speedtest server 20 miles away and only one hop away (each router in a network path is considered a "hop"), but then the connection to the server in Texas (or whereever) needs to go through X number of routers and X number of connections.

Your download speed is only as fast as the slowest connection. Connection speeds will vary based on distance, bandwith, and noise.

If you are getting 300 kbps to a local server, and your promised bandwith is 300 kbps (what does your ISP promise?) to a local speedtest server, then I would say it is not your home wiring or modem.

If you are promised 3mbps (3000 kbps), then it "could" be.

You need to measure your signal speed to known servers to determine where the problem is.

How you do that depends on your level of expertise, but here is a fairly easy way to get started.

go here:

http://visualroute.visualware.com/

download the visualrouter 15-day trial

Visualroute is a neat little visual tracert program that will show you the path information travels from your pc to a remote server.

It then highlights bottlenecks for you so you can see where the problems lay. Each hop will give you the time it took for a packet of data to move from one server to the next, as well as if there is data loss on the trip (data loss means that the information must be sent multiple times).

It even makes this info fairly easy to read through the use of color (green good, red bad)

Report back what it says.

I can tell you that the path from me to www.hawaiiantel.com is showing very poor transmission at the moment.

 

No what i mean is the hawaiiantelcom download average for hawaii is 300 and i only get 45. all these are speedtest stats.

 

I see....but you are not all of Hawaii--you are one guy who knows where in Hawaii

Get visualtrace and report back

 

It seems as if on almost all websites there is a problem on node 4. It has no name and the ip is unknown but the packet loss seems pretty high.

 

your picture did not post....attach it, don't cut and paste it (the image you see if linked back to your own drive)

C://Users//Aengus//Pictures//Capture1.jpg

 

sorry here it is:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22217&stc=1&d=1218330144

 

I wouldn't worry about the one unknown...some routers don't report back adequate...but you did a test to a local server (still in Hawaii) only.

Run a test on a server NOT in Hawaii.

Also, let's download something from a server in Hawaii

go here:

ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt

download
GSHHS1.10_full.tar.bz2

(you can throw it out later)

 

still averaging around 40. Maybe my service isn't what it should be because we got it 4 years ago and now maybe we need to upgrade.

 

And my mom says that our family service is high speed so should be about 3mbps.

 

what about visual route to www.google.com?

 

here is the result:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22223&stc=1&d=1218341140

 

We're just not getting a good trace....look at all the problems once you get to the 14th hop....and that is about where you are changing networks from Sprint to the next network (not enough info on what network you are on at that point)--but something is going seriously wrong there.

I cannot tell where the bottleneck is occuring geographically with this little information, but it would not surprise me if there's an issue when the network traffic routes off the islands to the mainland...

It's worth noting that when I downloaded the file from the University of Hawaii I got a faster connection than you did--not real fast, but faster (about 150kbps).

I did a trace on the download and I never hit the Sprint network, though, so it's not a single path from the Islands to the mainland (which would have been VERY surprising).

The question is--is this a permanent issue, or temporary?

How long have you had this ISP as your provider? A router could be dying, or is simply overworked. Sometimes these are temporary issues.

I'd be curious what a trace to ftp.soest.hawaii.edu showed

 

My family has had this service for about 4 years but i don't think that it was ever working super good. Oh yah and sorry i forgot to tell you but the internet lights on both the modem and router are blinking if that changes anything. And i can't connect to either the ftp or hawaii.edu.

 

it depends on which lights, but generally this only means internet activity.

What do you mean, you cannot connect?

You said earlier you downloaded

GSHHS1.10_full.tar.bz2

from here:
ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt

at 40kbps
download

 

I think both are firewalled.

 

did you or did you not download that file?

 

i started it but it was taking so long i decided to stop.