|
I'm lucky enough to live on the very edge of a zone that is covered by 2 DSLAMs. My line attenuation is extremely high, yet I've managed to do a half-assed job of keeping my connection reasonably stable. Here's a few things I've done:
So guys and girls, what ideas do you have? What's the best way to improve the stability and speed of an internet connection? Are there any cheap ways I've missed? |
|
If you have physical line problems while it can be fixed your self it is best to have the ISP do it because it wont cost you any money if they do it and they will replace all of the lines as needed. Often depending on the wiring in the home, your ISP will set up a splitter for the main phone line coming into the house and then will run a direct line from the splitter to a new jack (often they will drill a small hole and install a new jack. (I had this done when I had DSL and it fixed all of my connection stability problems) PS when calling your ISP, for physical line problems of problems on the ISP end, ask to be connected to a "network specialist" (this will get you to a local support center instead of india. The people at the local centers will be able to fix most problems easily. if the problem is on their end (network congestion) they can switch you to a different router on their end. They will also skip the useless trouble shooting and if you explain the problem full they will just send a worker out to install new lines and many other needed repairs. When you have a stable connection, the next best thing to do is simply get a good router and set up some QOS rules (also using firmware like tomato or dd-wrt will generally increase the max number of connections that the router can handle at one time. (By moving to tomato, I no longer have lag problems with using bittorrent with many connections at one time, and wifi performance increased greatly)
edit: picture referenced in a comment I added:
less bandwidth but the pings will stay very good even with a lot of network activity. In Australia, ISPs don't replace telephone lines. They refer faults onto Telstra, who owns the telephone lines. Telstra replaces them if they think they need replacing. It's at no cost to my ISP, and I believe it actually costs me money to have an inspection done by Telstra. As I said in my initial post, though: They don't tend to care. I'm not sure if you realise what a job is to a person. You can't just make an assumption that someone is correct and skip the troubleshooting. Imagine if every mechanic believed their customer when they said "the carburetor is shot". I'm sorry, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to sound like a smartass. Why is QoS required for a fast internet connection? It seems to me like all other services it's going to require some overhead. 1
QOS has no noticable overhead when set properly and it makes better use of the bandwidth you have. Have you ever downloaded multiple torrents and even when not using your full bandwidth, the torrents still caused a significant drop in web browsing or gaming performance? That is caused by the router reaching it's limit of connections it can handle and also a problem with small packets and other packets with special control flags getting delayed or dropped all together. QOS is a great improvement if you multitask on your connection (eg downloading and doing online gaming or multiple people in the house doing random things at the same time. For me, I set my base priority to low, then for services that I like, I increase their priority and for services that are not as important, I set them to lowest. (in my other classification page, I have the priority for smaller packets such a sack packets on a really high priority, this helps with a lot of things such as web browsing and online gaming as they are less likely to be delayed by less important bulk traffic The only time QOS really has a noticable overheat is when you set it in a way that allows for the best ping times. (eg if you only do voip and gaming and rarely ever do bulk downloads like bittorrent, some people will set the QOS to 75-80% of their benchmarked internet speed (this will limit their upload and download). they will then set QOS rules as normal and then you will maintain a really good ping even if you have multipbe users torrenting and surfing the web. I have different profiles for my router and If I will be doing many clan matches in online games and lots of voip and little downloading, I will use a more restrictive QOS in order to maintain the lowest pings possible (I will edit my answer to include a picture of an example of a good ping) Ps for the skipping of trouble shooting, to do this you first need to be connected to a higher up worker then explain the problem with a clarity and detail. You missed the point. QoS doesn't increase the speed or reliability of an internet connection. It reserves portions of bandwidth for specified services. That requires an overhead. Your internet connection as a whole (not just that part of it you use with Internet Explorer) will be slightly faster and more reliable without it. 1
for me I currently have mine set in a way that allows me my full bandwidth but if I start a high priority activity, the lower priority will be throttled to a much slower speed to allow the high priority more bandwidth. If your physical connections are fine then there is nothing you can really do to make it faster as the slow down will be on the ISP's end. On most internet connections used in companies, a QOS will be set up because bandwidth is expensive so they use QOS in order to make sure the high priority services can have the bandwidth they need. QOS is not reserving bandwidth, for example you can allow everything to have full access to your bandwidth but a higher priority service will be able to take bandwidth away from the lower priority (up until the low priority item hits it's minimum (you can puck both a minimum and maximum for each service and with it set properly, I have no loss of speed on my speedtest.net kinda like how in windows task manager, you can change the priority of running processes, you are not slowing the system down or reserving CPU cycles you are simply telling the OS "hey this process is more important than this other one, the low priority can have 100% usage of the CPU's resources but if the higher priority program needs the CPU then give it as much as it has requested with QOS you can do this same setup (when 100% of the bandwidth is available, your pings will go up when the connection is saturated but nowhere near the amount it will go up if you did not have QOS) Most people multitask, they will download a torrent, surf the web, use VOIP. While QOS wont make the internet faster than what the ISP has provisioned you with, you will be able to keep your torrents having no limits on the download and the torrent will use your full bandwidth but the router will slow it down to give higher priority items. Simply set your QOS to your benchmark speed then allow all of your priorities full bandwidth but set their minimum to low levels for low priorities, then to test, download a torrent and let it use your full bandwidth, then do a speedtest.net test with qos on and off, you will see how it manages your available bandwidth. No, QoS is a bandwidth reservation tool. "you will be able to keep your torrents having no limits on the download and the torrent will use your full bandwidth but the router will slow it down to give higher priority items." Precisely. Sort of like reserving a seat for an older woman, yes? Wikipedia agrees with me. Also, don't rely on benchmarks so much. The only thing the benchmarks prove reliably is how fast the benchmarks run. This is why those bandwidth benchmarks like speedtest are retarded. Yet that is how it works. low priority items can use your full speed but if a high priority item wants 90% of your bandwidth, then the low priority item will be throttled to 10% of your bandwidth and the high priority will take 90% you are not making the internet faster but you are making better use of the speed by having more time sensitive traffic having first dibs on the bandwidth. Sites like speedtest.net only need a system fast enough to fun the flash lag free. other than that, it is doing a raw TCP transfer from the server then uploading that data back to the server, it then measures how the rate of transfer. a faster computer wont make the test any faster. Keep in mind, even an old 900MHz PC can saturate a gigabit connection. going from a core 2 dual core, to a core if quad will not improve internet speed as your connection is a major bottleneck. You wont notice any benefit from QOS if you are only doing one thing, the time when QOS actually takes action is when your available bandwidth becomes saturated (not enough bandwidth to go around) QOS will then choose which connections get a larger chunk of the available bandwidth based on their priority. For example if you were torrenting and it was taking up all of your bandwidth, when you open your web browser ad load a page, if set right, the QOS will see a high priority connection and allow the high priority connection full access to the bandwidth so for a few seconds while the page is loading, the torrent will slow significantly allowing the web page to load quickly then when the browser stops needing so much bandwidth the torrent will speed up again. you are not making the internet faster but you are making better use of the bandwidth.
showing 5 of 6
show all
|
|
Razor512 has some great detailed answers. Tought act to follow.
Broadband Tests and Tools - ***http://dslreports.com/tools*** |
|
GREAT! Problems identified. Advise buying a pair of powerline adapters, and pairing them up. Locate the jack where service enters your premesis, and connect it to the master unit. Go to the room/office where you need service, and install the slave unit. Connect the slave unit to the DSL modem. At this point, you can connect to the router or directly to your computer. Service Jack - BPL Master - BPL Slave - DSL Modem - Router - Computers Broadband Over Powerlines (BPL), HomePlug, IEEE P1901, etc. have been around for many years. It's used in Europe & Asia, and slowly being adopted in the U.S.A. I've installed & use Panasonic BL-PA100KTA HD-PLC Ethernet Adaptor BL-PA100A units.
I followed your advice on this and purchased powerline adapters. It made a huge difference and my (Wi-Fi)internet connection now manages to get much farther in my NYC apartment. I have old plaster walls with metal lath construction. It really messed up my signal strength.The powerline adapters saved the day. Seb, Did you try this? |
