In which Our Heroes continue to wrestle with our internet connection.

[bookzombie]

We did all the normal stuff like closing down the router and restarting it again and we were still having consistent drop-out.

Then yesterday I had the mad (mad I tell you!) idea to upgrade the firmware on the router (Netgear D834 if anyone is interested in that sort of thing) which, overall, seems to have helped with the drop outs.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have helped with the speed. It's a bit better right now than it was this afternoon, which was taking an age to do anything, but still fairly slow, particularly the patch that I'm downloading for City of Heroes which is sitting around the 6-7K/sec. P. is downloading the same patch with similar speeds.

So the question is, what is the root cause? I've checked the diagnostics on the router and it appears to be connecting at a good speed and not registering any issues. Our ISP is virgin.net, which doesn't have a great reputation, but has been fine for us until the last few weeks.

I would guess that assuming the router is okay there are two possible issues:

1. It's just particularly heavy traffic at the moment (weekend, lots of people ordering Christmas pressies online, for example) so tough.
2. Virgin.net's servers are stuffed.

If the latter, I'd have to seriously consider changing our service provider.

Anyone got any thoughts?

Comments

Lies and statistics

[themis1.livejournal.com]

Much debate about this on Radio 4 last week. There are two reasons for slow broadband. One is the distance you are from the telephone exchange ... the other is the number of other people using the same line. So the more people take up broadband, the slower it gets. (This is also why it's fastest about 3 am!)

The debate was whether the providers are breaking the law when they advertise speeds they don't expect anyone to actually get - !

Re: Lies and statistics

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ooh - did I be confusing, when I said I was on Virgin? I'm on cable - only these days it's Virgin cable, since they bought out NTL. I wot not of their phone-line service.

Re: Lies and statistics

[themis1.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find the same rules apply - only for 'telephone exchange' substitute 'cable provider terminus' - same thing applies about number of users!

Re: Lies and statistics

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Given the connection has been pretty good since Sunday afternoon (including playing City of Heroes MMORG without any particular lag issues) it looks like your suggestion is on the button.

It also turned out that one of the 'symptoms' - trying to connect to the SingStore for the PS3 Singstar - is actually caused by problems with the Singstore server, not with our Broadband.

Re: Lies and statistics

[themis1.livejournal.com]

There was an article about this on Sky News yesterday - they are seriously looking at forcing the broadband suppliers to be honest about the ACTUAL best speed you can achieve, not the best that you could downhill with a following wind!

Re: Lies and statistics

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was reported on the BBC website as well. Major corporations not being forthcoming about performance - is anyone still surprised...?

Re: Lies and statistics

[themis1.livejournal.com]

Can't say I am, 'tis true, but it is darned irritating when you're wacking something in Guild Wars and the connection goes dead!!

Re: Lies and statistics

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

I'm probably going to regret saying this but I can count on one hand the number of drop-outs we've had on City of Heroes. Lots of lag issues a while ago (which was a CoH server issue rather than our problem) but few drop-outs.

I know I shouldn't have said that out loud...