Railworks America

I have DSL with a 256kb connection. Normally our network averages 1-2mb/s download speeds, but in the past few months, the connection has really seemed to struggle loading data on any device on the network. When 1-3 people were on the network, it worked fine. Now, it barely will respond at all when you load a page. I'm not sure if it will help in solving the problem, but a while back when downloading TS2013 onto my computer, it seemed like the download would start and stop as if the network would only send/receive data in waves. The DSL Modem is connected to a Wifi router, which is then connected via Ethernet to my desktop's port. Do any of you know what the potential problem is here? It's never done this before and it's getting to the point that you can't even watch a youtube video on low quality until about 3-5AM! Normally it has no problem streaming 480P or 720P at times and even to watch 320, I have to sit and let it load for a while. This is quite frustrating given that I like to actually use the internet. Any help is very much appreciated!

Example for the moment: I am downloading Fedora 17 for my HDD partition. It is downloading only about half a GB and it is estimated to take 4 hours. A few weeks/months ago, it would have taken approx 15-30 minutes at maximum.

Also, I came home a while back and the room that the router is in had a funny smell to it, like technology overheating. It was in fact, the router. Is it possible that the router is simply 'fried'?

I wouldn't be surprised. I tend to change out my router every two to three years. They just start acting wonky and soon fail.

Well, earlier I took the router out and just had a direct connection to my computer from the modem. Perhaps they're both just finished?

When my system slows down I reboot the router and it goes back to normal. I usually have to do this once a day if I am on the computor all day.

Also it's possible that your provider has started doing some throttling on your connection.

For me it was local traffic as well. So it wasn't the ISP.

Ugh. I'm wondering if the increased internet usage in the [rural] area has left the current system in place unable to handle all of those connections. The internet is fine on off-peak hours.

donjgatlin wrote:Ugh. I'm wondering if the increased internet usage in the [rural] area has left the current system in place unable to handle all of those connections. The internet is fine on off-peak hours.

That sounds most likely. I was on a dsl for a while and on Monday morning at nine o'clock it was almost unusable but late evenings it would just hum along. You might contact your local provider. In my case it helped to let them know I was having a problem. Turned out they were having some "noise" problems they didn't know about until I pointed it out to them.

DSL is a direct connection to the local phone company's switching station. It shouldn't slow down, but these days with all the internet traffic, I guess it's possible. I use "Speedtest.net" http://www.speedtest.net/ to test my internet speeds. But, here where I live, I have 3 other people on the same DSL, so when everyone's on, it does get slow. Cable will always slow down, because it's one line and the whole neighborhood is on it.

If your modem is a few years old, most companies will upgrade it for you. AT&T gave us a free upgrade last year. Routers do wear out. And if it's a wireless, did you move it or put some furniture in the way? I tend to hardwire my net, I don't want the neighbors stealing my internet. We do have one WiFi downstairs, but it's password protected.