Are you getting the bandwidth you're paying for?

Lou Dolinar

May 4, 2008

Are you getting the bandwidth you're paying for?

Broadband providers sell a certain speed of service. For example, Verizon has two consumer DSL tiers: 768 kilobits downloads versus 3 megabits (for those who want to pour their bits into the same-sized glasses, that's 0.768 megabits versus 3.) Read the fine print, however, and you'll find that service level isn't guaranteed.

There are dozens of online speed tests you can run to check what you're getting. All are flaky, because the Internet is, too. Traffic jams can exist anywhere in your neighborhood, for example, if your provider hasn't been keeping up with capacity, and you'll see substantial drops when school lets out. More likely, miscellaneous tie-ups are affecting the Internet at large.

I just upgraded my service from 0.768 to 3 megabits. What's interesting is that the slower service was much more consistent, give or take a 100 kilobits. When I tested the new 3 megabit service recently, I was getting mostly 2 megabits, which is pretty good, but it occasionally dropped below 1 megabit.

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Your provider will generally have a speed test function on its Web site. The test involves downloading and uploading a file of known size, then calculating how long it takes. Start there, the idea being that the internal network should give you the most consistent reading. Google "online speed tests" and you'll find lots more. Try tests originating in different parts of the country as well, just to get a feel for how well your provider's network connects elsewhere. Don't read too much into any one test, or even any one day of testing.

I wish I could give you some good guidelines for "How fast should I expect it to be?" but the answer is highly variable. Getting consistently less than 50 percent of your rated speed is a problem worth pursuing. If you're getting better than 75 percent, let it slide. This isn't about justice, but about how much time you can waste. Also take a look at online user forums to see what others in your area are getting. My favorite is

broadbandreports.com, which has forums by vendor and also a suite of tools for troubleshooting your connection.

Problems with connections fall into two areas: systemic network problems vs. those unique to you, including defective equipment, poor wiring and connections and badly configured or spyware-compromised computers.

A chronic issue with DSL, for example, is the distance from the central office. Too far equals less than rated speed. In addition, demand for bandwidth grows so rapidly that vendors often find themselves coming up short during periods of high usage.

For example, Verizon users on Justin Beech's Broadbandreports.com are complaining about widespread slowdowns in the late afternoon and evening.

Before you call your service provider, check out some things on your own. The universal cure-all: Reset your IP address (see side story). If you have a local-area network, especially if you're using a wireless connection, bypass it and connect your computer directly with an Ethernet cable to the modem, then retest.

Besides factoring out your router as a potential problem, this also avoids any other bandwidth-hogging processes -- say, your daughter's BitTorrent client -- that may be sharing a connection with you. Assuming speed improves, you'll have to sort through your local area network.

The computer itself may have problems, spyware or maybe just a lot of bandwidth wasting processes from software you deleted long ago. Both can run invisibly.

If you have Windows, open up a DOS-style command prompt window (from the Start menu, select Run, then type in "cmd" and then hit enter). Once you get the black screen, type the following on the command line, sans quotes: "netstat -b 5 \>activity.txt." That will create a file that shows all your active network processes. Then hit Control-C to stop the procedure. To view the file, enter "type activity.txt" on the command line.

You'll see a lot of entries. Most of mine were for Internet Explorer. I looked up the ones I didn't know via Google and found they were system-related. A couple surprised me. A fragment of Slim Devices SlimServer, a music player, was still checking in on the network regularly, as was a Roku player and Apple's Bonjour utility -- all of which I thought I had deleted previously.

No great slowdown there, but no telling what you'll find on your own PC. On the theory that some spyware will get past even the best scanners, I started my laptop with DSL Linux (free download) from a CD. That bypasses all software on your computer, so if your speed improves dramatically, you know you have some kind of nasty Trojan. Mine didn't.

Windows settings may be a problem. You'll find a test page and downloadable speed tweak software for this at broadbandreports.com. My own experience is that this is rarely worth the bother, but you might want to give it shot.

Finally, your provider's tech support line can usually run some basic tests remotely, potentially finding, for example, a faulty router on their end of the connection. If you're confident you've cleaned up your own setup, try for a real service visit by a live technician. This is rarely the first step they'll take, so it pays to be persistent.

Send your personal-computing questions to dolinar@verizon.net.