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General discussion

Broadband: Is my cable connection becoming saturated?

Sep 18, 2009 6:49AM PDT
Question:

Broadband: Is my cable connection becoming saturated?


It has been several years since I got my cable modem. Living
in what was a relatively sparsely populated area, I enjoyed
lightning-fast response times on the Internet. My son grew up
and got involved in online shoot'em-up gaming and
downloading, and I detected that when he was doing that, the
little activity light on the modem was on a lot more than
off, which was expected.

More recently, I have noticed that the activity light is
nearly always on, blinking off occasionally and my response
lags a bit. I can't blame my son's activities anymore, since
he went off to college, and his PC's been powered off. What
could possibly be the culprit? Is it time to complain to my
ISP? Thanks for your opinions!

--Submitted Steve B.

Here below are some featured member answers to get you
started, but please read all the advice and suggestions
that our members have contributed to this question.

Broadband connection --Submitted by GEO2003
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7583_102-0.html?messageID=3130449#3130449

Testing your Cable modem upload/download speed --Submitted by ralphjramirez
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7583_102-0.html?messageID=3130465#3130465

Cable broadband slow down --Submitted by Zouch
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7583_102-0.html?messageID=3130465#3130465

Sounds like a virus... --Submitted by darrenforster99
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7583_102-0.html?messageID=3130736#3130736

Is my cable connection saturated? Not likely... --Submitted by Watzman
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7583_102-0.html?messageID=3130394#3130394

Please read more contributions below in this discussion thread.

If have any additional advice or experience to share with Steve, click on the reply link and submit it away. Please be as detailed as possible when providing a solution. Thank you!

Discussion is locked

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OK, my problem may be the browser, but ...
Mar 6, 2010 3:51AM PST

You say run Firefox? So how come my Firefox takes forever to load? I've gone back to Explorer.

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But how much down/up load speed do I need?
Nov 4, 2009 4:40AM PST

I asked Time Warner how much down/upload speed I have; they told me, (I have 1.41 down, 0.21 up) and did the speedtest and found it to be near what it should be. This answer (above) left me hanging. OK, so which cable speed do I need? I can't listen to YouTube videos without some buffering. It also takes over 3 hours for me to upload a hi def video to them. And my Firefox crashes most of the time I try to do that. Of course, I may have over 90 tabs open at the time (I get a lot of crashes, which started all of a sudden some months ago with firefox). I've also endured the occasional choppy Vonage reception and the Vonage people are tearing their hair out trying to figure it out. And I called up Linksys to see if it was my wireless router, and they had me pay $40 for six months of tech support with it (which hasn't helped AT ALL).
I have a Windows XP machine with 4 GB ram, 2 yrs old.

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Browser crashes...
Nov 4, 2009 7:48AM PST

I had 1.5Mb down on AT&T last year and found it adequate, usually with the same test results you had.

I also found that in the last two years, I have to control the files put on my computer by surfing. Running CCleaner regularly to rid my browser and system of temporary files,clipboard, etc. was necessary to complete loading pages reliably. If you get tired of doing that every 5 minutes then try Adaware Aniversary Edition Free with AdWatch enabled, and you will only have to scan with it once every couple of hours or day or two.

I bought MBAMs lifetime license and now almost never have problems, but I still clean with CCleaner at least once a week.

Bear in mind, there is a limit to how many tabs you can open if you have a limited amount of RAM space. Theoretically you can get away with murder, but let's face it, having that many tabs open is a little excessive.

The most likely issue you have is probably updating; if you don't keep FireFox, your operating system, and all plug-ins, add-ons, and applications updated, you can have the same problems.

CNET has an update checker, but I use File Hippo's, as it is very efficient, and uses almost no resources.

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Crashing firefox / updating
Nov 4, 2009 8:22AM PST

Firefox seems to have its own updater which comes up in a window of its own and updates all the add ons.

How many open tabs is too many?

Would it help if I distributed them across open sessions of firefox?

Is this why it crashes even if I'm not even doing anything with it at the time?

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Yes but...
Nov 4, 2009 11:14AM PST

Browsing is affected by the health of the installation, if you don't keep all updates going, it can affect Firefox. In fact Microsoft got into trouble for deliberately installing an update that made FireFox vulnerable!!

Thankfully both MS and Mozzilla fixed that problem!

You only need one session window open really. The limit on tabs is only limited by your particular PC's CPU cycle rate, and the RAM you have on board.

A typical weather radar page will use 100Mb for example; this can add up very fast. None of my clients are getting away with anything less than a Gb of RAM now-a-days; which is unfortunately because security software uses a lot of it.

Just the operating system alone seems to be using 500Mb + or -. XP is getting pretty bloated now, if it is fully updated. I've had to forgo IE 8 on slower machines that have only 678Mbs of RAM, and they have minimal very lightweight anti-virus and anti-malware, so this is quickly shoving older PCs off the web.

That same PC loads the newest version of FF veeeerrry slowly, but once open, it surfs pretty fast. Needless to say, I don't open very many tabs on that one! Sad

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Do you have an unsecured wireless router?
Feb 6, 2010 4:41AM PST

If your son connects with a wireless router maybe here is an explanation. My neighbor has a very fast cable installation. He has me hook up a wireless router to his PlayStation 2. Unfortunately his PS 2
would not play with any of the security coded we could create, We had to leave the router without a security code. Maybe you have a neighbor freeloading off your signal. I never figured a working solution to this problem.