Cobra89
join:2005-04-18
Melrose, IA
1 edit | Connection Very Unstable
I have a wireless ISP and I have noticed that my speeds have a tendency to fluctuate greatly and I have extreme lag to my first ISP subnet hop. If I try and download something from an FTP server one time it may download at 300K, and if I stop it and start it again the next time I start it a few seconds later it may start out at 15K, stall out and drop to 5 or 6K. Sometimes it is so bad I cannot maintain a 32Kbit radio stream with nothing else going through the line. It seems like when I run bit torrent and it only runs at 30K it slows the entire connection down so if you try to load a page or run a stream it will not connect to the server. Sometimes bit torrent slows down to 5 or 6K and the entire line stalls out. A month ago and before I've seen bit torrent easily go over 200K. The ping times are sometimes over 1000ms to the access point. It appears that there is a line of site to the tower, but there is a tree right below the tower from where the antenna is. Does this sound like an antenna issue? I want to have a good idea as to what is going on before I contact my ISP because ISP tech support in my case is a pain. Thanks. |
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LLigetfa
join:2006-05-15
Fort Frances, ON
| Either you have line of sight or you don't. Which is it? LOS is a straight line between the AP and your CPE plus a margin called the fresnel zone. Depending on distance, this fresnel zone could be 25 or more feet on either side. Generally, 60% of the fresnel zone should be clear.
Usually, the AP is not a router per se, so users cannot normally calculate ping times to it directly but none the less the first router you encounter in a tracert should be what you base your last mile performance on. Keep in mind that routers often put a low priority on ping, so if something further out gives you better times, you can discount the bad times.
Just do your homework with a few tracert and pathping results and confront the WISP with them. That should get things moving in a positive direction. Just make sure that you are not causing your own interference with your own DSL router or new cordless phone. |
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Cobra89
join:2005-04-18
Melrose, IA
| reply to Cobra89
The results from the traceroute only result in a 90ms lag, but this still doesn't solve the problem of the reliability and slow speed. I have access to the signal strength, bit rate, link quality, noise level, etc... Signal Strength: 25%, Link Quality: 29/255, Noise Level: 0/0, Bit Rate: 2mb/s. The bitrate of course fluctuates somewhat, but it is usually stable at 11mb/s when there isn't a lot of traffic. It hasn't been staying at 11mb/s when idle like it normally does. I have also noticed that the signal strength has dropped from what it usually is. It is normally 32-33%, but now never goes that high. I hope these results can help. The bitrate is especially low when running bit torrent, sometimes as low as 1mb/s. |
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seagreen
Premium,Mod
join:2001-05-14
out there | reply to Cobra89
You'll find some useful tips here as well as some tools to use to document the issues you've been seeing.
»Need help? Information to include in your post. |
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dhaas
join:2001-12-02
Alma, MI | reply to Cobra89
I can tell you one thing, bit torent requires alot of underlying connections just to handle the security of it all.
you will never get "full speeds" using bit torent. |
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