Internet Problems, Need help!

[OrbitzXT]

The last 3 or 4 days I've had very unstable internet. It always works, but there are period of times when I get disconnected from whatever I'm doing. Its very frustrating because I make my living from online poker, and I keep getting disconnected from tables and losing money because of it. I have Road Runner in NYC, I called them but they were their usual unhelpful selves (Is your mouse plugged in, etc). I've had problems in the past where the lines outside my house had a weak signal, and they had to send someone here to boost my signal which helped.

I was looking at this diagnostic page, http://192.168.100.1/diagnostics_page.asp

and it says the following...

Cable Signal Details
Forward Path:
Signal Acquired at 687.000 MHz
SNR: 36.5 dB
Received Signal Strength: -4.8 dBmV
Modulation: 256 QAM

Return Path:
Connection: Acquired
Frequency: 23.0 MHz
Power Level: 48.0 dBmV
Channel ID: 2
Modulation: 16 QAM

Does anyone who knows what these numbers mean can tell me if I have a weak signal again or if my problem is something else? When my internet works, it works fine, but very often I get disconnected for 30-40 seconds and reconnect.

 

[d44ve]

Try connecting straight to your modem and bypass the router completely


This will help figure out if it is a router issue or ISP\modem issue

 

[von kain]

it might sound idiotic but do you have another modem? there was a speed update? it start raining?(seriusli it might be the muisture inside the cables)

 

[OrbitzXT]

I've tried bypassing the router because whenever I call Time Warner they ask me to do that, so it was slow even without it. They ran their little diagnostic on the modem and told me it was fine. Gah this is annoying. I almost wish it was just not working at all so they could see a problem and come fix it. But with this they tell me everything is fine and keep transfering me to other people.

 

[Ehstii]

get a better ISP?

 

[OrbitzXT]

Hm a Time Warner technician is coming to my house Monday...I just hope the problem is present while they're here. I honestly don't even know what to tell them. The signals coming into my house are supposedly okay, they tell me my modem is okay, and actually I was using the other computer in my house that has a PCI wireless adapter, and the connection on that actually seems more stable after using it for an hour or two.

So the problem isn't the router, since I have the problem even with the cable modem directly connected. The problem doesn't seem to be the cable modem or my lines since my connection seemed okay on my other computer. I thought the problem might be my onboard network card and/or the ethernet cable going into it...so I bought a new Linksys card and cable, and I still have the problem. I thought it might just be some kind of malicious program installed on my computer causing a slow down, so I reinstalled Windows...but still slow.

I ran http://speedtest.nyc.rr.com/ last night while it was in a slow state and got..

Download Speed: 490 kbps (61.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

That's normally my upload speed, my download speed that I took just now while it's working fine is...

Download Speed: 9791 kbps (1223.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

Any thoughts what could cause a problem like this that only pops up every 10-15 minutes continuously under these conditions? I'm just trying to think what to tell the technician. It almost feels like I have some kind of bandwidth cap, because it starts out fast then when I'm doing something, either a game, playing online poker, etc..it'll slow down and get to a point where I'm disconnected, then once reconnected it's usually okay again for another few minutes till another slow down and disconnect.

 

[driver66]

Bandwidth usage in your neighborhood?

 

[OrbitzXT]

All of my friends, one of which who lives right downstairs, are fine and the others mere blocks away. Also I take back what I said about my other computer on wireless being better...I used it just now and tried to play poker on it to truly see if it had the problem and it does. This issue is not too noticeable while web browsing, only something that requires a continuous connection like games of any kind.

 

[keakar]

time warner and other service providers will bottleneck you if they see you as a bandwith hog. they switch you over to a slow server to save bandwith on faster lines so it leaves you still connected but you cant get much out of it.

have you been doing much uploading downloading that they might be limiting your bandwith?

 

[OrbitzXT]

Just to update anyone curious, the guy came and said the wiring to my house was a mess caused by water damage. And it did rain and thunderstorm heavily in NYC last week so I suppose that was it. He supposedly fixed it so now its my duty to do nothing but gaming to see if it truly is working now =p