[Atomic-S (OP)]

Being frustrated at being often unable to complete even a relatively modest brousing session (such as enough to do a basic shopping view and then pay by credit card -- perhaps 20 gross minutes max.) through my ISP due to the slowing and finally stoppage of the connection, I eventually signed on with a different ISP. It is good for 360 hours a month. I have used very little of this. Using this other service, I am again having the same problem. This is in the early to mid evening as before. My total hours thus far logged on the new ISP since signing up are well under 360. Maybe all of 3 or 4 thus far. Oddly, with both services, accessing thenakedscientists.com is significantly easier much of the time. Has anyone got any idea what is going on?

[tangoblue]

how old is your computer.

[Madidus_Scientia]

What kind of internet and modem do you have

[techmind]

There's all sorts of possible reasons - not least that your old and new "suppliers" may share a significant amount of the same infrastructure - particularly equipment in the telephone exchange and of course the telephone line.

Domestic internet usage tends to peak in the evenings, and the collective load can cause bottlenecks.

Another possibility is that your computer (or router - especially if you're still using the same equipment) is looking at the same DNS server, which might be responding poorly (this converts human-readable domain-names into nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn IP addresses and is a prerequistite for most web transactions).

Is it possible that there's someone else using your internet connection to do filesharing without your knowing (eg if you have a poorly-protected WiFi router) - this would slow you down. It could be the BBC iPlayer working in the background for example. These kind of things can seriously throttle (bung up) your connection for other purposes.

Or that you've got a virus or something hogging the computer and/or internet connection some of the time.

One more thing that springs to mind is some kind of radiofrequency interference to your telephone line - from some source which only comes on at certain times of the day.


- You can use Task Manager on your computer to see whether your computer-processor itself is being stressed (given too much work)
- If you looked at your modem/router config/setup screens you could see whether at the times your browsing is slow you are really transferring much data that you weren't aware of, also what the upstream and downstream attenuation levels/error rates are, which would all help to point towards the cause (or at least rule some out).

It's also worth picking up the telephone and listening for any unusual buzzes or hisses on the line as these may also affect the ADSL broadband signal.


In the UK, it's also worth trying removing the front (half) cover of the BT Master socket (this is intended to be something the consumer can do) which disconnects your house phone wiring and reveals a telephone socket which goes straight to the company cable. If this works noticeably better than your usual socket or extension it may point to an issue with your internal house phone wiring.


In the first instance, a simple thing to do is to run the speedtest at http://www.speedtest.net/  (pick the London orange triangle). Note down the UPLOAD, DOWNLOAD, and PING times -both when your system is good and when its bad- and report back here.



Be extremely wary of online "virus scanners" and online "we can diagnose and soup-up your PC" advertisements/inducements. While there are some good ones, there's an awful lot of very nasty malicious stuff out there masquerading as something helpful.

[Atomic-S (OP)]

Thanks for the plethora of suggestions. This problem could turn out to be more complex than I would wish.

[Atomic-S (OP)]

What kind of internet and modem do you have

It is a dial-up, via Juno and via BMI (not at the same time, of course)

[Atomic-S (OP)]

how old is your computer.

This is a MicronPC.com "millennia" system, originally equipped with Windows ME, but a couple of years ago I had the operating system upgraded to Windows 2000 via an upgrade kit furnished by the service facility, of which I do not have an installation copy. The problems with slow and stopped internet connections do not appear to have begun at the time of the changeover, however, but substantially later.