Practicing the Black Art (08/12)
Juice Your Broadband Speed
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@comcast.net
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
People prefer broadband internet connections
because of the obvious speed advantages over
dial-up and satellite links. Then why is it that broadband never seems
to be fast enough? Are you getting the speed promised by your ISP?
Broadband can cost $100 a month or more, but does the provider really
provide the advertised speed? Is the connection reliable or does the
modem need a reboot several times a day? Fortunately, there are ways to
achieve high, reliable throughput without having to have an engineering
degree. Here are some suggestions to get every bit per second possible
from your modem without any technical hiccups or interruptions in
service.
Start with your computer and TV equipment. A common
source of line noise can be traced to improper grounding of anything
that plugs into household electrical circuits. This can seriously
degrade performance of cable equipment. Every electrical device,
especially those in the same room as the cable modem, should be plugged
into properly grounded outlets. The best connections are with polarized
plugs oriented in the correct direction, and please don’t use any three
prong to two prong adapters. Get up-to-date gear. Electric outlet
testers are cheap. Buy one and use it to test for excess voltage on your
cable wiring. Any problem could indicate a serious safety hazard. Engage
a licensed electrician to fix it.
Almost anything manufactured today in the consumer
electronics world is light years ahead of its predecessors manufactured
only two or three years ago. Cable modems are no exception, so if yours
is more than three years old get a new one from your provider. Most
providers will make a free exchange, but some will require an extension
of your contract. You want to do this because the latest modems conform
to the DOCSIS 2.0 standard. This offers higher upload and download
capabilities and supports other advanced broadband applications,
including online gaming and peer-to-peer computing.
Ask your ISP if they automatically update firmware
for the modem. If they don’t, have them supply the website address of
your modem’s manufacturer so you can download the most recent firmware.
Check the website about twice a year for new updates.
Next, go to a test site such as PC Pitstop, and check
your upload and download speeds to see if they match the terms of your
service contract. If they don’t, give your ISP a call and have them
reset the modem’s settings. While you’re at it, have them check the
signal-to-noise ratio. Too much noise can cause interference, and your
modem will then have to resend information cutting down on your
throughput.
It’s possible that your cable wiring may contain too
many splices or simply be too long. That can be fixed by a visit from
your ISP technician. Have the technician check the line quality leading
to your house. If the signal is good and you’re having problems, the
house wiring may be the culprit. The definitive answer for cable modems
is to create a split directly after the junction box and then run a new
cable directly to your modem. The other side of the split will take care
of your television sets which aren’t nearly as sensitive to line noise.
After you’ve done everything from a hardware and
firmware standpoint, and your cable connection is as clean as possible,
you’re ready to fine tune the system for best performance. Vista users
don’t have to do much of anything to optimize the operating system since
Vista does TCP stack tuning dynamically. Any internet performance
adjustments can be made through the browser. Firefox users may want to
try Firetune or Fasterfox. They are both free utilities and allow
adjustment to cache memory, capacity and other settings such as
pipelining.
If you do a lot of downloading, you can save time by
installing a download manager like Flashget. This widely used utility
claims the highest number of users on the internet. It uses MHT
(Multi-server Hyper-threading Transportation) technique. It’s very easy
to use and comes with exceptional document management features. Best of
all, it’s free.
After all this work, it would be a tragedy if you
didn’t keep in mind that sometimes the simplest solutions are the best
ones. Most cable modems and routers have reset features. Many a
mysterious internet ailment has been corrected simply by resetting the
equipment. Turn off the computer and the modem. Un-plug the modem for a
few minutes and then power everything back on. You may be pleasantly
surprised. :
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Copyright 2008. This article is from the December 2008 issue of the
Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota
Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL
34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit
computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and
our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication
the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For
further information about our group, email:
admin@spcug.org/ Web:
http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members
and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User
Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are
members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC
Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.