I have a problem

[Feawen]

My internet is shot and I don't know what's causing the problem.

It took me about fifteen minutes to load the forum, load the techy bollocks, and load this new topic.

My connection was a little slow at times when I was online, and so I cleared the cache and took a speedtest. The first time I got about 800kbps d/l with 7kbps u/l, the second and third time I got 800kbps and it didn't even begin the upload. I tried these with the three servers in my country. I turned off the router for the last test but that made no difference

Since, it's been worse to get anywhere online. Is it the router, or temp files or something? I know there's something wrong, I just don't know what to look for.

Images seem to take ages to load, as I post this, only "Important" has loaded as a thread icon.

Sorry for the double post but the edit button is taking far too long. I meant to say that I turned off my firewall for the last speed test, not the router :P

[Thunderjew]

Is there any P2P programs running? Like LimeWire, BitLord, uTorrent and stuff like that?

Those tend to suck out all energy from your internet if not set up correctly.

[Feawen]

No, I wanted to sort out my connection to use one, but I didn't have one running yet.
Friend of mine told me to open cmd and use netsh winsock reset catalog, I restarted the computer and while it was restarting I unplugged the router. It's still a bit sluggish but better than before the reset, I'm going to speed test it now.

I found it strange that my download speed was decent but my upload speed was almost non-existent.

[edit] My speeds are now 770kb download, 90kb upload. The upload is now ten times better, but I'm on a 3meg line. .8mb?
I just realised that I was testing on wireless, which would be far less than wired speeds. I got 880kbps download (100kb more) and 100 upload (10 more). It's still not even a 1meg connection.

[faragher]

I really don't think you have a problem...

Here's how the numbers work (and it is confusing, so don't beat yourself up)

You have an advertised speed of up to 3meg. This means that your download speed is up to 3 Megabits per second. So that is up to 3072 bits per second.

Now, windows shows downloads (and most speed tests ) use KB/sec or Kilobytes per second. So 384 KB/sec is 3072 bits per second...

Confused? Well a byte = 8 bits. K?

So if you are getting 770KB/s download, that is:

(770*8)/1024
6160/1024
6(ish) mbs connection, or about twice as fast as you thought you have...

As for the slow upload speeds, you probably have ASDL yes?

ASDL = Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. And the secret is in the Asymmetic bit - in straightforward terms (i.e. incredible oversimplification bordering on lies), ASDL uses some of the upload bit for download instead - this speeds up the downloads, which are what is important to most people, but at the expense of the upload speed.

So that's it - you connection sounds pretty good to me - most people would be happy with 770KB/s downloads - in fact, that is about double my peak speed at the moment.

/edit

all of this presumes that you were not talking about kilobits per second. I'd be suprised if you were, but if that is the case, apologies for patronising you...