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[BigFatDwarf]

I recently moved into a dorm. Really nice and everything.

Now, on my HP G72 notebook I get 500 kb/s max, while eveyone else is getting around 10 Mb/s.
I checked the computer with fully updated AVG and turned up nothing.

Anyone got any ideas?

If you have the problem of having lower speed than you should, (everyone else having better speeds on the same line), check this table for problems and solutions.

• Some routers and such divide bandwidth strangely sometimes. SOLUTION: Get a new router?
• TCP Optimiser might fix it. Set it at the speed you should be getting.
• The net might just be out of bandwidth. SOLUTION: Wait for others to stop using it (or politely ask them to pause their torrenting of the new Avatar movie.)
• Check for hidden firewalls, spyware, viruses and other such programs.

Anything I missed?

[SHAD0Wdump]

Personally, I find 500 kb/s not something to complain about. Jealously and/or curiosity is the only factor I can see here.

[BigFatDwarf]

Actually, it is because we don't have 24h access to the net. Plus it might already be crowded. So I have a limited time there so I'd like to get as much as possible.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also the low ping at TF2 would also be a bonus

[Akura]

Personally, I find 500 kb/s not something to complain about. Jealously and/or curiosity is the only factor I can see here.

I only get about 50kbs.

<- Is JEALOUS.

[cerapa]

I can generally get 600kb/s, but with the tv off, I can get 1.2Mb/s.

Others get a speed of 10Mb/s?!

[BigFatDwarf]

Never heard of optical cables?

[nenjin]

Plus it might already be crowded

You're on a campus network. You can stop looking for answers.

[Virex]

To find the problem you may need to run some tests. First of all, try downloading stuff at the place of your friend who do get a high download speed. It might be that you're on a crowded part of the network. Another indication of this might be that you're getting a lot of packet loss, but the network architecture could be smart enough to load-balance and speed-balance the network to avoid that. If this is the case, running multiple downloads from the same location should only have a minor effect on the speed since you're already sharing with a lot of users. On Windows NT and up the pathping command that you can run from the command line will give you the route to a given address (like google.com or an IP) and the ping time per hop for a default 100 packets. If you're on a crowded router one of the early hops, probably the second, should show a high packet loss or ping compared with the rest. Note that the default setting for 100 packets is quite slow, so don't fret if nothing happens.

[Peewee]

First, let's get your units straight...
Are you getting
500 kb/s = 0.5 Mb/s
or
500 kB/s = 4 Mb/s?

Next, where are you getting your speeds from?
Where is "everyone else" getting their speeds from?

I find it very likely that they're connected to a 10 Mb/s switch and you're connected to a 100 Mb/s, so the network adapter settings dialog says "speed: 100.0 Mbps."
Have a couple people run http://www.speedtest.net/ and post the results.

For example, my results are:



Oh, and welcome to college life, by the way.

[forsaken1111]

Or find a student going for an IT major and tell him to fix it and you'll buy him beer.

[Peewee]

If I'm right, he'd just laugh in his face anyway (as there isn't a problem to be fixed) and take the beer.

...

*steals beer*

[forsaken1111]

If I'm right, he'd just laugh in his face anyway (as there isn't a problem to be fixed) and take the beer.

...

*steals beer*

You never know what strange crap is installed on people's computers though. I've been doing this for years and know of several programs which could have been installed by 'accident' (aka, user not knowing what the hell he is doing) and could cause something like this. Did you know that a while back the latest graphic drivers from Nvidia came bundled with a simple firewall which installed silently with them if you picked the "typical install" option? It was some marketing thing they did with a personal internet security company.

Thing is, the firewall software would block anything it thought was suspicious, and limit others, and it did all this as silently as the install so you never even knew you had the thing. Pain in the ass. My biggest pet peeve is people who just whack away at the 'next' button during installs without reading anything and then wonder why it didn't work right. And even better is when they try to cover their ignorance by telling me that 'it didn't do that the first time!'. Yeah, a programming gnome snuck in here and changed the installation program while you weren't looking did he? 

[BigFatDwarf]

Okay guys, sorry it took me so long to post. It seems college is ... hard and really time consuming.

Anyway, I kinda managed to fix the problem with TCP Optimizer. Goes around 6-7 Mb/s now.

Also, to answer Peewee's question, I'm sorry if I mixed the b and B. To clarify, I always mean bytes when talking about data unless noted otherwise.
I ... guess I should change the title to help others with similar troubles. Thanks for all the answers, again.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I take it none of you here have ever had the experience of 2400 baud?

[Eugenitor]

Slowest I've ever been on was 14400. Which is horrific, practically unusable. And now add AOHell into the mix...

Oh yeah. My childhood was awful.