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[Sappho]

So... Internet speed. I'm starting to get really frustrated. I swear it gets slower all the time. My contract expires in a month and I'm happy to change companies, but now I'm starting to wonder if it would even be any better.

I have DSL, the fastest available in my area. I pay for 3 Mbps, and I get about 200 kbps. On a *really* good day, I might get 300. Never any more than that.

I looked at another DSL company and punched my address in their web site. The fastest they offer for my area is 2 Mbps, which I figure translates to "at least as slow as it is now, if not slower." At least that would be cheaper.

Worst of all is the upload speed. I rarely get more than 10 kbps. Considering the fact that I regularly upload videos to YouTube (and have to leave my computer on all night to do so), this is ridiculous. I can hardly handle playing online games. I certainly can't host any. It's driving me nuts. I'm all set and ready to buy this new computer in December, as soon as I get paid, but I still won't be able to get faster internet.

The thing is, I live near the center of the city. I'm in a touristy area. Prague Castle is right around the corner. I'm not on the outskirts here. I'm not in a suburb. I can't understand why the speed is so slow.

The customer support for my current ISP is practically non-existent. They're one of the biggest phone/tv/internet companies in the country, but they have one single guy who speaks English, who is not often there when I try to call for help. Even when I get the guy on the phone, he's terribly unhelpful. When I tell him my internet goes down all the time, he insists that everything looks fine on their end and tries to sell me a new modem. (My modem is new. There's nothing wrong with it.) The one time I got them to send a technician to have a look, the guy came 4 hours early, when I was still at work, said "everything looks fine to me" (without going into the building), left, and refused to come back.

There is a cable internet company here, but they don't offer service to my address. I'd be willing to invest in having them install cable in my building, if it meant I could have fast internet, but there doesn't seem to be any option to do so. Again, I am very close to the center of the city.

Any ideas on anything I can do to increase my internet speed, short of moving? I'm really settled here and I love my apartment and the area where I live. There's a park outside my window. I don't want to leave. At the same time, I'm pulling my hair out here. : (

[Arx]

Any option on some kind of 3G internet? My mother uses something that's essentially a USB adapter for a SIM card, which is pretty fast. Might get prohibitively expensive on larger bundles, I'm not certain.

[Sappho]

Is that the mobile stuff? They have that here, but it has a really low bandwidth limit and it's REALLY expensive if you go over it. Also, I don't think it's much faster than what I have. : / My downstairs neighbor had that when I first moved in, and he tried to show me a YouTube video on his computer, and it wouldn't load because he was already over his limit. Definitely not going to cut it for uploading to YouTube, I'm afraid. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

[Sinistar]

Might sounds stupid/obvious question but - do you have a wireless internet? If so, did you consider people stealing your net?

Also, what about malware or any unwanted program slowing you down? Probably a long shot because I don't think malwares leave such obvious traces but try using programs like NetBalancer or NetLimiter, to see what exactly is using your net...

Then again, it's entirely possible that ISP's thing. It could be they are just a dirty, money grabbing company that cut corners and are not in fact even able to provide such high speeds but because they paid certain people/have market dominance, no one can do a thing about them. Dunno what situation is like in Poland, but it wouldn't surprise me. It's sad times we live in. 

That's all I can think of, sorry.

[Sappho]

No wireless. Hardline from the computer to the router. And it's the same speed with all computers. It's definitely not a software issue. The physical connection is slow.

The ISP says that I'm at the maximum distance from their hub or whatever it is, so I get the slowest possible speed. It doesn't make sense to me that I'd be so far away, since I'm near the center of the city. The vast majority of people in Prague (it's Czech Republic by the way, not Poland) have MUCH faster internet than me. It does seem to have to do with my physical location. But most people have the option to get cable. I have no idea why it's not available where I am.

It would be one thing if it was a "you get what you pay for" situation, but I'm paying for max speed and no limits. I'm willing to pay more, but they won't offer me anything faster.

I was hoping maybe someone could suggest ways I could speed up the internet, if maybe there's something I could physically do (or hire someone to do) that would make it faster. I have no idea, for example, if the internet cable is coming into the building alongside electrical wires or something that might interfere with it. On the other hand, if I try to get someone to come and check, it will be difficult to do. And I don't own the building, so I can't really change anything physical without the landlord's permission...

Why would cable service not be available at my address? Is it likely that I could pay them to install it? Or is it a bigger issue than that?

[Karkov]

Cable might not be available for a multitude of reasons.  Down where I live we have "Historical buildings" where building code actually denies people from making the changes to the building necessary to add in the infrastructure wiring (drilling holes everywhere).  It might just be that your landlord doesn't want a bunch of people coming in, tearing down walls and chasing cable throughout the building.  I'd talk with your landlord about it and find out why cable isn't available.

On the distance away from the hub thing, ISP's will put relay stations and things wherever they can, if they can't get to the center of the city (because real estate prices are usually their highest there), then they'll put them anywhere else they can and be done with it.  Then again that doesn't really make sense with DSL because you should be getting the full speed anyway.

[Rex_Nex]

Unsure if this is the right place for the question, but here it is in short:

I don't want other devices on my wireless network to have priority over my network traffic. Mostly for gaming reasons - if I have a video streaming on my phone, I want it to have minimal interference with whatever data I'm streaming on my PC. Is this possible to do right?

The one thing I've tried is router QOS (using netgear), which doesn't seem to actually do anything. Another device being particularly bandwidth hungry will absolutely decimate the connection, even though I've given my MAC the highest priority.

[Thief^]

QOS is the answer, but it sounds like the implementation in your router is lacking.

Not sure there's much else you can do.

[aenri]

No wireless. Hardline from the computer to the router. And it's the same speed with all computers. It's definitely not a software issue. The physical connection is slow.

The ISP says that I'm at the maximum distance from their hub or whatever it is, so I get the slowest possible speed. It doesn't make sense to me that I'd be so far away, since I'm near the center of the city. The vast majority of people in Prague (it's Czech Republic by the way, not Poland) have MUCH faster internet than me. It does seem to have to do with my physical location. But most people have the option to get cable. I have no idea why it's not available where I am.

It would be one thing if it was a "you get what you pay for" situation, but I'm paying for max speed and no limits. I'm willing to pay more, but they won't offer me anything faster.

I was hoping maybe someone could suggest ways I could speed up the internet, if maybe there's something I could physically do (or hire someone to do) that would make it faster. I have no idea, for example, if the internet cable is coming into the building alongside electrical wires or something that might interfere with it. On the other hand, if I try to get someone to come and check, it will be difficult to do. And I don't own the building, so I can't really change anything physical without the landlord's permission...

Why would cable service not be available at my address? Is it likely that I could pay them to install it? Or is it a bigger issue than that?

AFAIK if you are too far away from DSLAM - that's Telekom hub for DSL internet, you are pretty much out of luck with ADSL. I would search around for wireless ISPs (f.e. http://www.cznet.cz/cenik.html, they seem to have wirelessly covered the whole of Prague). Maybe there is one in your area.  About fiber optics - Do you live in a flat? Or a house? If it's latter, probably some provider could hook you up, but it would be prohibitively expensive. If it's former you could share the costs with other residents and you could get some kind of price reduction, but it will be a long process.

[Rex_Nex]

QOS is the answer, but it sounds like the implementation in your router is lacking.

Not sure there's much else you can do.

Damn, as I thought. Alrighty!

[Sappho]

No wireless. Hardline from the computer to the router. And it's the same speed with all computers. It's definitely not a software issue. The physical connection is slow.

The ISP says that I'm at the maximum distance from their hub or whatever it is, so I get the slowest possible speed. It doesn't make sense to me that I'd be so far away, since I'm near the center of the city. The vast majority of people in Prague (it's Czech Republic by the way, not Poland) have MUCH faster internet than me. It does seem to have to do with my physical location. But most people have the option to get cable. I have no idea why it's not available where I am.

It would be one thing if it was a "you get what you pay for" situation, but I'm paying for max speed and no limits. I'm willing to pay more, but they won't offer me anything faster.

I was hoping maybe someone could suggest ways I could speed up the internet, if maybe there's something I could physically do (or hire someone to do) that would make it faster. I have no idea, for example, if the internet cable is coming into the building alongside electrical wires or something that might interfere with it. On the other hand, if I try to get someone to come and check, it will be difficult to do. And I don't own the building, so I can't really change anything physical without the landlord's permission...

Why would cable service not be available at my address? Is it likely that I could pay them to install it? Or is it a bigger issue than that?

AFAIK if you are too far away from DSLAM - that's Telekom hub for DSL internet, you are pretty much out of luck with ADSL. I would search around for wireless ISPs (f.e. http://www.cznet.cz/cenik.html, they seem to have wirelessly covered the whole of Prague). Maybe there is one in your area.  About fiber optics - Do you live in a flat? Or a house? If it's latter, probably some provider could hook you up, but it would be prohibitively expensive. If it's former you could share the costs with other residents and you could get some kind of price reduction, but it will be a long process.

I'm trying to understand that CZNET site... According to their availability page, they don't cover my part of Prague. They cover 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10. I live in 6. : /

I live in a flat in an old building. Most of the people living here are members of the landlord's extended family. They're all old and not interested in internet except for basic email and such. So I suppose installing something better will be out of the question.

I will try to look into more wireless possibilities. I've heard there are a few companies that do that, but I've also heard that they generally have high prices and low limits, which wouldn't be very useful for me. I don't really understand how the wireless stuff works, though. What am I connecting to? Does it depend on my computer having wifi? Because my current computer has barely functional wifi capabilities, and the computer I'm going to buy doesn't have any at all.

From what I understand from the machine translation, this actually looks quite good: http://www.airwaynet.cz/internetove-pripojeni/tarif-490/

It appears you need some kind of modem, but they loan them for free. The monthly price is lower than I'm paying now (not by much, but that doesn't matter if I'm getting better speed) and they say there are no limits. Would I really get the speed they're advertising there? What does it depend on? I've heard of these companies, but I really don't know anything about how they work, and I don't think I know anyone who currently uses one. The neighbor I had who used it was buying his through the phone company, which is notoriously terrible. This looks a lot nicer, if it really works...

They have a form where you can check availability at your address, so I've sent an inquiry. I guess I'll get an email from them soon. This could be really nice, if it really works...

[MaximumZero]

That would actually be a pretty decent price here in the States. ~$22/mo for not terrible internet speeds is definitely doable. From what I gather, they're a cable internet company. Not sure if you'd use the wi-fi router or not, but hey, free router and free installation. Do you have any cable jacks in your place?

Aside note: Bing Translate is a lot better than I thought it would be.

I have my fingers crossed for you, Sappho.

[Sappho]

That would actually be a pretty decent price here in the States. ~$22/mo for not terrible internet speeds is definitely doable. From what I gather, they're a cable internet company. Not sure if you'd use the wi-fi router or not, but hey, free router and free installation. Do you have any cable jacks in your place?

Aside note: Bing Translate is a lot better than I thought it would be.

I have my fingers crossed for you, Sappho.

There is no cable connection here at all. That's the original problem. If there was a cable connection, I'd have cable internet already. : /

The Airwaynet company seems to be mobile internet. From what I've managed to translate, they'd put an antenna on the roof and the internet would come in that way. They have lower bandwidth options that apparently don't require a modem, but I have no idea how it all works or how reliable it would be. I wish I knew someone who used their service, so I could ask if it actually works. Also, I suppose I'd need the landlord's permission to do this...

In any case, it seems even mobile internet is hard to find in my area. What the hell... It's a large, very wealthy residential area near the center of the city. How is it possible that there isn't high speed internet available here?

(By the way, I know it would be cheap in the USA, but cost of living is lower here -- and so is salary. What I earn in a month here wouldn't even be enough for rent in the USA. So it's not as cheap as it sounds. And right now, I'm paying more than that for VERY terrible internet...)

[Rex_Nex]

You'd be connecting to a tower (or something similar). It's sort of like a server. Yes, you need wifi - but you can actually buy USB wifi receivers for a fairly cheap price.

[Aklyon]

Sappho's new computer was going to be a laptop of somekind, right? I thought those (that are recent enough at least) all had some sort of wifi receiver builtin.