PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post - IT gurus: problems with my DSL, please advise

Lebenz · #5 05-13-2006, 06:11 PM

Here’s a few easy tests, posted in a less than ideal order....

Shut off the power to the modem and let it cool for about 20 minutes. After that power it up. After a minute or 2 it should be up and running

Supposing you’re using a windows xp machine, open a command window (start run type cmd and hit enter. When the command window opens type

tracert yahoo.com and hit the enter key

You’ll get a result similar to the following

Tracing route to yahoo.com [66.94.234.13]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 46 ms 45 ms 46 ms tukw-dsl-gw07-199.tukw.qwest.net [63.231.10.199]

3 46 ms 45 ms 46 ms argw-agw1.inet.qwest.net [63.231.10.125]
4 46 ms 45 ms 46 ms ukx-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.11.97]
5 90 ms 63 ms 63 ms wwv-core-01.inet.qwest.net [67.14.12.6]
6 64 ms 65 ms 64 ms urx-brdr-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.214.38]
7 65 ms 64 ms 64 ms if-9-3.core3.PDI-PaloAlto.Teleglobe.net [207.45.
196.85]
8 125 ms 125 ms 124 ms ix-5-0.core3.PDI-PaloAlto.Teleglobe.net [207.45.
196.90]
9 125 ms 126 ms 126 ms ge-3-0-0-p251.msr2.scd.yahoo.com [216.115.106.18
3]
10 133 ms 126 ms 126 ms ten-2-3-bas2.scd.yahoo.com [66.218.82.223]
11 126 ms 125 ms 126 ms w2.rc.vip.scd.yahoo.com [66.94.234.13]

Trace complete. Note the speed references above. Those are the values of, as examples 45ms and 124 ms (and every other value followed by a "ms").

Each one of these references is a router the data is passing through on its way to yahoo. There are a lot of elements affecting what the speed will be, but if any are a lot higher after a one or more hops, then the slow router may be the problem.

After the cool down and restart, let the modem run for a few hours, or whatever it’s typical time to observable problem is and redo the test. You should always see roughly similar results. Reasonable variances are between 5% and 20% depending on who you talk with and what hair you are splitting.

Test 2 is to do a test as above, but with the modem as is now (warm). After that, simply put a fan on the modem for a bout 15 minutes to cool it down. Do another test after about 15 minutes and see if the performance changes.

Test 3 is to the same test as above, but rather than do a tracert yahoo.com do a tracert 66.94.234.13 and hit the enter key

The difference here is that by using the ip number of yahoo rather than their name, we circumvent the DNS or name server you use. That will let us know if your isp’s DNS server is failing. Similar to that you can use a different name server to see if that solves the problem.

All that said, I’ve come across several machines recently that experienced similar problems to what you describe and it turned out to be due to I have no idea why, but it was due to the Google desktop program sucking the life out of the computer’s resources. This is an example of where the problem has nothing to do with the apparent issue of the DSL line or modem. The trick in all of this is to eliminate the red herrings and focus on the source or sources of the problem. In fairness, you could merely have a loose cable somehwere that is causing this.