[Snap] New to Snap, slow connection?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › [Snap] New to Snap, slow connection?

Youi

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#119037 17-May-2013 22:20

Evening Geekzoners,

I feel silly making this post as I know so little about the technical side of computers and modem/routers and broadband, so please bear with me as I sound like a newbie!

Three weeks ago we changed from Slingshot to Snap! (I think both are "normal" speed broadband, is that called adsl?). We also upgraded our 2.5 year old Belkin modem/router to the Fritz!Box 7390. We had been with Slingshot here for 2.5 years and other then almost daily drop outs for up to an hour at times (it could have been Slingshots fault, the Belkins fault, our fault, we didnt know how to check/couldnt be bothered dealing with hours on the phone to Slingshot) and the lack of data cap (we were still on the old 50GB+free nights, not enough for the household), speeds were fine and we just kept with it because we were scared to change and maybe end up in a worse situation.

Now we're with Snap. Its been about three weeks and its .. so-so. We dont get dropouts anymore but now there are speed/loading website issues. Due to my work, I need Firefox to be able to open 20-40 tabs without crashing which it used to do just fine on Slingshot, it crashed maybe once a week when I pushed it nearer to 50+ open tabs. Firefox is uptodate and the only thing thats changed is moving to Snap. I cant even open 15 tabs now without it crashing. Firefox has already crashed 6 times today and im getting sick of it. Its been like this since we started with Snap and the Fritz!Box. Its also much slower to load webpages/pics/clips overall which is getting a bit annoying. Sure we have 525GB per month now, a stupidly huge amount, but if I cant even get my daily work done then whats the point? Ive done the cache clearing, modem/laptop restarting, but that makes no difference. Its slow on and off all day (I use it from 8am to 10pm) with no real pattern like you would think maybe it would get slower at peak times but it seems random.

Having very limited energy at the moment (due to illness), ive only got so much to spare for working this problem out. I dont know where to start as I know bugger all about this kind of stuff and I thought maybe you helpful folks could point me in the right direction to start getting this sorted out and back to previous speeds/stop firefox crashing every hour or so.

Thank you so much for reading and in advance for any help :)

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#821375 17-May-2013 22:20

Hello... Our robot found some keywords in your post, so here is an automated reply with some important things to note regarding broadband speeds.

If you are posting regarding DSL speeds please check that

- you have reset your modem and router

- your PC (or other PCs in your LAN) is not downloading large files when you are testing

- you are not being throttled by your ISP due to going over the monthly cap

- your tests are always done on an ethernet connection to the router - do not use wireless for testing

- you read this topic and follow the instructions there.

Make sure you provide information for other users to help you. If you have not already done it, please EDIT your post and add this now:

- Your ISP and plan

- Type of connection (ADSL, ADSL2, VDSL)

- Your modem DSL stats (do not worry about posting Speedtest, we need sync rate, attenuation and noise margin)

- Your general location (or street)

- If you are rural or urban

- If you know your connection is to an exchange, cabinet or conklin

- If your connection is to a ULL or wholesale service

- If you have done an isolation test as per the link above

Most of the problems with speed are likely to be related to internal wiring issues. Read this discussion to find out more about this. Your ISP is not intentionally slowing you down today (unless you are on a managed plan). Also if this is the school holidays it's likely you will notice slower than usual speed due to more users online.

A master splitter is required for VDSL2 and in most cases will improve speeds on DSL connections. Regular disconnections can be a monitored alarm or a set top box trying to connect. If there's an alarm connected to your line even if you don't have an alarm contract it may still try to connect so it's worth checking.

I recommend you read these two blog posts:

- Is your premises phone wiring impacting your broadband performance? (very technical)

- Are you receiving a substandard ULL ADSL2+ connection from your ISP?

I am the Geekzone Robot and I am here to help. I am from the Internet. I do not interact. Do not expect other replies from me.

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Youi

80 posts

Master Geek

#821401 17-May-2013 22:37

This is the info I found in the Fritz!Box thingy, I hope this is helpful:

Im trying to upload a third image, from the "Statistics" tab but it wont let me, ill try again in the morning.

SamF

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#821402 17-May-2013 22:38

Hmm, sounds like you have some issues there!!

There are 3 main things which could be a factor in this:
1) Your Internet connection
2) Your Computer
3) Your home network

To be honest, despite the fact that this appears to have become worse since you changed ISPs, I think that your computer is the most likely culprit here. In saying that, it's also possible that some kind of Internet issue is causing your computer to misbehave more than it has been before.

The only way to really work out what's actually going on is to eliminate things until you find the thing (or things) which are causing the issue.

Firstly, I'd start with the computer. Do you have another computer that you can test with? If not, do you have a friend with a computer that works fine who would be willing to bring it around to test on your connection? The aim here is to work out if your computer is having issues or whether it's something else causing all the problems.

I'm happy to help guide you through this in the days ahead as we work through this issue as I have quite a bit of experience with this kind of troubleshooting and I can see that you are frustrated with the situation you have found yourself in! :) I won't sugar coat this issue however, these kinds of problems can be quite tricky and time consuming to resolve, but with the right method, anything is fixable!

In terms of your choice of ISP I believe you have made a great choice in choosing snap (no I don't work for them!). I have been a customer of many different ISPs over the last 20 years and in my experience, snap are probably the best out there at present! They have great technical support (they also regularly post on this forum), so if we do find any issue with your Internet connection they will be very keen to assist!

Between snap, myself and the others on this forum I'm sure we can get things working much better for you! :)

SamF

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#821405 17-May-2013 22:51

Those modem pages are useful, thanks :)

Your line looks ok from what is showing there. Your physical line might be a little longer than might otherwise be desirable (or possibly there may be some line issues), but it doesn't look like you're getting too many errors, which is good. The statistics page would be useful as well when you get a chance to upload it.

jarledb

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#821407 17-May-2013 22:58

Just a quick note. Its probably a good idea to do speedtests with a computer you are sure are working well (and that is on a wired connection to the Fritzbox - to rule out any WiFi issues)

You can do speedtests by going to https://www.speedtest.net

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SamF

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#821409 17-May-2013 23:02

This is true. We'll get to speedtesting in due course, at this point I think we need to eliminate any potential issues with the PC to start with.

insane

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#821420 17-May-2013 23:28

Sounds more like a browser / plugin issue to me. With the number of updates from the likes of Windows, Firefox, Adobe etc release each week its highly likely that updates have been installed.

If you can try using Chrome over Firefox, and or look at how to disable the built in versions of flash. Having multiple versions installed can often lead to browser instability.

Lastly (should be first ) make sure your DNS servers are set to that of Snaps

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

chevrolux

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#821559 18-May-2013 12:23

They are rubbish stats for only 17dB attenuation. You need to check your wiring.

Youi

80 posts

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#821565 18-May-2013 12:45

Wow, thank you so much for such a wonderful reply and the offer of help! Ill try ans answer your questions and fill in any more info I can think of, as well as the third image that wouldnt upload last night.

Firstly, I'd start with the computer. Do you have another computer that you can test with? If not, do you have a friend with a computer that works fine who would be willing to bring it around to test on your connection? The aim here is to work out if your computer is having issues or whether it's something else causing all the problems.

My partner whos laptop sits at the other end of the desk has also noticed the slow loading of websites, but he never opens more then three Tabs in firefox so hasnt noticed more crashing the before. I assumed it was internet related because as soon as we switched on Snap, everything slowed down and I started getting the Firefox crashes. So we've got two laptops to test things with but dont have any others that we can borrow from friends or family. I also use chrome (for having more then one gmail signed in etc), but when I click over to it to try and use it after doing other stuff on my laptop, it almost hangs for a few seconds and then sloooooowly starts to respond, I couldnt use it as my main browser. I love Firefox, it just dosnt seem to be too happy at the moment.

I'm happy to help guide you through this in the days ahead as we work through this issue as I have quite a bit of experience with this kind of troubleshooting and I can see that you are frustrated with the situation you have found yourself in! :) I won't sugar coat this issue however, these kinds of problems can be quite tricky and time consuming to resolve, but with the right method, anything is fixable!

Thank you again for such a kind offer, it really means a lot that someone is willing to hold my hand through this, its so tricky when you dont know the right terms or what the thingys are lol. Its nice to have hope that this can be fixed :D

In terms of your choice of ISP I believe you have made a great choice in choosing snap (no I don't work for them!). I have been a customer of many different ISPs over the last 20 years and in my experience, snap are probably the best out there at present! They have great technical support (they also regularly post on this forum), so if we do find any issue with your Internet connection they will be very keen to assist!

Id hear from people and from a bit of online searching that Snap! seemed like decent 'people' and that they would be worth a try (dont feel like supporting Telecom and the others dont offer what we want)

Ahh! I figured out why the third pic wouldnt load .. it was every so slightly too big.

Youi

80 posts

Master Geek

#821567 18-May-2013 12:46

SamF: Those modem pages are useful, thanks :)

Your line looks ok from what is showing there. Your physical line might be a little longer than might otherwise be desirable (or possibly there may be some line issues), but it doesn't look like you're getting too many errors, which is good. The statistics page would be useful as well when you get a chance to upload it.

When you say 'physical line' do you mean the line outside the house, in side the house, or from the jack to modem?

Youi

80 posts

Master Geek

#821568 18-May-2013 12:51

chevrolux: They are rubbish stats for only 17dB attenuation. You need to check your wiring.

I wish I knew what the stats meant or how to interpret them! If you think it might be a wiring issue (rented flat in an apartment, we dont have free range to get into things like walls to check wiring), do you know why this slow-loading issue might have only shown up when we changed to Snap?

SamF

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#821593 18-May-2013 13:33

Youi: Wow, thank you so much for such a wonderful reply and the offer of help!

Not a problem, happy to help! :)

Youi: My partner whos laptop sits at the other end of the desk has also noticed the slow loading of websites, but he never opens more then three Tabs in firefox so hasnt noticed more crashing the before. I assumed it was internet related because as soon as we switched on Snap, everything slowed down and I started getting the Firefox crashes. So we've got two laptops to test things with but dont have any others that we can borrow from friends or family. I also use chrome (for having more then one gmail signed in etc), but when I click over to it to try and use it after doing other stuff on my laptop, it almost hangs for a few seconds and then sloooooowly starts to respond, I couldnt use it as my main browser. I love Firefox, it just dosnt seem to be too happy at the moment.

Ok, your partner's laptop is fine to test with. Now you can do a test with http://speedtest.net and post the results on here.

Youi: When you say 'physical line' do you mean the line outside the house, in side the house, or from the jack to modem?

Well, I mean all of the above actually; basically everything from the back of your modem to the exchange / cabinet that you're connecting to. There could be issues with any part of that connection.

I think your connection speed is ok, possibly a little lower than might otherwise be expected, but 17db is quite high. But let's not worry about that yet, we'll get to that later if we need to.

chevrolux

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#821617 18-May-2013 14:20

I have an issue when people say 'it slowed down when we changed'. Ok sure, this can be related to changing from a ULL provider to Snap but more often than not it is just people start realising things are going slow and decide to contribute it to changing providers.
The next issue I have is we are talking about using speedtest.net on a laptop, so I assume you are testing on wireless? The Fritz doesn't have the greatest range but does have pretty good performance. That won't matter though if you are a couple of rooms away from the router. If you want your speedtest's to bear any relevance (which in my eyes, and many others, they jus don't) you need to be plugged in with a cable.
The only piece of information you have provided that shows a problem is that you have 17dB attenuation and only a 13Mbps sync rate. This should be much much higher. To give you some context my home connection has 33dB attenuation and I get around 13Mbps. I would guess you would see around 16-18Mbps if the wiring got sorted out.

Your laptop issues are most certainly a bit funny, sounds like SamF can help with that. But your line itself is the issue I see being the most relevant issue.

edit: just checked my line stats again and they were actually better than I thought!

insane

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#821618 18-May-2013 14:28

Youi:

.... do you know why this slow-loading issue might have only shown up when we changed to Snap?

There are a large number of things which could contribute to it, just to name a few:

May have been because you were previously on 'the better network' where the device your phone line connects up to was owned by Slingshot, where as now you may be on Chorus wholesale equipment in the exchange/cabinet.

Slingshot may also have had you on Annex-M which has a faster upload speed (~2mbps vs 1mbps)

Could also be because slingshot caches a LOT of commonly visited websites with their Oversi cache, which makes day-to-day browsing snap!pier ;)

You've made more than one change (ISP & Modem) so it's harder to find out what is causing the problem, or what combination is causing issues.

I'd check that you are using the SNAP domain name servers (DNS) too, it's really important!

SamF

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#821619 18-May-2013 14:30

You could well be right chevrolux, just walking this through one step at a time :)

When troubleshooting potentially complex issues, I find the best approach is to eliminate one component at a time in a logical, staged approach, otherwise you run the risk of missing something or jumping to conclusions too early.

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