Internet Slow OverNight?

On 1-Oct-2007, at 04:55, Jim Carr wrote:
> At 10:47 PM -0700 9/30/07, Bob Warner wrote:
>> I find that the Internet is very slow (pages draw very slowly or I
>> get łunable to connect˛ error messages) between the hours of 7 PM to
>> 7 AM with great regularity.

> If speed tests are fine, there is nothing more to
> do at your end or for Comcast to do. The problem
> is out there on the net.

I don't think so. I think Comcast is doing something very weird,
because I have oddly similar problems.

For example, I can run speed test all day and night, and get
consistent results showing 9-9.5 Mb/s downstream. And yet I cannot
hold a ssh session open to a remote server for more than a few
minutes. I also often find that trying to open web pages is, if not
slow, then something I have to do several times. For example, I was
trying to load up my google reader page and it just timed out and
wouldn't load. I tried 5 or 6 times and then everything seemed back
to normal, and other pages also started loading and working.

It used to be I could stay logged in to my server for quite literally
weeks at a time, before a system update would force a reboot. That
is no longer the case. I also lose connections to iChat and IRC
frequently (several times a day at least, and sometimes several times
an hour).

Trouble is, all I can do is complain about it to Comcast and they say
"everything is fine" and I say "No, it's not. I have to reconnect
over and over and over to my remote servers" and they say "Everything
is fine."

It's not DNS as the same thing happens with IP addresses, and it
seems to be tied to persistent conenctions and new connections, so
while ichat often loses connection, Skype doesn't, and IRC is
somewhere in the middle. (iChat/AIM has a lower 'ping' threshold
before it assumes you are dead than IRC or Skype).

But, at least when they tell you no one else is having trouble, Bob,
you can call them out on their lies.

I finally switched to a business cable a couple of weeks ago and the
problems are much less, though still occasionally present. Holding a
SSH connection is still an empty dream, but I have issue loading
websites much less than I did.

I will say that if I shut down EVERYTHING ELSE the network is doing,
including pulling the Vonage router AND shutting down the low-
bandwidth torrents (20K upstream out of 1.5Mb/s upstream) on the
wintendo, the problems USUALLY clear up.

On 10/1/07 1:47 AM, "Bob Warner" <BobWarneratt.net> wrote:

> Comcast (predictably) canąt explain it - and insists mine is the
> only complaint.

Of course.

> Any ideas?

Where do you live? If you live in a densely populated area (or near a
school/college), the times you report might coincide with *everyone* online
at the same time and everyone in the area having the same issues.

Is it possible to check with friends who live nearby and use the same or
different ISP?
--
Shawn King

> exhibits the same symptoms.
>
> Comcast (predictably) can’t explain it - and insists mine is the
> only complaint.
>
> Intel MBP running OS 10.4.10.
>
> Anyone else experiencing anything similar?
>
> Any ideas?

Interesting this has come up not long after Halo 3 debuted. Probably
a coincidence, and perhaps this problem has plagued you for some time
and you just now decided to check further afield. However, I am aware
of some ISPs taking a second look at how their routers shape packets.
Some were only shaping TCP packets and not UDP packets. With the rise
of online gaming via X-Box, the UDP traffic has sky-rocketed and it
is affecting WANs, particularly in the U.S. in the evening hours as
the online gaming begins to ramp up. And yes, at least here in
Lawrence, KS, the kids do play ALL night. Maybe in a month or two it
will let up some.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey McPheeters wrote:
>> exhibits the same symptoms.
>> Comcast (predictably) can’t explain it - and insists mine is the
>> only complaint.
>> Intel MBP running OS 10.4.10.
>> Anyone else experiencing anything similar?
>> Any ideas?
>
> Interesting this has come up not long after Halo 3 debuted. Probably
> a coincidence, and perhaps this problem has plagued you for some time
> and you just now decided to check further afield. However, I am aware
> of some ISPs taking a second look at how their routers shape packets.
> Some were only shaping TCP packets and not UDP packets. With the rise
> of online gaming via X-Box, the UDP traffic has sky-rocketed and it
> is affecting WANs, particularly in the U.S. in the evening hours as
> the online gaming begins to ramp up. And yes, at least here in
> Lawrence, KS, the kids do play ALL night. Maybe in a month or two it
> will let up some.

Here's a question for the net neutrality advocates. Should the ISP's be allowed to throttle gaming traffic so the rest of us can do other things at what we think of as a reasonable pace?

This type of slow down used to happen when DSL first arrived. The "Internet" would slow down in the afternoon and evening with the major slow downs seeming to occur at about 3PM, 5:30PM and 7 or 8 PM. By 11 PM it was usually over.

David

At 3:27 AM -0700 10/16/07, David Ross wrote:
>Here's a question for the net neutrality advocates. Should the ISP's
>be allowed to throttle gaming traffic so the rest of us can do other
>things at what we think of as a reasonable pace?

Of course Microsoft can pay the full tariff for Halo traffic, so it
would be other game providers who might not be able to compete. And
Halo would not be affected, so all of us would lose.

On 16-Oct-2007, at 04:27, David Ross wrote:
> Here's a question for the net neutrality advocates. Should the
> ISP's be allowed to throttle gaming traffic so the rest of us can
> do other things at what we think of as a reasonable pace?

Absolutely not. The gamers are paying the same fee and deserve the
same service. Throttling some ports because they may be being used
for 'gaming' will just get people to run their games on port 80 or
something.

Google Kreme wrote:
> On 16-Oct-2007, at 04:27, David Ross wrote:
>> Here's a question for the net neutrality advocates. Should the
>> ISP's be allowed to throttle gaming traffic so the rest of us can
>> do other things at what we think of as a reasonable pace?
>
> Absolutely not. The gamers are paying the same fee and deserve the
> same service. Throttling some ports because they may be being used
> for 'gaming' will just get people to run their games on port 80 or
> something.
>
>
Which is why this is an issue. Anytime you have a demand for a resource that can become infinite (the demand, not the resource), or at least more than the finite availability of the resource then fixed prices for unlimited usage creates problems. At some point the pool of users will start to suffer as some in the pool start to use way more than their "fair share". So the resource provider either has to limit resource usage or change prices or admit that the resource isn't infinite and folks who "game" will create limits the access for others.

The biggest issue here as I see it is large phone company and cable ISPs advertise as if bandwidth is all there all the time but in fact it isn't and they even have clauses in many of their service agreements that they can terminate service for usage of too much of said advertised bandwidth.

Which is why most of the discussion about net neutrality is nonsense as most participants leave out key points of the debate.
- Bandwidth is NOT infinite
- Bandwidth is shared
- There are limits now, just not very well known or appreciated.
- Fixed pricing creates problems of usage.

David Ross

On 18-Oct-2007, at 04:40, David Ross wrote:
> At some point the pool of users will start to suffer as some in the
> pool start to use way more than their "fair share". So the resource
> provider either has to limit resource usage or change prices or
> admit that the resource isn't infinite and folks who "game" will
> create limits the access for others.

Well, with gamers the issue is that gamers do not, in point of fact,
use that much bandwidth. WoW uses something like 20Kps, for
example. I don't know about Halo3, but I would be surprised if it's
much more than that. Even adding in voice chat, that's normally less
thank 10K/s.

The issue is that a lot of gamers play at the same time (evening)
which is also the peak computer usage time in general. You see
slowdown, especially on cable, in the evening and it's very easy to
'blame the gamers' but you know, updating my iTunes podcasts takes
FAR more bandwidth, as does loading youtube pages.

Maybe we should blame YouTube?

No, wait, let's blame the telcos for taking over 20 BILLION in
governemnte funds to build-out a true broadband network and did
nothing with it but spend it with nothing to show for it. Or maybe
the government itself for failing to insist the money was used as
intended. Sounds like a better idea to me.

--On October 16, 2007 3:27:44 AM -0700 David Ross
<drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:
> Here's a question for the net neutrality advocates. Should the ISP's be
> allowed to throttle gaming traffic so the rest of us can do other things
> at what we think of as a reasonable pace?
>
> This type of slow down used to happen when DSL first arrived. The
> "Internet" would slow down in the afternoon and evening with the major
> slow downs seeming to occur at about 3PM, 5:30PM and 7 or 8 PM. By 11 PM
> it was usually over.

Actually the afternoon slowdowns occur on cable modems that have shared
bandwidth between neighbors that got home at the same time. DSL doesn't see
this quite as much, it typically occurs on DSL when the entire ISP is being
overloaded.

Further this issue isn't what Net Neutrality was designed to prevent.
Standard traffic shaping using QOS policies is traffic management. The
issue that net neutrality was setup to prevent is articial toll roads being
placed on traffic, and charging both ends for the same service.

For example, suppose Halo 3 were throttled all the time, even when traffic
was not overloading the system? And your ISP approaches Microsoft and says
"You know those complaints about slow response you're getting? For a few
bucks we can protect your traffic and make those complaints go away." Even
though Microsoft already pays for Internet access, they now have to pay
protection money to their customer's ISP as well.

I have the same problem. Slow web browsing. Large files seem to download pretty fast and ok though.

I have an iMac with OS X 10.4.9 and an old PC with Vista.

The PC with Vista has no web browsing problem.

It's only in OS X that the slow web browsing happens. So I thought maybe it's hardware related on the iMac but the problem happens with both AirPort and built in ethernet plug.

HOWEVER Vista running on the iMac using bootcamp works without problems. No slow web browsing. So confused.... my iPhone supposedly running OS X works fine when web browsing.

iMac 24" 2.11Ghz 2GIG RAM OS X 10.4.9 Vista with all current updates

> I have the same problem. Slow web browsing. Large files seem to
> download pretty fast and ok though.

I find lately that certain sites are opening very slowly with Safari
(example is Versiontracker). It may be an issue with the current
beta and webkit (just a guess). It will be interesting to see what
happens with Safari in Leopard.

Regards,

Howard

On 25-Oct-2007, at 05:32, Nano wrote:
> I have the same problem. Slow web browsing. Large files seem to
> download pretty fast and ok though.


Looking into this further, I think this is all related to Comcast's
anti-p2p traffic policy (you know, the one they deny having?).

The reason that I say this is that when there is an issue, websites
don't time out, they come up, rather quickly, as unavailable because
'the connection has been reset by the remote computer'. This is also,
I expect, why my ssh connections (which used to stay up for days) now
stay up for mere minutes, if at all.

What is really obnoxious is that recently this has been happening when
loading up google or google/ig. Oddly, at these times loading up a
different search engine like ask.com works perfectly well, so Comcast
appears to be 'traffic shaping' me away from Google.

This week world series tickets were available in Colorado via the
online site only, and I again had trouble with reset connection.

I think we may look back on Comcast's actions in a few years and
realize they did more to promote net neutrality laws than all the
cybergeeks combined.

I am totally disgusted with Comcast, but I have absolutely no choice
where I am as I am far too far from the closest CO for DSL. However,
I am keeping track of every time I see that error and every time my
ssh session to my servers is reset (about every 5-15 minutes now) so
that when another option becomes available I have cause to terminate
my contract with Comcast.

On Oct 25, 2007, at 7:32 AM, Nano wrote:

> I have the same problem. Slow web browsing. Large files seem to
> download pretty fast and ok though.
>
> I have an iMac with OS X 10.4.9 and an old PC with Vista.
>
> The PC with Vista has no web browsing problem.
>
> It's only in OS X that the slow web browsing happens. So I thought
> maybe it's hardware related on the iMac but the problem happens
> with both AirPort and built in ethernet plug.
>
> HOWEVER Vista running on the iMac using bootcamp works without
> problems. No slow web browsing. So confused.... my iPhone
> supposedly running OS X works fine when web browsing.

What web browsers have your tried on Mac OS X? Do they all have the
slowness problem?

============================
Paul Chernoff
Director of Information Technology
Washingtonian Magazine

On Oct 25, 2007, at 4:32 AM, Nano wrote:

> I have the same problem. Slow web browsing. Large files seem to
> download pretty fast and ok though.

If you want a guess, my guess is that there is an ad server out there
that doesn't like us.

   --John

Google Kreme wrote:
> On 25-Oct-2007, at 05:32, Nano wrote:
>> I have the same problem. Slow web browsing. Large files seem to
>> download pretty fast and ok though.
>
>
> Looking into this further, I think this is all related to Comcast's
> anti-p2p traffic policy (you know, the one they deny having?).
>
> The reason that I say this is that when there is an issue, websites
> don't time out, they come up, rather quickly, as unavailable because
> 'the connection has been reset by the remote computer'. This is also,
> I expect, why my ssh connections (which used to stay up for days) now
> stay up for mere minutes, if at all.
>
> What is really obnoxious is that recently this has been happening when
> loading up google or google/ig. Oddly, at these times loading up a
> different search engine like ask.com works perfectly well, so Comcast
> appears to be 'traffic shaping' me away from Google.
>
This is NOT just a Comcast issue, slow downs that is. I'm in Time Warner land with Bellsouth, err AT&T, as the local phone company. I get my internet via a 3rd party who resells AT&T's "last mile". I see issues a lot lately also. Based on what I see at businesses the last few weeks, there's something slowing down DNS. And more and more large ISPs seem to be routing through fewer and fewer peering points. So traffic from a T1 supplied by NuVox goes from Raleigh to Atlanta to Washington to Raleigh to get to an AT&T DSL circuit. Routing between Time Warner and AT&T is about as bad.

There is also a LOT of background "bot" activity going on which no one wants to talk about as the big ISPs are looking to detect them without tipping their hand.

David

Howard Kaufman wrote:
>> I have the same problem. Slow web browsing. Large files seem to
>> download pretty fast and ok though.
>
> I find lately that certain sites are opening very slowly with Safari
> (example is Versiontracker). It may be an issue with the current
> beta and webkit (just a guess). It will be interesting to see what
> happens with Safari in Leopard.
>
Version tracker was 50/50 24 hours ago on Firefox. It's NOT Safari.

David

On Oct 26, 2007, at 2:42 AM, Google Kreme wrote:

> Looking into this further, I think this is all related to Comcast's
> anti-p2p traffic policy (you know, the one they deny having?).

Not all. The slowness is happening in Safari with other carriers as
well. (Qwest DSL and "Cablespeed" here.) This is the part I was
suggesting an ad server problem for.

None of which is to say that there aren't extra problems with
Comcast--it certainly seems that there are.

   --John

On Oct 27, 2007, at 8:13 AM, David Ross wrote:

> This is NOT just a Comcast issue, slow downs that is. I'm in Time
> Warner land with Bellsouth, err AT&T, as the local phone company. I
> get my internet via a 3rd party who resells AT&T's "last mile". I
> see issues a lot lately also. Based on what I see at businesses the
> last few weeks, there's something slowing down DNS. And more and
> more large ISPs seem to be routing through fewer and fewer peering
> points. So traffic from a T1 supplied by NuVox goes from Raleigh to
> Atlanta to Washington to Raleigh to get to an AT&T DSL circuit.
> Routing between Time Warner and AT&T is about as bad.
>
> There is also a LOT of background "bot" activity going on which no
> one wants to talk about as the big ISPs are looking to detect them
> without tipping their hand.

Not for the Comcast problem, but...

I just improved some sites where I had been having slowdown problems
by shutting off IPv6 on my Mini (Tiger 10.4.10). The improvement was
instant (no logout or reboot required) and dramatic. It could also
be coincidence.

In Tiger, in the Network control panel, TCP/IP view for the
connection you're using, click the Configure IPv6... button. Change
the Configure IPv6 popup to Off. In Leopard (mine was already off,
which might have been inherited in the Upgrade install), System
Preferences-->Network, select the active connection, TCP/IP view,
Configure IPv6 popup set to Off.

YMMV (and don't do this if your provider is actually giving you an
IPv6 address, of course--which won't yet apply to many of us).

   --John

On 27-Oct-2007, at 09:13, David Ross wrote:
> Based on what I see at businesses the last few weeks, there's
> something slowing down DNS

This is not the issue here as I use my own dedicated DNS servers.

Google Kreme wrote:
> On 27-Oct-2007, at 09:13, David Ross wrote:
>> Based on what I see at businesses the last few weeks, there's
>> something slowing down DNS
>
> This is not the issue here as I use my own dedicated DNS servers.

Even in offices where we do that we see slow queries when we ask for things not cached locally.

David