Computer problems and/or advice 2012

[annew]

So far so good, John. Cross fingers...

[ArnoldT]

Couldn't get on at all last night.  Sat in front of the computer and couldn't get on with a mobile smart phone using the Wi-fi signal.  I'll check the telephone connection later at work.  This morning worked like the old days.

[David Pilling]

There can be oddities like the wrong address for a site being present in some name servers. There are tools to sort these things out see:

http://network-tools.com

Maggi, there is something called 'pingdom' which (for free) will monitor the health of your site and send you alerts when it goes down. Which affords the chance to look at your phone, and say "I must reboot my server" and rush off...

[JohnLonsdale]

There can be oddities like the wrong address for a site being present in some name servers. There are tools to sort these things out see:

http://network-tools.com

Maggi, there is something called 'pingdom' which (for free) will monitor the health of your site and send you alerts when it goes down. Which affords the chance to look at your phone, and say "I must reboot my server" and rush off...

Thanks David.  I have changed my DNS servers to several different primary and secondary servers and it makes no difference.  There is a bottleneck somewhere that increases forum page load times as web traffic increases - but not necessarily forum traffic, more likely traffic over here somewhere.  From 9am today I have seen SRGC forum page load times steadily increase until now, when the forum is becoming effectively inaccessible again.  Previously it has been worse in the evenings here, but now with many folks on vacation we are seeing the effects earlier.  It seems to be a problem restricted to the Verizon FIOS ISP that Arnold and I both use.  The strangest thing is that only the SRGC site seems to be affected - all my other web activities are completely unaffected. Running a TRACERT wasn't very helpful either.

Best,

John

[David Pilling]

John, a few more thoughts. Browsers all have developer tools in, they will show you what the browser is asking the host for and how long it takes to get it. Control+Shift+I in Chrome. On Safari you have to use preferences to enable the Developer menu.

Are there proxy servers, the sort of thing one uses to read web sites that are banned or if you don't want to leave a trail. In other words giving you a different route to the SRGC site.

I'd be looking up the ip address and trying ping - but can be a lot more complex if Verizon has inserted a cache. I wonder if you can configure things to not use caches.

[Alan_b]

John:  I and others have problems with alarming and quite unpredictable fluctuations in internet connection speeds -  one minute it can be bringing "stuff" in at 54 Mbps and literally seconds later this can fall to 2 Mbps -

Your computer connects to a router. The router connects to the internet.  Normally the speed bottleneck is the speed of the internet connection established by the router but if you have a wireless connection between your computer and your router then the speed of that connection can drop very low if the signal is weak.

The symptoms you describe are due to a weak wireless connection between your computer and your router.  So one moment you get the full strength wireless connection at 54 Mbps but then something, interference possibly, causes you to lose reception and the speed of your wireless connection drops to 2 Mbps.  You could move your computer closer to the router if practicable, or try moving the router higher in the room.  Or you might get a better result by changing the wireless channel used by your router, if you know how to access the settings. 

[Maggi Young]

Thanks Alan, interesting stuff.
I am using a wifi connection mostly these days but had similar problems when using the desktop  and router direct. But the 'upside' is that I'm suffering fewer chilblains when working in the south facing sitting room than I was in the north- facing studio.........

[Alan_b]

In the UK the speed of your broadband internet connection is fixed by negotiation between your router (or broadband modem) and the equipment in the telephone exchange.  Once fixed, if you leave your router switched on (as you should) it should remain fixed for days or weeks or even months.  If the connection is dropped for some reason then the speed may change but this takes at least 30 seconds of renegotiation during which time you have no internet connection at all.

Of course, particular web sites can be slow if they are too busy and if your Internet Service Provider has taken on too many clients in your area then the capacity of their connection from your local telephone exchange to the wider internet can get overloaded at busy times of day.  But the usual bottleneck, which is the speed of the connection between your house and the local telephone exchange, is fixed for long periods at a time.  My router tells me it has been running at its current speed for the past 167 hours.

Maggi, the speeds you mention are the instantaneous speeds of your wireless connection to the router.  Maybe a Wireless Range Extender would help to give you a fast wireless connection in a warmer environment.  This one http://www.amazon.co.uk/Netgear-WN3000RP-Universal-Range-Extender/dp/B0055Y6PUA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1356775039&sr=8-2 is quite good and not too difficult to set-up.