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50 mbit connection takes 3 minutes to open websites
I've been having this odd problem recently where my connection has a stable 50 mbit download/upload speed, but when I load websites in chrome/firefox, they can take anywhere between 5 seconds to 3 minutes to load. Speedtest during this 3 minute load attempt still shows 50 mbit/sec. Also, occasionally youtube videos start lagging and stop to load every few seconds. The third and most annoying problem related to this is failed downloads. When I start downloading a 700 MB file, it goes fine until a certain point, usually 100-200 mb, and then freezes up and never resumes the download. This happens in browsers and game launchers (excluding the secret world, that one resumes for some reason).
This problem only happens on my desktop PC. The laptop in this wifi downloads everything perfectly and never freezes.
Tried:
fresh install of windows
disabling antivirus stuff
changing activeX settings
changing user permissions
disabling a bunch of random security settings
*insert rage here*
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
Try some other browsers.
Check system resources and specifically memory usage.
Contact your ISP and let them check the line.
Two very likely solutions for you, as this is a common issue I see all the time with garbage ISP's. (Which is sadly almost all of them nowadays.)
The first and most likely to work solution is to simply unplug and remove any backup battery from your router/modem. (Since you have a 50+mb connection that means you have cable internet almost assuredly, so you'll mostly likely have a modem/router hybrid box supplied via the ISP.)
So unplug it, make sure that if it has a backup battery you remove it. Wait 10 seconds. Plug it back in and wait 5m or so. This will likely fix your issue if it's on your end.
In the event this doesn't fix it, you'll likely need to have your ISP check their end. (They will claim it's not them, but mine has said that to me and been wrong and apologized after I insisted they check 4 times now.)
The issue your "likely" experiencing is intermitent connection stability to connection requests. This causes the slowdown when you request a large number of files commonly loaded on a webpage or a game for example. But the speed tests fail to detect this as they typically only make a single large file transfer request, causing it to only slow down for that single request before it starts. Hence the speed is still 50mb, but there are large pauses between requests. This is typically the fault of the router/modem.
Hope it works for you.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
You could:
Use a usb wifi dongle on the desktop and see if that does better
Plug the laptop into the Ethernet and see if that has the same problems
Plug the desktop into the modem via a different cable (including wall ports)
Identify weather Ethernet connection is lost when the downloads stop (event viewer will show a message)
If you click on your Ethernet connection icon to get status does it say 1Gb?
What kind of speedtest do you use?
Have you tried http://www.speedtest.net/. If you get 50 mbit/sec both upload and download with the browser while the browser is having issues loading webpages then it's really strange.
Is your PC working normally otherwise? If you launch some game while you've got one of the trouble-causing Youtube videos running, does the game launch normally and lag free so that it's not any performance issue with your computer.
EDIT: Have you tested that you don't have any packet loss. http://www.pingtest.net/
Ok so I checked a few things. The laptop downloaded everything fine after I plugged in the exact same cable that was in the pc and switched from wifi to cable. So this probably indicates the problem is in the pc itself not the connection provider?
Also there were like 8 instances of google chrome running in the tasks list, each taking about 50k memory. Closing all of them made things a bit more resposive.
The modem has no battery to remove (2nd reply)
Overall, games seem unaffected by this. I've played a 6 hour stretch of CS:GO without a single hiccup, also played 3 hours of the secret world the other night and had the latency displayer turned on, it never went above 150.
My guess is DNS server settings. I've seen it happen before where it's fine on one computer, but for whatever reason totally spazzes out on another even though it looks the same.
Try manually configuring your DNS server (heck your IP and everything else while your at it).
Google, OpenDNS, and many other companies run free DNS services you can just enter in your connection settings.
When I used Time Warner Cable for my ISP, they had a few instances of DNS server issues. My roommate refused to change his out of fear of his lack of understanding of the system, but mine was running fast.
You might want to check for viruses, malware, and adware. I suspect some malware has changed your DNS or web proxy settings for the purpose of stealing your information. You wouldn't notice it in games because DNS resolves names to IP addresses and games frequently have static IPs which skip the DNS issue.
Used to work tech support for a major cable company. I'll just walk you through all the steps.
Connect your computer directly to your modem (DO NOT use your router) with the ethernet cable. This is to determine if it is an issue with the router or the modem. Power cycle your modem by unplugging it and plugging it back in after 5 to 10 seconds. Wait until it is completely rebooted.
Make sure you have no programs running in the background (downloading or uploading especially).
Open your start menu and in the search bar type in "cmd" and hit enter to open your command prompt. It should look like an old Windows DOS screen (black with old style font).
Type in the following:
ping www.google.com -n 30
Do not do anything while this is running. Just wait patiently.
Once this is complete, you should see how many packets were sent and received to google.com. If you lost more than 10%, there is an issue with your internet. Also, below that look at your average trip time. If it is over 100ms, there is a problem. Call your ISP if either of these are the case.
If you are not losing packets or having a high average trip time, it could be an issue with settings on your computer. Remember, you should still be plugged directly into your modem, not your router at all. In this case, open your control panel and look for your network and internet settings. Go to Network and Sharing Center (Windows 7) and on the right should be Change Adapter Settings (Windows 7). Right click your Local Area Connection and go to properties. Look for Internet Protocol version 4 on this list. Click the words (not the check box; keep it checked). Make sure you are obtaining your IP and DNS automatically. If these are set to automatic, it is more than likely an issue with your drivers in which case I would recommend checking your LAN drivers that come with your motherboard.
Let me know if any of this helped.
Open start menu or search function type in cmd, right click cmd to run as admin.
Type in netsh winsock reset
Let the computer reset.
Hopefully that works for ya. I had a similar issue recently with my Google Chrome, IE worked fine enough though...its like the twilight zone when IE works better than Chrome.
Just replying to say that the instances of Chrome you are seeing in the process list is likely extensions you have running. I noticed the same thing and I began closing some of the process and I noticed extensions disappearing.
With that said I think I had a similar issue before but calling my ISP seemed to resolve whatever was wrong. My problem was that I couldn't connect to the internet at all via browsers or almost anything, yet skype and a few other things that also require internet worked fine.
Could be a faulty ethernet cable or something like that too, but if you said you play games fine on the PC with issues then I'm not too sure what to suggest. Others in here likely have better advice to give you, all I can say is to call your ISP and try to get it resolved with them first just in case it's something easy to diagnose for them.
I used to have a similar problem a while back, and it turned out to be Spybot - Search and Destroy. I had used the immunize option in it and every time I clicked a link it was comparing it against this huge list. Maybe the list was corrupted, or massively fragmented, but getting rid of the immunization fixed it.
Granted, this prolly isn't your problem, but possible solutions are always good.