Broadband expert John Navas of The Navas Group shares his top tips for keeping your connection up and running.

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More troubleshooting

  • Remote host overload
    It's a fact of Internet life that remote hosts can become so popular that their response becomes sluggish. A common way to deal with the problem is for the remote host to contract with Akamai, which has high-capacity caching servers spread over the Internet. By placing supply closer to demand, these caching servers can greatly ease capacity-related problems, not only at the remote host, but also along the entire Internet path between you and the remote host. Better providers even have these servers installed internally, which minimizes loads on their transit links. Check with yours.
  • Gaming lag problems


    • Game PING is not the same as TCP/IP Internet PING
      PING times as reported by your game include the overhead of the game software on your computer and the load on the game server, the latter of which is the most common difference between game PING and Internet PING. Nothing can be done about a sluggish server other than to switch to a different server. Your provider will be concerned only with Internet PING, so don't complain about game PING. Also bear in mind that consumer broadband is commonly sold on the basis of speed, not latency, so your provider may not be terribly concerned unless the latency numbers are pretty bad.
    • DSL mode
      The most common type of ADSL (DMT) can be configured to work in either Interleaved or Fast (or FastPath) modes. Fast mode is more sensitive to errors but has lower latency. If your latency to the closest node ("1" in the examples above) is above 25 ms, you're probably in Interleaved mode. You may be able to persuade your provider to switch you to Fast mode if such a switch is possible. It may not be.



For more information on broadband, including tips on increasing speed, improving security, sharing your connection on multiple computers, and much more, visit my Navas Cable Modem/DSL Tuning Guide.

John Navas is the author of the Navas Cable Modem/Cable Internet Tuning Guide and president of The Navas Group.

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