Internet Speed Test

I was having slow internet issues this morning as well. I contacted Cox about it and after a good 10 minutes of unhelpfulness I asked if there was some kind of server maintenance going on or some kind of firmware upgrade. He told me that there was server maintenance going on until 10:00 AM EST 06JAN14. I have no idea if this is actually the truth or he was just trying to tell me something to make me go away. Only time will tell.

Hi MartS,

There are other limitations that will affect your download speed, if the site has a cap on the amount of bandwidth they allow for a download.  We would do not throttle our internet service in any way.  What were the results of the last speed test that you ran?  I would recommend testing a different site (speedtest.net and speakeasy.net are good sites to try). 

horatio154,

If you continue to have problems please let us know, we do not want any issues you have to go unattended.  

Hi Derrick,

Thanks for your quick reply...

I used the megapath and linkline servers for the tests. Both gave a little over 5 Mbps download speeds. This is what I was getting with my essential internet before I upgraded. Did somebody forget to turn something ON for my upgrade? Since the upgrade, I haven't noticed a significant increase in download speeds from ANY website I visit. Even page refreshes are just as slow as with essential. I know in some cases this is related to the server hosting the page, but I'm comparing it to my recent experiences on Verizon. Since I was getting consistent 15 Mbps download speeds on Verizon, I expected the 25 Mbps to be SCREAMIN' in comparison. It's not happening...yet.

MartS said:
Did somebody forget to turn something ON for my upgrade?

Besides that, what kind of equipment are you using? Modem? Router? Also what speedtest site (not server but domain) are you using? Have you tried the one in interest tools?

I will be able to be more helpful when I know more about whats going on. 

I connected directly to the modem through a long extension to my family room. Through this connection I was able to get at least 25 Mbps down using the Cox internet tools. However, from any other website I tried, I was only getting 5 Mbps using this same connection. 

In case it makes a difference (don't know why it should), I'm on an iMac running Safari under Mavericks os. This system was running very fast on Verizon's Fios @15 Mbps. I was hoping to get the similar speeds with this upgrade. 

It was my understanding that if I ever reach my data limit during any billing cycle, Cox would throttle down my speed until the next cycle. Could that be what happened and Cox forgot to reset my bandwidth?

I'll see If I can get some traces to various sites I visit when I get home.

If I'm seeing this at websites that claim to measure my internet bandwidth, what do you think is happening? Since my connections must be good enough to see full speed at cox.net, how can I lose 80% of my speed going to another site? It can't be anything going out of my house, right.

While you're waiting for my traces, do you have any insights on what else could cause this anomaly. That's assuming that the other servers are OK. I'm wondering since I have to believe that a website that claims to measure internet bandwidth would optimize their servers and pipes for speed. The ones I visit see download speeds over 100 Mbps.

Thanks,

Martin

Here's the trace route from dslreports.com. I confirmed that the cox.net speed tool can achieve over 25 Mbps over my WiFi connection so I did the trace route over the same connection. I also found a couple more sites that were able to reach the same speeds as the cox.net tool. This included http://my.verizon.com/micro/speedte.. and http://www.megapath.com/speedtestpl..

I also found a couple sites that were much slower besides dslreports.com. I included the trace routes for one of the other speed tests and for a site where the downloaded file took twice as long as I thought it should.

Since I was able to confirm that there were other speed tests that achieve your advertised bandwidth, I don't have much to complain about. But, I would still be interested in why dslreports is reporting such slow download times since I have used it in the past (from a different location and ISP) with good results.

Thanks for taking the time to help me find a solution to my issues.

Martin

www.dslreports.com (5964 kbps)

Traceroute has started…

traceroute to www.dslreports.com (64.91.255.98), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets

 1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  3.803 ms  0.834 ms  0.711 ms

 2  10.72.160.1 (10.72.160.1)  9.156 ms  9.461 ms  7.254 ms

 3  ip68-4-14-52.oc.oc.cox.net (68.4.14.52)  8.386 ms  7.371 ms  7.781 ms

 4  ip68-4-11-95.oc.oc.cox.net (68.4.11.95)  9.434 ms  9.130 ms  9.465 ms

 5  ip68-4-11-94.oc.oc.cox.net (68.4.11.94)  9.414 ms  9.945 ms  11.595 ms

 6  langbprj01-ae1.rd.la.cox.net (68.1.1.13)  11.158 ms  12.184 ms  14.316 ms

 7  te-0-9-0-6-pe01.600wseventh.ca.ibone.comcast.net (173.167.57.109)  14.504 ms  12.576 ms  15.279 ms

 8  pos-0-6-0-0-cr01.losangeles.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.87.209)  16.146 ms  14.773 ms  11.990 ms

 9  he-2-11-0-0-cr01.sanjose.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.89.213)  23.765 ms  27.501 ms  27.819 ms

10  he-0-13-0-0-cr01.denverqwest.co.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.89.130)  55.784 ms  54.016 ms  56.370 ms

11  he-3-12-0-0-cr01.denver.co.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.89.33)  55.631 ms  58.132 ms  54.322 ms

12  he-5-15-0-0-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.113)  66.181 ms  69.075 ms  68.368 ms

13  be-13-pe03.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.84.250)  69.357 ms  66.861 ms  65.943 ms

14  66.208.216.86 (66.208.216.86)  68.752 ms  71.540 ms  67.009 ms

15  lw-dc2-core6-te9-2.rtr.liquidweb.com (209.59.157.226)  71.669 ms  72.620 ms  74.828 ms

16  lw-dc3-dist15.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.205)  75.452 ms  73.973 ms  72.315 ms

17  www.dslreports.com (64.91.255.98)  70.048 ms  69.975 ms  71.663 ms

www.2wire.com (8.6 Mbps)

Traceroute has started…

traceroute to www.2wire.com (216.52.29.100), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets

 1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  3.567 ms  0.876 ms  3.325 ms

 2  10.72.160.1 (10.72.160.1)  8.387 ms  10.540 ms  7.405 ms

 3  ip68-4-13-242.oc.oc.cox.net (68.4.13.242)  9.192 ms  8.138 ms  7.321 ms

 4  * * *

 5  ip68-4-11-228.oc.oc.cox.net (68.4.11.228)  11.286 ms  8.883 ms  28.531 ms

 6  langbprj01-ae1.rd.la.cox.net (68.1.1.13)  64.537 ms  10.694 ms  9.773 ms

 7  68.105.30.150 (68.105.30.150)  10.432 ms  12.295 ms  11.740 ms

 8  ae2.cr1.lax112.us.above.net (64.125.31.190)  11.834 ms  10.621 ms  9.855 ms

 9  xe-0-2-0.cr1.sjc2.us.above.net (64.125.26.26)  18.373 ms  18.594 ms  20.449 ms

10  ae1.mpr3.sjc7.us.above.net (64.125.24.2)  35.218 ms  18.553 ms  19.937 ms

11  208.184.110.74.ipyx-072053-003-zyo.above.net (208.184.110.74)  23.465 ms  21.571 ms  23.341 ms

12  border3.pc2-bbnet2.sje.pnap.net (66.151.144.71)  26.597 ms

    border4.pc1-bbnet1.sje.pnap.net (66.151.144.10)  28.488 ms  137.558 ms

13  2wire-4.border2.sje.pnap.net (66.151.145.222)  22.282 ms  23.128 ms  23.149 ms

14  216.52.29.100 (216.52.29.100)  24.471 ms  25.371 ms  22.146 ms

www.chronosnet.com (350 MB file took about 3:36 to download)

Traceroute has started…

traceroute to chronosnet.com (204.228.150.78), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets

 1  * 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  3.592 ms  0.839 ms

 2  10.72.160.1 (10.72.160.1)  8.142 ms  8.413 ms  7.859 ms

 3  ip68-4-13-242.oc.oc.cox.net (68.4.13.242)  8.708 ms  8.907 ms  8.861 ms

 4  ip68-4-11-229.oc.oc.cox.net (68.4.11.229)  12.233 ms  18.645 ms  8.922 ms

 5  ip68-4-11-92.oc.oc.cox.net (68.4.11.92)  8.792 ms  8.681 ms  8.875 ms

 6  langbbrj01-ae2.rd.la.cox.net (68.1.1.14)  10.508 ms  10.312 ms  11.831 ms

 7  ae12.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.127.229)  11.100 ms  15.271 ms  12.897 ms

 8  ae0-110g.cr1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.127.137)  11.253 ms  11.000 ms  10.805 ms

 9  ae4-50g.cr1.lax2.us.nlayer.net (69.31.124.114)  21.123 ms  11.047 ms  14.785 ms

10  xe-0-2-1.cr2.slc1.us.nlayer.net (69.22.142.150)  23.972 ms  24.022 ms  24.140 ms

11  * * *

12  te-9-3.dcr1.slc.xmission.net (166.70.4.97)  32.905 ms  31.368 ms  30.678 ms

13  204-228-150-78.ip.xmission.com (204.228.150.78)  29.894 ms  30.521 ms  37.590 ms

Hi MartS,

The trace route results you provided do not show any latency (minus the one timeout on hop 4 on the second set of results), there appears to be nothing impeding the speed of your connection.  I am not sure why DSLreports.com shows slower speeds, that could be due to the location of their speed test server.  It is supposed to find a location that is closest to you to run those tests to get the best results, geographic location also plays a part.