Why is my internet connection faster at home?
 

At home I have AOL, (I know, don't say it), and a 56K modem, w/ a 333Mhz PC. At work, I have a brand new dell Laptop that's like, I don't know, 1.6Ghz, with LAN/T1/100+MB connection. So, Why is my surfing at work so damn slow? Yahoo takes seconds to load at work, while at home, it's almost instant.

Is my company slowing down my surfing? Or is it a configuration problem? (I hate Windows)

It's probably the congestion of the number of people sharing that link to the net. (Or the upstream ISP overselling T1s and causing congestion before the net ever gets to you; it happens.) You have a fast link back to the router that connects you to the internet at large, but how many other people have that fast link? (More to the point, how many of them are doing P2P? That can suck all the bandwidth you've got.)

Undertoad
 

Good point, we were recently migrated from about 12 different gateways to a single, I say single but it is most likely several, gateway address. Went from a ...ds.internet1.com (thru 12.com) to ...ds.internetpln.com Now, that gateway could be only one server, or it could actually be a "virtual" address for a cluster of gateways, but it is so damn slow.

Even hitting the back button can take seconds to reload what should already be cached in temp internet files. It's almost like my machine doesn't like cached files, and wants to refresh them, but I've got the settings right, so I think it's an underlying company spyware, or a gateway screw-up. It's just frustrating.

Or, it could be the Windows XP that they just upgraded me to.
:mad:

Re: Undertoad
 

Well, I can tell you that the problem isn't confined to your desktop. And at times, it actually interrupts my work flow. (Ahhh, corporate regulations are wonderful, aren't they?)

From what I was told, the conversion to the current configuration of the proxy servers is to get everyone using the same connections. (Something that has to do with our affiliation with WorldCom I believe - But well, you can never tell.)

If that's the case, (and it's so hard to find out a real answer sometimes) then we've got everyone in each office on the east coast using the same gateways. Not exactly the most efficent thing in the world. (and this is just a layperson's opinion)

But your assumption of corporate spyware is very accurate. After this past summer's hubbub on the yahoo.biz message boards, and the lawsuits.com fiasco, you're never sure what they're watching or when. I personally err on the side of caution.

Heck, I have enough fun reading the internal boards lately. :D

Dagney

Maybe you're configured not to cache anything and are being sent through a busy firewall or a firewall behind a busy router or something.

Try running a traceroute to microsoft.com or something, and see what it gets you. (run "tracert microsoft.com" in a cmd window, or find a traceroute tool - there are lots of em).

Or google for a "traceroute gateway" - look for a website that will trace back to you.

Traceroute tries to see how long it takes to reach each point between you and your destination. Between you and microsoft.com or cellar.org or whatever, there may be 10-20 different routers or gateways of various kinds from various providers. Because traceroute tries to see how long it takes to reach each one, sometimes it will quickly show which one is the bottleneck.

Run it when you're more congested, then when you're less congested, and compare the two and see if that shows anything interesting.

Then complain to management that your co-worker is running Kazaa Lite and sharing his entire hard drive of porn. Your connection will improve immediately.

Have your IT guys turn of the QoS Packet Scheduler. Your network performance should increase.

Don't know about the connection problems, I don't know why a company would intentionally slow down their network connection (what, you want employees to spend more time on the internet?)

Anyway, when a browser goes to display a page that's already cached, the first thing it does is ask the server "my user's trying to view this page again, got anything newer?" If the server replies "no", then you see the cached version. If the reply is delayed, then the screen stays blank.