BT broadband problem.

[HardDrive]

Hi all,
I have a 1mb connection that is shared on a network of 6 pc's, when i test an indivdual pc for connection speed it comes up at around 20kbs which is less than dial-up. Can anyone shed some light where my speed is gone to and how i might be able to get it back.

[Sean]

To me, it looks as if one or more of the PCs may have a virus/worm or something running in the background hogging the link.

To start with, ensure all the PCs are on and are idle, then have a look at the hub/switch the PCs connect and check the individual LEDs for each connection. There should be little, if any activity shown by the PC. If one or more LEDs are blinking away, unplug the network cable associated with each LED frequently blinking and then run the speed test from a connected PC. If there is a dramatic performance improvement, then one of the unplugged PCs has something hogging the connection.

If you have a wireless network where it is not straight forward to look at the network activity, switch off all PCs apart from the original which worked fine and do a speed test. If the speed is still slow, then try a direct connection (without the router) to check if the router is at fault. Otherwise if the performance is far better with just this single PC, then switch on 3 PCs, leave them running for about five minutes and repeat. If the performance drops, then at least one of these PCs is the culprit. In this case, switch them off one by one, performing a speed test each time to see which PC is the culprit. Otherwise, switch on the remaining three PCs, leave for five minutes and repeat.

Once you identify the culprit PC, check that its anti-virus software is running and up-to-date and have a look to see if there are any file sharing utilities running in the background. I’ve done a call-out to an Internet café once where they were complaining about terrible Internet performance to find out someone had installed BitComet (BitTorrent file sharing program) set to run as a background process at start-up with 10 large active transfers).

[HardDrive]

Thanks for the reply Sean,
I'm going to give that a try and see but first i better give you more information about my setup.
First of all I just started working at a car dealership and was asked to try and solve the slow internet problem.
They have a broadband connection from BT which I tested today and is actually a 3mb download.
The setup is as follows:
There is a server that holds all information for the cars which is connected to a network that has 6 pc's on it. In the begining the server had a dial up connection from an external modem which is still there. There is also 1 pc that is not on the network. (7 pc's in total) The only software that is on the pc's are AVG anti-virus, internet explorer and 2 programs that connect directly to a server, 1 in dublin and 1 in france.

Today I did a test on the setup.
I disconnected the broadband directly from the phone socket but I still managed to get internet connection on the 6 networked pc's, which led me to believe that they are been served by the dial-up modem.

Question 1? Can I directly connect the broadband from the router to the server and get rid of the dial-up modem?

I then got my own laptop directly connected it to the router and did a speed test and got full download speed.
I then connected it to the stand alone PC ( Same cable as laptop) that is not on the network ( A new Dell Dimimsion ) and did a speed test on that i was only getting about 200kbs on a 3mb download. Is there any program that can show me where the bandwidth is going.

Anymore info just ask.
All ideas are welcome.
Thank you.

[Sean]

The dial-up modem likely explains the slow connection, especially since it would be virtually impossible to go online with the broadband disconnected and no other means of connection present. Unfortunately, switching from dial-up to broadband on a server is not as simple as pulling out one and plugging in the other, as the server would need a little reconfiguration to share out the broadband connection. I have the best experience with configuring the router for the network and having the PCs access the Internet directly through the router. While it may be simpler to reconfigure the server to share the broadband instead of the dial-up, I had a few cases where the server stopped sharing out the connection for no apparent reason, requiring its routing service to be restarted or even the server to be rebooted.

The poor speed you have reported from your BT connection seems to be an issue with BT broadband itself, since my 3Mb BT broadband connection has been terrible over the past few weeks with speed tests typically around 120Kb to 500Kb in the evenings on the downlink. After getting no where with their support, I'm in the process of changing to Digiweb DSL. However, even still, you should not see anything below 100kb reported from a speed test with the broadband.

As it has been a good while since I last set up a broadband connection in an office with a company server in place, I am unable to confirm whether all the steps mentioned below are correct or if I left anything out, so the following information is from what I recall. Please also carefully document any changes you make to allow you to undo them should an issue arise. If it is critical that the company remains connected, wait until a weekend (or a quiet evening) and make sure you have a phone number of an experienced local IT technician handy to avoid the worst case scenario where no PC or the server can get online. Note that these steps are based on my experience with server 2000 and 2003 and may not work on a older Windows NT Server.


1st Method - Connecting the router to the network

• First, connect only your laptop to the router and configure the router such that it is on the same subnet as the network and with an IP that no other PC uses on the network. Disable DHCP on the router.
• Next, connect one of its LAN ports to the 'uplink' port of your network switch and then try pinging its IP address from any PC on the network. If you get a ping reply, that's the router itself set up.
• On the company Server, go into the control panel and then into "Network and Dial-Up Connections". Then right-click "Local Area Connection" and go into properties. From the list of items, click on "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" and click Properties. Set the default gateway to the IP address of your router. If the either the Preferred DNS server or alternate DNS server fields are blank, type in the IP address of your router into one of these. Otherwise if both are already filled, click the 'Advanced' button, go to the 'DNS' tab and add the IP to the first list.
• Now, go back into the control panel, into administrative tools and then into DNS. On the left section, right-click on the server (first item below DNS) and click 'Properties'. Then click the 'Forwarders' tab. Tick the 'Enable forwarders' option if it is not already enabled and add the IP address of your router into here. Then click 'OK' and close out of the DNS configuration.
• Go to a PC on the network and check if it is DHCP enabled by running ipconfig at the command line. If the 'Dhcp Enabled' option shows as true, type in "IPConfig /renew" to get the PC to obtain the new configuration. Otherwise, go into the network card properties and into the TCP/IP properties (as in the above step for the server) and set the default gateway to the IP address of your router. If the "Alternate DNS server" entry is blank, insert your router's IP here. Otherwise, click Advanced, go into the DNS tab and add the IP of your router to the top tab. Close off the dialogue boxes by clicking 'OK' to each.
• Verify the internet connection works for this PC, including a speed check. If this goes well, repeat the steps carried out on this PC with the remaining PCs.

2nd Method - Connecting the router to the server

• First, connect the router to the server and ensure its drivers are installed (if using its USB connection).
• Go into the control panel, into administrative tools and then into "Routing and Remote Access". Right-click on the server name and click 'Properties'. Go into the IP tab and tick "Enable IP Routing" if not already ticked.
• Run a speed test to ensure the server is accessing the internet through the router. Otherwise, disconnect the modem connection and try again. If the server insists on making a dial-up connection, perform the following to disable it: Go into Routing and Remote Access (as in the above step), right-click on the server name and click 'Properties'. Tick the option 'Local area network (LAN) routing only" and click 'OK'. Now try accessing the Internet again.
• Once the server can access the broadband, test the connection on the other PCs.