Internet connection configuration problem
I have four different stable OSes currently installed on this machine. Windows XP, openSUSE 64 bit, Linux Mint Debian 64 bit, and Debian Squeeze 64 bit. This machine is a HP Compaq Core2 duo, with 4G DDR2 ram. Has an Ethernet card with a cat5 cable connected to a high speed SURFboard (SBG6580CD) router/modem. We have Brighthouse Lighting 40Mb/s service.
On Jan 2, 2011 I noticed there was connection issues that was intermittent that cause my bandwidth to fall to around 50Kb/s. Running traceroutes show latencies in the 200-800ms range on the second hop in the cable network, within RoadRunner's system, pings are in the 150-250ms range, jitter is 100-150ms.
I have ran the same bench marks is all three Linux OSes and the above speeds are very typical. At times I can be downloading a 4G file and it will be flying and in the middle the band width will drop to 50Kb/s, a file that was reported to have 10 minutes left now says it will be finished in three days.
Sometimes OS system updates take minutes, at other times they take hours to download even small files.
In an effort to correct this problem Brighthouse has sent three techs out, they dropped a spliiter to increase the signal by 4db, ran a direct line. The last tech said he had isolated the problem to a Line Extender two taps down from the house. They came out yesterday and replaced the Line Extender. I still saw the same benchmarks, no change.
I was looking for some more detailed analysis benchmarks to run when I came across one that required ActiveX (Windows IE8 gimmick) in order to run. When I could not find a Linux ActiveX work around, I booted up Windows XP and went to run the benchmarks. while that was running I thought I might as well see how IE8 handled all the others. Every one of the benchmarks passed with excellent marks. I ran them all several times in IE* and the in Chrome while in XP, perfect scores across the board with not even a slight dip. Reboot into Linux same results as before, nothing would pass, I have yet to pass a packet test in Debian or Mint, openSUSE will pass the packet test but none of the others, same range for all the Linusx OSes. I switched between Linux and XP several times running the benchmarks and in every instance XP passed with pings in the 20-25ms range and jitter was 2ms-5ms, perfect.
I'm convinced that I have a Linux OS to router/modem configuration setting issue. For the pass few hours in openSUSE I have switched network setting one at a time and reran the benchmarks and have had no luck what so ever in seeing a difference. I'm at a dead end, I don't know how to proceed any further. I'm including some screen shots of one of the benchmarks to illustrate the issue.
I was going to but do not know how to point a http addy to my desktop screenshot.png and I see no other method of posting an image. If you want to see an example of the screen shot I was going to include, it is the benchmark at pingtest.net, the packet test, ping, and jitter are in the ranges mentioned above for the Linux vs Windows OSes.
Can some one help me optimize my internet connection?
