ISP/ Ping Question

[Curbkiddytech]

Okay so I live in a small town in Iowa, but large enough where we have access to decent internet. We have a cable/modem setup that connects to a router which then connects to the PC's in our house. We're paying for a High Speed 8Mb internet plan through our town which I believe goes through Long Lines. And I know that there are certain times of the day when internet traffic is going to be higher/lower than usual but shouldn't we be getting somewhere close to the 8Mb download speed when there's low traffic? The highest download speed we seem to ever reach is 1Mb and that's usually after midnight. We never get 2, 3, 4, or anything higher than 1 to be honest at any given point during the day. When I run a speed test online it says I should have 10 ping, around 9Mb download, and 2Mb upload. I play League of Legends a lot and I'm lucky if I get 82/83 ping in-game when no one is home during early morning or very late at night when traffic is low.

Can someone please explain to me why this is happening and if it's normal before I go down to city hall and complain that my internet is slower than what I'm paying for? I would greatly appreciate it.

Our router is WNDR3700 Netgear, and a modem that was installed by the city.

 

[carnageX]

And I know that there are certain times of the day when internet traffic is going to be higher/lower than usual but shouldn't we be getting somewhere close to the 8Mb download speed when there's low traffic? The highest download speed we seem to ever reach is 1Mb and that's usually after midnight. We never get 2, 3, 4, or anything higher than 1 to be honest at any given point during the day.

Where are you getting the 1Mb number from? When downloading files?

It's going to depend on the server's upload bandwidth you're downloading from what speeds you're going to get as far as download. You can't download faster than it can upload.

When I run a speed test online it says I should have 10 ping, around 9Mb download, and 2Mb upload.

Plug your computer directly into the modem (not the router) and run a speedtest.

If speedtest is accurate there, then plug into the router, and repeat. Usually you lose some speed at the router, and even more so if you're wireless.

If you're already getting the speeds from Speedtest you're paying for... then you're getting an accurate connection.

I play League of Legends a lot and I'm lucky if I get 82/83 ping in-game when no one is home during early morning or very late at night when traffic is low.

Again, depends on the server, as well as the distance. A farther location is going to have higher ping. If you go on Speedtest and test a different server, one that's much much farther away... such as in another state or country even, the ping is going to be higher than the 10ms you're getting from the closest server you're testing from Speedtest.

Can someone please explain to me why this is happening and if it's normal before I go down to city hall and complain that my internet is slower than what I'm paying for? I would greatly appreciate it.

Our router is WNDR3700 Netgear, and a modem that was installed by the city.

City hall wouldn't be involved at all - you'd have to talk to your ISP. But make sure none of the things I posted above applies to you (server upload bandwidth, distance, router issue, etc.).

 

[Pyrothrillah]

I agree fully with Carnage on this one. A ping in the 80ms range isn't a bad ping at all. (especially for a game such as LoL)

And you have to take in to consideration if you just go to speedtest.net and hit "begin" it will automatically select the closest server to you whereas the server that you play LoL on may be 2000 miles away.

Remember there are major differences between megabytes and megabits.

8 megabits per second = 1 megabyte per second

However; with that being stated, if you are getting 1 Mbps as your download speed when promised 8, then you have some serious issues. Try selecting different servers in your tests to see how the speeds vary.