For the past couple of my months my Internet connection has gotten progressively S-L-O-W-E-R. In the process of hunting down the issue I learned a couple new tricks that I wanted to share.

• SPEEDTEST.NET is great, but make sure you verify the slowness with your ISP’s speed testing tools. They aren’t going to believe it’s an issue unless you use the ISPs reference site.
• M-Labs has some great tools to help you diagnose Internet connection issues.
• Part of your issue might be due to your ISP’s poor perfoming DNS servers. You should investigate alternative DNS servers. (Look for a future post about this, but in the meantime take a look at this to wet your appetite.)
• Most cable modems contain an embedded web server that can provide you with some good information. It’s usually on http://192.168.100.1. Refer to this post to verify your signal/modem are within spec.
• Your ISP might surprise you! After calling Time Warner’s 1-800 number I was able to quickly speak to a rep who worked with me to determine the issue without the use of a script. Upon determining it was an onsite issue, he quickly dispatched a tech to investigate the issue.

In the end my issue turned out to be my modem. He swapped out my Ambit modem for an Arris one which I was told does a much better job of holding onto signal. My Internet speeds have jumped from 0.3 Mb/s to 30 Mb/s!!