PC Speed

[PrayerPrince]

I have a 2007 Aspire Desktop PC. It came preloaded with Vista. About 4 months ago we changed Vista out and reformatted it to run XP Professional. I am a fan of XP, hate Vista thus the change. Anyway, here where we live out in the rural area our choice for internet providers is 2 fold. !). Dial up - No Thanks. 2). Satellite Internet - Not great, but better than dial up.

The problem i am having is simply this; lack of speed. I have 1 gig of memory in this thing. Lot of programs but they don't all open at once, nor do I have several running at 1 time. The tech from the satellite company has been out again today. Of course when he came out he conducted a speed test. Naturally the speed this a.m. was up to snuff. He messed around with different things asking questions and such. After 1 plus hours he tells me that he thinks that with me running Norton 360 anti-virus that it's causing the connection speed to drop in half. He said their research has shown this to be a problem with 360 and Zone alarm anti virus. Both have their own built in fire walls. Then he suggested I change the settings (RULES) in the firewall to just include incoming/outgoing connections to be monitored. No e-mail/messaging, etc.. He said everything on the satellite companies end checked out. He got a reading of almost 1.6 kbps download and upload of about 140. Now then, when the company had me do a speed test the other night, at 7 p.m. it was barely crawling along at 512 kbps download. Forgot the upload but it 2 dragged. He blamed wheather saying most likely that played a role although the sky was clear. When I called the guy who did the change out of soft ware and he talked to the tech  the tech became defensive. Long story short; I had these same issues when I first signed up almost 2 years ago. Same issues when I ran Vista. In the end, when the tech found I had about a gig of memory, he then said to reconfigure the firewall rules on 360 so just to monitor in/out connections and add another gig at least to the PC and my trouble would be over. I am a novice at best. When i had the guy who reformatted vista op.system to Xp, on his broad band connection this machine flew. He went through it 2 weeks ago and checked the machine b 4 i called the company and again, no problems with the pc, nor that it only had a gig of memory.

My question for those much more experienced; can i loose1 whole meg of speed this easy because the pc and speed r fine in the early part of the day and later in the evening it drops to 512 kbps or there abouts based upon what this tech told me today? or is it just another story by the tech because he didn't have a correct answer?

Many Thanks,

DV

[zalternate]

Who's the satellite ISP? Wildpoo or Hughesnet.

And if Hughesnet, which satellites? The old KU bands with satellites that have electrical issues and can get overloaded with users. Or the KA band is the new(one year old) Hughesnet satellite.

WildBlue has two satellites and some 'spot beams' are oversold and slow down between about 5pm to 10pm or maybe to midnight.

You are being fed a tremendous line. And these companies feed it to everyone who have not read many, many reviews on just how these companies operate with speeds and such. You will be blamed for slow speeds. Or your router will be blamed. Or your security software will be blamed.  But if your dish is installed well, there should be little problem, except for the amount of users online at once.

Norton can slow down 'your machine', but not the Internet connection for the most part. There are some exceptions occasionally. I don't know if the 'bloat' of Norton has been reduced, but it has been known to be a resource hog.

Not scanning your emails is a bad thing if you get an infected email. A scanner can slow down your email coming in, but usually with large attachments.

The firewall should automatically setup to allow safe programs access to the Internet. If the FireWall blocks your browser, you can't surf, simple. But the FireWall is there to block outgoing programs, as well as incoming programs(Windows firewall is only for incoming).

1 Gig of memory should be good for XP. For Vista it is minimum 1 gig. I have an old system that is slow due to it's age(about 10 years old) and traffic is choking through the mother board.

Here are some reviews to learn the system for either company.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/internet/wild_blue.html

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/internet/hughes.html

Well at least you keep above about 512Kbps. It's not fair to go down one or two package levels , but users are not rebelling enough to get the Government to actually listen about these business practices. You bought a speed of 1Mbps to 1.5Mbps 24/7. You should not have to accept being defrauded of speeds and defrauded of money.

A.M. speed test are the scam time to do the speed tests. It is the time that the installers will use to quote the speeds on satellite. At another forum, they post only the am speed test times to 'white lie' to the future users.  

Some satellite ISP 'approved' speedtest sites are a scam and the satellite provider will prioritize the speed test traffic to the site. Or the speedtest is only to the NOC, which only gives your speeds between you and the NOC and not the Internet.

Some people spend many dollars to upgrade their computers and see no difference in speeds.

And only run one anti-virus and one firewall at a time, otherwise there may be a conflict.

The weather excuse is either, it's cloudy over your house or it's cloudy over the NOC(satellite down/up link).

[PrayerPrince]

I have Wild Blue. This Jan. will be 2 years and the speeds keep getting slower. % to 11 p.m. seem to be the worse. Which of course is the time where alot of people are on the internet. However, when I am paying for 1.5 KBPS ability, they should at least crank up their power to ensure it comes close. I think 1.2 plus wouldn't be bad. But to fall all the way to 512 at 7 p.m. is ridiculous. None the less, thanks for your imput. I will read the article you provided for wild blue. It's funny, while the guy was here my speed was almost 1.6 downloading and stayed that way until 3 p.m. when it began dropping. At 3 p.m.my speed had dropped to about 1 KBPS and of course it slowed down some more right before I got off at 5 p.m..

[zalternate]

Sometime is 2011 for WildBlue to get a new satellite. And sometime in 2012 for Hughesnet to get a new satellite.

http://www.viasat.com/broadband-satellite-networks/viasat-1

No cranking up the power to be had. A certain amount of bandwidth available and I don't know how much they oversell each beam. So a 'X' number of bandwidth on the satellite and at least 20% of customer oversell to be a very rough figure. Since not everyone can be online at once, right? 

Your speeds are the standard 'PrimeTime slowdown'.

So avoid any new contracts in case you have a good wireless provider setup one day.

[PrayerPrince]

At the moment i am checking into Crickett and sprint. Both provide a modem and a USB adapter which will give you about 1.5 KBPS download. Even if it's a bit or 1/3 less, can't be worse than Wild Blue who gets 90.00 a month for the pro package which is suppose to be top of the line and gives you a little over 540 download in the evening. Excuse me; some of my neighbors must have spent the night out. My golly, 690 download and 91 upload tonight. Hooray!!!!!  All my griping today must have did something to have such a high speed tonight. Wow, can't believe my eyes. Wildblue allowed me to have 690 tonight instead of the normral 540.   

[tommie gorman]

If you get the EVDO you will not be disappointed. In reality its much quicker than sat.