Internet is slower all of a sudden..

[Special Chris]

Basically..the same results.

[Mark]

I don't want to conclude this as the answer but i doubt it's an issue in your LAN, eg. someone else downloading / a machine causing problems since we've tested with all of those off and i don't think it's your machine, eg an application causing problems as other machines are having the problem.. unless you try a laptop just by it's self eg your machine off and just the laptop to see results.

For the past..Hell, 6-7 years I've been having the same download speed as 180KB/s(1.4Mbs)

If you could download at 1.4Mb/s but are now only getting piped 0.88Mb/s you cannot download at speed more than what you're provided. As i said i don't want to pass the blame to the ISP as you don't know the speed you were previously getting and it's unlikely they'd just drop your speed. How long have you had this problem?

If you haven't already, try a laptop solo, turn your desktop off.

[Special Chris]

About a week, maybe. I THINK it started on Monday.

And I tried one of the laptops solo, and no diff.

[Mark]

I assume you've not made any changes to your router since then? Configuration changes / new router?

Sounds like an ISP problem but i'd like clarification. *waits for another member*.

[Special Chris]

Actually, now that I think about it, but I really doubt it'd impact it that much, we've added a new laptop to the network in the past week or so. That wouldn't cause that dramatic of a drop would it, since I tested it with every machine off except one?

[Mark]

Not if it's turned off, no. If it's powered off and not connected to the network, eg. not transmitting anything then it won't effect anything. You did turn EVERYTHING off except one machine in the tests didn't you?

[Special Chris]

Yes. I opened em up, waited for them to load up, and hit shutdown on all 3 of them.

[Drumm]

There was an episode of Hak5 where they covered Bandwith throttling from your ISP, Personally, I don't think your connection is bad (I can struggle to get 0.1mpbs at times, with pings at around 3000+)
I quote:

Go to Measurement Lab and click on test your internet connection. Choose the first one: the network diagnostic tool, and click on Start. This test will look for your internet connection speed and anything slowing it down. The test takes about 20 seconds. Once finished, click on Statistics to see a detailed guide of your network traffic and how it may be limited. Next, run the Glasnost test. This test will look for traffic shaping when you are using such things as flash video or BitTorrent. This test takes about 8 minutes to finish, and make sure any downloads you have going are paused. When this test is finished, it’ll tell you if it detects any kind of traffic shaping happening when using the selected program. The NPAD test will find and diagnose any problems in your end machine that have to do with network performance. Run this one and it will send and receive data, then show you any problems in red. Pathload2 is a bandwidth test that will find out what your available bandwidth is. For this test, you must download the EXE and run the test. The last test through mlabs is ShaperProbe- a traffic shaping test. It’ll tell you if your isp is traffic shaping when you upload, download, or both, and the max burst size before shaping begins. You also have to download the EXE for this test as well, click start, and wait for the test to finish. Next is the Switzerland test. Download the .tgz or .zip over at Sourceforge. Extract the files from the folder and read the INSTALL.txt for information on how to install it on your specific platform.

The MLab tool, they talk about is a tool released by Google to test if your bandwith is being throttled. You can find the website here.

[Pack3t SynAck3r]

If you are using DSL which is generally brought into your home on a pair of copper wires i.e. your telephone line, you could be affected by in-climate weather. Often times the phone lines will get moisture at a splice station or perhaps the line received a slight bit of damage at some point. What is the quality of your telephone? Do you have any static on the line? Often times a call to your ISP, and a electrical current check for a "high" ground or a "high" short can give you some answers. The "high" refers to a very minute amount so you may have a chip off of the wire insulation at some point causing the pair to touch or for one of the wires in the pair to be coming in contact with a grounding source. The testing equipment on the line is very sensitive and usually most phone companies run a few dozen automated checks on every line each year so they should have a median test result to compare your current line results.

[Special Chris]

No, there isn't any static on the phone line, or maybe I just haven't noticed it, but I'm sure my mom would be bitchin' about it if there was. I guess I can try the MLab tool thingy whenever I get some free time, and if that doesn't do anything or whatever its suppose to do, I'll give my ISP a call.