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macosperformancemodem

how to determine where the bottleneck is in my slow (home) internet?


I recently got a new cable modem from my ISP (Rogers in Canada; old modem was a "Webstar" something, the new modem is a "SMC D3GN-RRR"). Since I got the new modem, it feels like my internet access is slower.

What I'm perceiving is sometimes when I enter a URL and hit enter, there is a delay -- a slight dealy, but it lasts half a second to two or three seconds -- before the web page loads. Once the web page starts loading it loads fast, but there's that delay during while it's looking it up or something.

I have a MacBook Pro, an Apple Airport Extreme wireless router, the new cable modem.

Is there some kind of tool, or cool UNIX command (traceroute, or something?) I can run see how much time is takes to jump from device to device, so I can "prove" where the delay is?

Just FYI, here's a "traceroute www.google.com", in case it's useful. I don't know what this means. :)

traceroute www.google.com
traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 173.194.75.105
traceroute to www.l.google.com (173.194.75.105), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1)  4.455 ms  1.204 ms  1.263 ms
 2  * * *
 3  * 69.63.255.237 (69.63.255.237)  36.694 ms  30.209 ms
 4  69.63.250.210 (69.63.250.210)  44.503 ms  41.303 ms  46.039 ms
 5  gw01.mtmc.phub.net.cable.rogers.com (66.185.81.137)  40.504 ms  34.937 ms  44.493 ms
 6  * * *
 7  * 216.239.47.114 (216.239.47.114)  58.605 ms  37.710 ms
 8  216.239.46.170 (216.239.46.170)  56.073 ms  57.250 ms  64.373 ms
 9  72.14.239.93 (72.14.239.93)  70.879 ms
    209.85.249.11 (209.85.249.11)  114.399 ms  59.781 ms
10  209.85.243.114 (209.85.243.114)  72.877 ms  80.151 ms
    209.85.241.222 (209.85.241.222)  82.524 ms
11  216.239.48.159 (216.239.48.159)  82.227 ms
    216.239.48.183 (216.239.48.183)  80.065 ms
    216.239.48.157 (216.239.48.157)  79.660 ms
12  * * *
13  ve-in-f105.1e100.net (173.194.75.105)  76.967 ms  71.142 ms  80.519 ms

Solution

  • Same problem for me. Download and upload numbers are great for me. Looks like the DNS, in my case, is responding extremely slowly (not due to slow RTT or line speeds, but maybe the DNS server itself is overloaded, or perhaps the DNS in this region is overloaded or under some form of attack). If I'm correct, it isn't trivial for us as "customers" to demonstrate that this is the explanation, or to have it fixed, unfortunately.