Charter Cable Internet going slow? Here's the fix! (No need to change ISP!)

[kpmedia]

For about three weeks now, I've had nothing but trouble connecting to websites. One minute, everything connected nice and fast. The next minute, it was slow. A couple of minutes later, I had no access whatsoever. The signal was dropping, and/or there were lots of dropped packets.

My Speed Tests

I ran speed tests, and came up with identical results:

1. Sometimes connections were in the 8 to 15 Mbps range
2. Sometimes connections were in the 0.5 to 2 Mbps range
3. Sometimes the tests failed, due to lost connection

What was strange, however, was that my upload speed was always a sustained 1 Mbps -- it was never affected!

I generally prefer the speed tests from Speedtest.net. However, many people like Speakeasy.net/speedtest, although I find it can report lower speeds. (Manually monitoring my FTP speeds from USA to Europe, I see speeds that easily surpass what Speakeasy will report from one USA city to another. So I don't know what's going on there. Speedtest.net looks far more accurate compared against my manual calculations.)

Testing the Hardware / Calling Charter

Because Charter phone techs treat all callers as if they are idiot children, I went ahead and pre-tested everything:

• I walked outside, and double-checked the exterior cable box. All wiring is fine -- dry, sealed and well connected.
• I removed the D-Link gigabit switches from the main network. There was no change in connection quality or connection speed.
• Next, I removed the router. At this point in time, I was directly connection from a laptop Trendnet gigabit card to the modem. Still no change.
• Then I tried the 100Mbps integrated network card. Again, no change to signal strength or speeds.
• Finally, I tried an entirely different computer. You guessed it -- no change.
• Because of the 1 Mbps upload being reliable, the modem is also unlikely to be at any fault. A bad modem would fail at both upload and download.
• All of the wires are CAT5e or CAT6 cables, fit to length, well shielded quality stuff. So that's not the issue either.

So I called Charter, and ran the lady on the phone through what I had done. Of course, the first thing she asked was, "Do you have a wireless router?" (What an idiot! Do these people even listen to us? They always want to blame something else!)

Only after repeating myself with "the computer is wired directly into the modem" did she start to investigate. She said that there were "no problems" in my area, and that there were "no reports" of problems. (I don't actually believe that last one.) She agreed that the modem was fine, having apparently run a test from her end. The phone tech insisted "everything looks good here" and tried to end the call.

I repeated myself that the signal was unreliable, it was not "fine" in any way, and somebody needs to come out and check the lines. Maybe check the Charter switches in my area. So a tech was scheduled to come out tomorrow.

The Fix

Still unsatisfied, and not willing to be offline for a full day, I kept looking for solutions. I was still bothered by 1 Mbps upload being sustained, while the download was unreliable -- it didn't make sense (yet).

When my connection went away again, I did some quick ping tests in the command prompt (DOS box). Connection loss only lasted maybe 20-30 seconds, so I had to act quick! I was unable to ping sites by name, but I was able to ping servers by IP. Ah-ha! It's a DNS error!

I changed my laptop to use the OpenDNS system, instead of automatically pulling from whatever IP Charter was issuing with their connection. Immediately, I could connect to all sites. My connection was ranging from 5 Mbps to 18 Mbps download, and still with a reliable 1 Mbps upload.

I've since set my computer to automatically pull DNS from the router. I changed the router to use OpenDNS, and no longer pull the Charter DNS info automatically. All systems on the network will now use OpenDNS servers.

I canceled the tech call, too. I'm afraid he'll just mess up something else by fiddling with the wires.

.... and that 1 Mbps upload mystery? I think it's because upload tests are transmitted by IP, while the downloads come across domain names (thereby using DNS servers). I'm not 100% certain on this, but it's a good theory, based off the information available.

Setting Up OpenDNS

OpenDNS used to have the setup information available in the open, but now you have to sign up to read the instructions. Just pick the Basic free option. Go ahead and sign up.

You'll be changing your network connection (on the computer) or the DNS setup (in the router) to the following IP addresses:

• 208.67.222.222
• 208.67.220.220

That's all it takes to make Charter work full-speed again.

[Tony W]

I registered just to thank you for this post. I also have Charter cable internet, and it has been flawless for almost 2 years...until the last 4 weeks. It has good speeds and signal strength, but was very unstable and would cut out maybe 4-5 times an hour. Just a blip, enough to lose connection, and come right back on. Very annoying for streaming or downloading, or playing online games.

I've had the Charter tech show up twice in the last two weeks, he couldn't find anything wrong with the wiring (new home) and said it was likely a noise issue outside the house. Their phone support just left me more frustrated than helpful.

So, I decided to search around and found your post here. I reset my computer and my XBox 360 to use the manual DNS option, using the OpenDNS numbers. Everything seems to work great now.

Thanks!

[kpmedia]

That's excellent to hear about your success.

This is actually a pretty decent "trick" for anybody on any ISP, should they run into websites loading slow or dropped internet connections, when accessing anything via domain names. The surefire way to check is to do that comparative ping of a domain and an IP, from the command prompt in Windows (or a terminal session in Mac OS). Compare against any number of sites to see if there's a difference:

• Yahoo.com - 67.195.160.76
• Google.com - 74.125.65.106
• BBC.co.uk - 212.58.224.138
• digitalFAQ.com - 77.235.61.8

ISP DNS servers just don't seem to be as good as dedicated DNS companies (like OpenDNS) or hosting companies (like our own host, EuroVPS).

[Cfeld]

Thanks a zillion

For your info about changing Charter's stupid DNS number. I've never had 3 full bars before on iPad, Wow! Before I was lucky to get the tiny bar at the bottom and that was frustrating as hell.

I thank you, profusely!

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[kpmedia]

Hi cfeld, welcome to the site.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cfeld

For your info about changing Charter's stupid DNS number. I've never had 3 full bars before on iPad, Wow! Before I was lucky to get the tiny bar at the bottom and that was frustrating as hell.
I thank you, profusely!

Thanks so much for sharing your current experience. It means a great deal to me to hear this advice continues to help others.

I wrote this post more than a year ago (17+ months), and it's still an immensely helpful method of speeding up slow internet connections, regardless of ISP. It just happens to work especially well with Charter, because Charter has some of the most hideously slow/outdated DNS servers I've ever come across. (For the web developers out there, Charter is the kind of DNS that makes "several days" the outlier in propagation times, versus just a few hours for most decent DNS servers.)

My most recent snafu with Charter was related to my static IP address. They just up and changed it one day.

Initial phone calls to the ISP were met with the usual stupid replies, insisting I reboot computers and remove routers. Yeah, like that's going to happen in 2011 (almost 2012). A person without a router these days is the same as a person without internet. That ISPs still insist on the one-service/one-computer support is ridiculous and asinine. Instead of requesting more troubleshooting, a new IP was requested, and I've spent some time changing various firewalls and security settings at remote servers.

Regarding iPads...

I dedicated an entire wireless router to my iPad. At the office, the incoming line goes to a modem, which goes to a master wired router, which feeds into three more routers. The wireless router is on a separate /24 IP (thus easily isolated from the rest of the wired network via 255.255.255.0 masking), and is MAC-locked and WPA secured to two devices: a Blu-ray player used for disc testing, and an iPad. For whatever reason, that also sped up my iPad performance. I don't think consumer routers handle too much traffic all that well, so having just a couple of wireless-only devices on a single router has worked great. Large file transfers can still be made between systems internally, on sub-routers and switches, and the master router and wireless router are unaffected by the data transfer.

This may not apply to a lot of people, but I just wanted to put it out there.

[kpmedia]

To add another tip to this post...


Blocking bad sites via OpenDNS:

In addition to simply speeding up your Internet speeds, advanced DNS services give you control over blocking "bad sites". Parents out there can input the OpenDNS into the router, and then password-protect the router. Little Timmy and Suzy then have no way to go around your protections*, unlike nanny software, because the blocks are hardwired in at the earliest part of the incoming signal. Schools use this kind of technology to block any number of time-wasters: Facebook, mySpace, Youtube, porn, games, malware, proxies, etc. By default, OpenDNS already blocks known phishing and malware sites, but you can add custom domain names to be blocked.

(* Unless they both have administrative access to the computer and know how to change DNS on the computer itself; however, most kids won't know about DNS blocking. Not yet, anyway, from my experience. Kids should never have full admin access to shared family computers. Give them a login, and restrict their ability to change networking settings in the control panel.)

This is done by signing up for free OpenDNS service (or paid version) and then logging into the OpenDNS dashboard.

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What to Block:

While I don't believe in puritanical censorship, there is something to be said for blocking specific porn sites. These sites are time-wasters, and generally project unrealistic portrayals of sex to teens and college students. Kids should be outside being social and making real relationships, not sitting alone in front of a glowing screen. With a few entries, you can block all of the biggest Youtube-like porn sites: youporn.com, spankwire.com, xvideos.com, xhamster.com, tnaflix.com, redtube.com, and others. (Tip: Look at the Alexa Top 500 list, and scan for pornography sites.)

You can also block a lot of sites known for "sharing" malicious software, unauthorized software downloads, torrents, porn downloads, etc. Generally speaking, it's just stuff that your kids might do, which in some way may come back to harm you -- either by subjecting you to letters from lawyers, or by hosing your computer with malware. Sites worth blocking include: thepiratebay.org, rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, and quite a few others. It will take some research on your part. Google keywords "torrent" and "rapidshare" and you'll quickly come up with a list of junk domains.

The thing to remember is that the goal is not blocking everything, but simply to block the easiest targets. Frustration will generally cause a person to get back on-task, as opposed to continuing to look for more outlets. OpenDNS even lets you add custom block pages, should you feel the need to scare anybody and make warnings.

You can also block entire categories via OpenDNS, but I suggest against it, because there may be false positives, meaning legitimate and non-harmful are now unavailable to you. Overly aggressive (and misguided) parents may also opt to block Facebook, mySpace, Youtube and others. But that's really taking it to the extreme. Wacky conservative types have gone so far as to block news sites like CNN and MSNBC, because they want their kids to be indoctrinated by the cult of Fox News. Please block sensibly.

To see what traffic is happening on your network, you can also enable stats in the dashboard. That will let you analyze traffic in/out, and you can identify any new problem domains that may need to be blocked.


Important notes on dynamic vs static IP, and IP tracking:

Cable internet providers generally provide semi-static IP address. If your modem is on 24/7, and you have the same router, your IP address likely does not change often, if ever. You can always check up on your IP address by visiting a site like WhatisMyIP.com.

DSL users, and dial-up users (the dozen of you still left out there), have new IP addresses every few hours, because of how that dated technology works. This is called dynamic IP addressing. OpenDNS has accounted for this, as can be read at this page: Dynamic IP Technical Details. They suggest using their other free service DNS-O-Matic, which tracks your IP changes and ties it automatically to your OpenDNS account. In fact, I don't believe I've ever used DNS-O-Matic before, but my OpenDNS login works there, too!


And that's it for now...

I almost feel like an OpenDNS ad right now, but this service is immensely helpful in a number of ways -- not just speeding up slow internet.

If this post/thread has helped you, let us know. Or if you have questions, feel free to reply at any time.

Take care.