How can I find out if Comcast is throttling my connection? In fact it seems the worst when I have been using this forum a lot. Maybe it is my imagination. That is a possibility.

When a speed test is run I get huge bandwith numbers. Usually high 50's mbps, yet reloading is slow. Granted it could be a problem with my computer. However if other members are experiencing similar problems with Comcast Cable then there must be a problem somewhere.

Add to this recurring message "504 Bad Gateway" which some of us are getting. I wonder if we are getting a per-user throttling based on usage?

My experience and knowledge of computing is limited so I maybe barking up the wrong tree suspecting the cable companies. Maybe it is the long distance trunk providers.

Any ideas what is going on? Is there a way to test for throttling?

Trolley

I already hate COMCAST because they took off one of my favorite channels, RFD TV.
I also have gotten errors messages lately while trying to access this forum. I got some of them while I was away from home using unknown providers? I took that to be a connectivity problem with this site.
No t being a big COMCAST supporter, I wouldn't take anything off the table. I would think slowdown before actual non connecting.

__________________
NRA LIFE MEMBER

This site has been acting slow in loading and hanging up at times for some time now, only site I am experiencing it on, don't know why.
Glen

__________________
NRA Life 1969
OGCA

Maybe but certainly not for something as trivial as web browsing which uses very little bandwidth. I'm sure everyone knows the courts ruled against the FCC and net neutrality so providers are again (at least for now) free to discriminate as they please and possibly exhort money from companies like Netflix, Hulu, google, Skype, utube etc for preferential treatment of their content delivery.

Bandwidth hogs are a different story... Netflix is the biggest bandwidth hog on the net and hated by most providers. It still works for the most part but there have been a lot more problems lately. Have not decided whether it's throttling yet or just Netflix has exceeded its capacity.

Unless you are constantly downloading HD movies, music etc I would not worry. Some like Comcast have monthly caps. If you exceed that they start throttling.

Yes, that is what throttling is. It squeezes your bandwidth but does not deny you access.

Thanks Pilgrim

There are at least 3 threads open in the Office complaining about same.
I don't know if anyone has acknowledged the problem or not.

__________________
Regards, Ron
USASA 1965/69

There is a thread in the Forum Office about the site running slow. There was a note from the administration this morning stating they are aware of the issues and are working to resolve the situation.

Search Google or your favorite search engine for "internet speed test" and try at least 3 different ones. Pick the ones far away from you. They test pretty accurately for real traffic.

Then, there is a windows utility, tracert.exe or traceroute.exe, that is on most PCs. It is interesting in that it shows the delay in miliseconds at each hop between you and the other internet address. Long delays can impact speed.

I was with Adelphia getting 6 Mbit/sec. When they went belly up, ComTrash took over. They dropped my Internet speed to 1 Mbit, charged me for 6 and repeatedly lied to me saying that is what it was. I finally got a tech to my home who told me they throttled everyone to make room for HDTV on the cable. I dropped them and never looked back.

I have Fios and this site seems to run slow, I'm not sure why, a fishing site that I go changed their server about two years ago and it has run slow ever since,maybe it might be the server that makes this site seem slow, sometimes on this site a screen comes up that says bad gateway, it doesn;'t happen too often, also this site always has a lot of people using it, that might be the problem also.

__________________
Don

Maybe if more people bought contributing memberships more money could be put towards better servers? Just an idea.

__________________
Lounge Lizard Extraordinaire

Good idea. We (I) forget that there are over a hundred forty thousand registered members. There are over 3,600 viewing as I type, 2,800 are guest. The number of regularly participating members must be less than 500 I would think. I could be wrong there.

Is there a posting of how many members make cash contributions?

Trolley

Comcast in AZ user here. We do NOT subscribe to Comcast cable TV, only high speed internet.

I notice peak hours of TV, 7-10pm (that's 1900hrs to 2200hrs for all you green types…)

that our streaming on our Apple TV is S-L-O-W, so slow that a 1hr show says it will take 2hrs to load!!!

Comcast claims no throttling, but I firmly believe Comcast is punishing it's customers that pay for internet only and stream TV vs. their cable TV subscribers.

I'd bet my pinky toe on it!

I also get the "Bag Gateway" from time to time. The slowness here is no different than I get on Gun Broker, or some other similar site. I will say that the Ruger Forum is a little faster, but more antiquated. Maybe that's part of the problem. As the sites upgrade to more complex software the slower they run because of more overhead? I'm no computer guy so I don't know.

__________________
H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

Yeah, it is ALWAYS our equipment BULL-- Iuse a new MAC and can assure you it is not my equipment-- The big C is to blame, we also cancelled the cable tv from them. Been getting the problem a lot of lat, and now only this forum--

I get a lot of 'Bad Gateways' or 'This page cannot be found'. The site has been running slow as Christmas, also the CBS news site so I know it's not just this forum. Some of it may be the site's capability, very high internet traffic and I wouldn't put it past my provider for slowing things down.

PS I'm sitting here at 3-4 pm EST and everything is clicking along real fast.

Don't kid yourself,
THIS SITE IS VERY SLOW...

I just noticed there was 435 members in the lounge, not counting all the other forums, that's a lot of people.

__________________
Don

They're throttling us all right but in the traditional sense. I've been taking a regular beating from Brighthouse (Now there's an oxymoronic lie). $178/mo for the worst pulp wash possible. I had one of their tools call me the other day and try to upsell me. Within 5 minutes she was begging to get off the phone. I told her the home phone is worth $30/mo, the 9/3 MBS internet another $40. Funny she couldn't account for the other $108 except that I could buy more channels. For their price I should get a performing company to act out Hamlet in my living room. Curses on all cable providers, got us hooked 20 years ago for $40 a month and too much to watch to $178 and it all sucks or I've seen "Die Hard" 500 times. Don't get me started. Joe

__________________
Wisdom chases me; I'm faster

Its probably on the server side. These types of forums are often run from service providers like HostGator. They will sell space on their servers for a monthly fee and depending upon what package you buy. If this site is on a dedicated server then it should run smoothly but if its on a shared server then its usually someone else's that's overburdening the server.

RFD TV is one of my favorites too. I especially like ‘Larry’s Country Diner’.

Where I live there is no cable so I’m forced to use satellite internet service. I’m also experiencing slow load times and a lot of 503 Error messages on the S&W Forum that started a coupe of days ago. All other sites function normally.

__________________
A gun has no brain.. use yours

I was Comcast victim when I lived in NJ, now I have Time warner and I can tell you its the same **** here.

All resources go to the HDTV, the internet stinks, I get pages at a standstill from 1500 to 2300, with sporadic bursts of slow performance.

They offer to send a tech who re does the connections, checks the modem and pronounces we're go to go and we now have "free Turbo service for 6 months. He leaves, by 3 PM its the same again!

There is no option here, TW has the franchise, Verizon never reached us w/ the FIOS so we're stuck (unless you want to watch the 200 channels of HDTV).

Much of the throttling has been taking place on the backbone connections that are owned by other communications companies. They have been doing it to get more money out of the Web TV providers.

The recent Bad Gateway problems are confined to the S&W site and the management has acknowledged there is an issue. See the posts in the Forum Office.

In December '13, my Cox Cable TV and Internet package in Vegas cost $159 monthly. In January, it rose to $183. Math is not my long suit, but that seems to be a 15% increase. That's excessive. Am getting some flickering on the TV screen of late, but nothing like the weekly problems I experienced with TWC in NYC.

Number of thoughts regarding this post...
1. Yes Commiecast really stinks. My bill just keeps going up and up while their service goes down and down. Their latest trick is to make you watch commercials even while in the "On Demand" section. I used to wait for the shows to go there and then watch them because the commercials have taken over too much. Now you get a message that says "fast forward has been disabled". Guess I'll have to DVR more. Won't rant anymore on them.
2. The "Bad Gateway" and very slow loading has been showing up only on this site while other sites work fine. This just started happening to me a week or so ago. Guess they are working on this.
3. The so called speed test are inaccurate. Commiecast gives an initial burst of speed and then slows down. The test results are based on that burst. If you could run a constant test for about 2 minutes you might see your real speed. If there are any high tech people out there, correct me if I'm wrong.
4. Not sure how this forum works financially. I'm assuming that it's supported by ads. What I'd like to see is more people contribute, even at the lowest level (like me). It's a well run forum and a few dollars from us can keep it that way. A Bronze membership cost less than a box of .45's.

__________________
It's Alive !!

One of the 3 threads (the one on slow loading that was 2 pages long) has disappeared from
the office. Hope someone will find a solution to the slow loading and all the 502 & 504 error messages.

Don

__________________
Laus Deo! <><

This morning the pages are coming up as fast as I click on them, even when it's running slow it's not too bad, I can live with it.

__________________
Don

The thread is gone and I noticed that stats on who is online and how many in each sub-forum are gone. I also noticed that the site is running very well this morning. Yesterday they promised a fix within 24 to 48 hours and it looks like they did it.

For those that do not visit the Forum Office and are still wondering what has been going on check this out. 502's/504's and forum slowness

504 Gateway errors typically happen when using load balancing devices like a LTM (Local Traffic Monitor). Some popular makes are F5 or Cisco. Web servers are typically NOT connected to the internet. What happens is when you connect, you are connecting to a load balancer. That devices then forwards your connection to one of many web servers. A misconfigured load balancer may send your connection to a non-responsive web server one minute and to a different web server the next minute.

If you have your site hosted, it could be their forwarding device. They typically have just a few public IPs and parse the connection to determine which web server to send the request to.

Bottom line, it's not you.

__________________
Semper Fi

Thanks, that explains a lot. Being forthright saves a lot of frustration. A site that I pay for attempted a disastrous 'upgrade' and the sysop disappeared for months.

I had contacted AT&T about my impending move to San Antonio. I wanted to see if I could get a separate phone line & DSL from my Dad's because they have that U-verse mess & I didn't want to get involved in that. In short, they said the phone was no problem but I couldn't do a separate DSL. That I couldn't figure out as the DSL is part of the phone line right? Today my Dad told me that he upgraded to the fast DSL, which is 18mbs. Mine here at the house is 6mbs. So that will be cool if they don't throttle it down too much!

__________________
Lounge Lizard Extraordinaire

Things are loading better tonight but keep on goosing the hamster.

I had one of the world class cable systems for about 10 years. Insight cable was a private cable co that went public and then went private again. A guy from Florida named Michael Wilner ran the company and it was a labor of love. About 2 years ago Time Warner made him independently wealthy and now Comcast has bought out TWC. Goes into effect next week. I get 20mbs service and it's pretty reliable, probably because Insight rewired the whole city. Prices went up almost immediately and the email system is much more awkward.

U-verse will be available soon and I may try that. I've used Centurylink's Prism which is very similar to u-verse and I liked it. U-verse bundle prices are a savings and they have a wireless receiver as an option if you get multiple outlets .

__________________
God spelled backwards is dog.