Internet Speed Issues

Hello everyone!

I apologize if this isn't the right board for this, but it seemed appropriate for the issue that I am having.

I'm having internet troubles and I would very much like to find out the cause. I'm fairly certain that I just have a very horrible ISP, but I figured I would post on here and see what everyone thinks.

I'll start by saying that I've had problems with my internet company (Frontier Communications) for years, and they have told me before that when I don't get the full speed that I am paying for it is because of the 'high demand' in my area. They have given me this excuse for years while doing absolutely jack about it. They care more about getting money from people than actually fixing the problems I guess.

Now I'm not sure if my current internet connection problems are caused from this, but it really makes me wonder. The problem I am having now is unique in that, when I download things via a torrent, I get close to my normal speed and when I download things ANY other way, or run speed tests on my providers website, or on speedtest.net I get WAY below what I am supposed to be getting. These issues have been going on for about 3-4 days now I think.

I have DSL and I am currently provisioned for 3.7 megabits. When my internet is working properly I get around 2.5 - 3.0. They actually raised my provisioned speed from 2.6 to 3.7 to help with the speed issues which was nice, but it hasn't done a whole lot really.

I had a tech come out today and he told me that when he checked the modem, it was reading 3 megs which is what it is provisioned for. He told me that the problem was somewhere in between the connection of the modem and my computer (with my computer likely being the problem). I found this comical considering that it reads the same way on two computers and there isn't, as far as I am aware, anything wrong with my computer causing this. I've done virus scans and scans with Malwarebytes, and these issues were happening right after a fresh clean OS install as well. I even ran a registry scan and came up with nothing just in case. It seems to me like this is more of this ISP's crap and their excuses.

Here are a few speed test results. There are four from speedtest.net and two from my ISP speed test.

(closest to me)
(the city Steam usually downloads from)
(a town closer to me than San Jose)
(another location close by)




Interestingly enough I also get packet loss when I ping servers using the CMD.

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8: (Google DNS 1)
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 96, Lost = 4 (4% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 72ms, Average = 33ms

Ping statistics for 8.8.4.4: (Google DNS 2)
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 99, Lost = 1 (1% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 66ms, Average = 33ms

Ping statistics for 4.2.2.2:
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 69ms, Average = 35ms

Now on to when I am torrenting files and how well it seems to work. I am running a torrent right now that is getting about 150 kBps to 200 kBps. This is still a decent bit under my provisioned speed, but I just thought it odd how a torrent is downloading faster than my overall connection is working at the moment.

Hopefully someone on here can give me some answers, it'll probably just end up being a problem on my ISP's end that they have failed to fix over these 3-4 days, but if not it'd be nice to get to the bottom of it.

Thank you!