Cable Modem Slower Than DSL using One Application

[DennisD]

I have recently installed a cable modem (Motorola from Cox.net). It supplemented my wireless DSL modem. I can now alternate between them. I ran speedtest.net and the new cable modem was from 15-17 times faster than the wireless DSL. My browsers work faster, and files download much faster. I also have a couple of web sites. I use a shopping cart that gave me a desktop application for interfacing with the shopping cart's back office. It uploads and downloads all of my products on the web site. Timing how long things take, it turns out if I use the cable modem instead of being 15 times faster, it is 1/3 the speed of the DSL line. I have received various suggestions on how to fix this like, increase the size of virtual pages, uninstall my software firewall and antivirus program, which I have done, and no changes.

Cox Cable is unable to figure out what the problem is. The people who wrote the software for my shopping cart said that no one else is experiencing this problem, and they have users logging in using dial up, cable, dsl and T-1. They claim their back office uses the same protocols as browsers. I went to a Cable Forum, but no one had any suggestions.

I notice, using Task Manger Network Screen, that the percent utilization of the dsl line is 12% or so while the cable is less than 1%, when I'm using the back office and communicating with the shopping cart's servers.

I have a feeling that the problem is my software, but I'm not sure where to begin looking. I'm running 32 bit Vista Ultimate with SP1, on a 1 year old lap top with 4GB of memory. The laptop is capable of running 64 bit Windows 7, but I need to solve my problem before this software is available to me.

Does anyone have any suggestions or questions that might help?

Thank you,

[cluberti]

Well, assuming it's the same web code and the same machine attached to both cable and DSL (and from your description, this is correct), consider your cable provider may have a crap routing table to get you to the back-end destination. Consider running a tracert to the DNS name or IP address of the backend server from both the cable and DSL, and I'll bet you see a HUGE difference. I used to have problems with Netflix when I switched to Time Warner cable in my area, and it turns out they were sending me to California, then Chicago, then Florida, THEN to New York where Netflix's streaming servers were (instead of a more... um... direct route - I was in North Carolina at the time...). Needless to say, once they took care of this little routing "glitch", it was just as fast as my previous internet provider.