Hi,

I am using a 1mbps dsl connection to the internet (pppoe) and I dont get the full bandwidth that I am supposed to get, which is around approx 120kbps for file transfers or downloads. The speed fluctuates from 100-110 kbps and then gradually drops to around 60 or 70kbps or even 40 kbps sometimes.

So I would like to know, are there any advanced tools for detecting packet/speed loss.

ping/icmp is blocked on my ISP's network so traceroute doesnt work.

Thanks,

pingu.

This doesn't mean you are having packet loss. The site itself could be throttling the connection to allow for more connections.
There are many things on the internet that you nor anyone else has control over that could cause this.

First thing would be to get a base line with Speed Test.
Next would be to find a test site somewhere close to the site you are downloading from and get another base line.

The download speed goes down (after a brief moment) no matter which site I download from and stabilizes to 60 or 40kbps.
It doesnt matter if I download .iso from ubuntu.com or getfedora.org or even the kernel from kernel.org.

I get the same thing from my windows partition too.
So obv. its not the fault of my OS or my machine hardware to get it cleared up.

This problems exists since two weeks. Before that it used to work fine.
This is indeed very puzzling since speedtest.net detects the connection link to be 1 mbps.

I am only interested in knowing where the loss occurs so that I can tell my ISP Operator accordingly.

As lazydog said...and I would add to use wireshark to detect packet loss if you are dead set on that being the problem. I honestly look at what you have provided and go "well you got DSL, and not a fast DSL connection at that..."

When are you performing these tests? High peak times? If so, then of course it's going to be slow. Are you using WiFi and so are other devices at the same time? That will also kill your total bandwidth. Lots of things matter in these situations.

Here is the link for using wireshark to detect for "packet loss".

https://ask.wireshark.org/questions/...e-of-wireshark

Thanks for the link fjennings. I will look into it and keep you guys informed.
I also agree that its not a very fast dsl connection too

Its just that I happened to observe that basic browsing was slow out of the blue one day with the wifi router implemented when the connection was shared.
Even after removing the router the connection was still slow, hence the first natural guess was packet loss when I noticed the drop in the download speed.

Yes, wireshark was the next step I was going to recommend. don't like putting too much information out at one time as things seem to be overlooked.

Have you seen your ISP walking through the neighborhood going door-to-door selling their DSL? Or has there been any development in the area? This has happened to me, most notably when I was running my IT Support company. (This may not be your problem at all, so keep that in mind) Clients in the same area would start to complain about a loss in bandwidth once a development in the area was getting finished and people were flooding in. Neighborhoods, businesses, etc. It turned out, that the ISP in area was selling faster than their upgrading of the backbone. It lasted for a good while for these clients, and most switched to a new provider very early on. In my neighborhood, personally, I use Cox Cable so I didn't have to go through this, but CenturyLink, the DSL company, was going around selling their 40Mbps "Fiber" connection door to door. A lot of people bought in to, and soon after, my neighbors were complaining about how slow it was. I didn't care, if anything, my bandwidth soared to amazing speeds, and have stayed well above what I pay for. CenturyLink on the other hand is out to our neighborhood atleast 2-3 times a week performing upgrades on their own backbone because it's just not large enough for the demand.
Something to think about.

my ISP operator (who provides access to their network via pppoe) says im the only one complaining about less speed.

But I highly doubt him since he says the exact same statement every time I have a problem )

Last time I told him the pppoe service was toggling - on off and so on and the connections were timing out.
He made that very same statement like a parrot.
When he sent one of his tech support guys to my place, first thing to my surprise, he didnt know anything about linux

somehow that boosted "my" morale and ego :P , but anyway, I had to show him in a console window the toggling of the service.
Only then he realised that one of his ethernet switches was misbehaving and had malfunctioned.

hell, I wouldnt be surprised if the ISP has capped my speed, since even that has happened to me before.

I paid for a 1 mbps net connection one time and they put a pathetic 256 kbps connection account for me instead.
It was only until I told them that their intranet site showed that I had a 256k connection, which is when they changed it back to 1 mbps.
(but that was a different operator back then).