Checking the "connection

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone could point me toward the easiest way to check my actual connection quality.
It feels like I'm losing my connection for about ten seconds every five minutes or so. Everything seems to be running perfectly smooth until I try to load a specific webpage, and then it just hangs there forever. It’s almost like the browser gets stuck in limbo; once I close Firefox and relaunch it, everything goes back to normal—right up until the next little freeze happens. I'm currently using Wi-Fi, and I can't help but wonder if the wireless signal itself might be bottlenecking my speeds. My ISP promised me a solid 75 Mbps, but whenever I run a speedtest, I’m only seeing about 50 Mbps. I really want to dig into this and figure out where the leak is so I know whether I should be giving my provider a call or if the issue is sitting right here in my own house.

Jack Alvarez said:Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone could point me toward the easiest way to check my actual connection quality.
It feels like I'm losing my connection for about ten seconds every five minutes or so. Everything seems to be running perfectly smooth until I try to load a specific webpage, and then it just hangs there forever. It’s almost like the browser gets stuck in limbo; once I close Firefox and relaunch it, everything goes back to normal—right up until the next little freeze happens. I'm currently using Wi-Fi, and I can't help but wonder if the wireless signal itself might be bottlenecking my speeds. My ISP promised me a solid 75 Mbps, but whenever I run a speedtest, I’m only seeing about 50 Mbps. I really want to dig into this and figure out where the leak is so I know whether I should be giving my provider a call or if the issue is sitting right here in my own house.

Start by power cycling your router. Just unplug it from the wall for about five minutes.
After that, try plugging directly in via an Ethernet cable so we can figure out if the issue lies with the ISP.
Once you've done that, let us know what kind of PC you're running and which Wi-Fi adapter you have installed.

To me, this sounds more like a browser glitch than a service provider issue.

Alright, let's see how it goes.

I finally got things stabilized by hooking up a 10m Ethernet cable, and now I’m hitting a solid 75Mbps on Speedtest. However, whenever I start pulling files through Internet Download Manager, the speed just starts jumping all over the place—it fluctuates wildly between 8, 9, 12, 10, 15, then drops back down to 5, 7, 9, 15, 10 MB/s. It’s like a roller coaster instead of staying at a nice, steady pace, say around 9 MB/s, right?
My setup is running an MSI Z87-Pro, an Intel Core i7-4770K, 8GB of RAM, an EVGA GeForce GTX 7970, and a Qualcomm Atheros AR946x Wireless Network Adapter.
So, yeah, those annoying little speed hiccups are still happening, so I'm going to install Chrome to see if it behaves any differently when I'm downloading.

Try looking at it through Chrome

Regarding everything else, that Wi-Fi adapter is rated for speeds up to 300 Mbps when you're running on an 802.11n network. It really shouldn't be causing any headaches for you, unless your router is set to a different mode entirely; even then, while you might see a slight dip in speed, it certainly shouldn't be enough to make playing Final Fantasy feel sluggish.
When it comes to downloading files from the web, remember that your connection isn't the only factor at play; more often than not, the bottleneck is actually the host server where the file lives, so that's not really a reliable way to judge your own setup.

It’s definitely not on my end, I can say that for sure; every once in a while, the connection just drops out completely for about 10 to 15 seconds, leaving my tablet, my phone, and even the TV totally dead. At this point, it feels like the culprit is most likely the router itself.