There are however issues that you may want to consider before going all in on the idea. There is first the issue of ownership and all the responsibilities that come with it.

The subscriber is basically responsible for all activities. Your neighbors’ kids downloading music from the Internet, illegal activities such as fraud or spam, or even hacking or computer sabotage. Law enforcement, lawyers and the ISP will be knocking at the subscribers’ door first, or even worse, smash it wide open in the night. And while that’s without doubt a horror scenario, I’d personally would not want to experience it first hand.

Other issues may come up. Since you are sharing bandwidth, you may experience downloading, streaming or even connectivity issues on the Internet. While you may be able to upgrade your line for a fee, you may still experience less than optimal situations especially in the evening or on weekends.

You also have to consider the possibility that your neighbors move away, and when they do, they are likely unwilling to pay whatever you have agreed on for the monthly broadband plan. This could mean that you would overpay for an expensive plan that you do not need anymore.

Another aspect to consider is the availability of the Internet connection itself. Imagine your Internet connection going down on a day where you are not at home. Your neighbors cannot call your ISP to get the issue resolved, and they probably cannot get into your house either to reset the modem. This may not be a problem if you are back in the evening, but what if it happens while you are on vacation?

You are also sharing a local network with your neighbors, which can make it a lot easier for them to hack into your computer. And while that is again something that is not likely to happen, it is still a possibility.

Depending on your Internet Service Provider’s terms of service it may be forbidden to share the connection with another household or person. Abuse can lead to termination of service, fees and even legal action in court.

Would I share my Internet connection? I certainly would with my family, and a few close friends. I’d still have a bad feeling during that time.

Do you share your Internet with someone else? If so, why?

We have reviewed programs in the past that display the network traffic in the taskbar and on the desktop, with Net Traffic being one of them.

NetSpeedMonitor is another professionally looking option for the Windows operating system. And unlike Net Traffic, it displays the upload and download bandwidth right in the taskbar.

The network monitor can keep a history of the network adapters upload and download speed which it will do by default. You can disable that during setup and later on in the options, which you may want to do if you are only interested in realtime connection speed information.

The program displays the upload and download bandwidth in kbit per second. You can customize the layout in the program options. Here it is possible to change the font type and size, rendering, prefixes, and the bitrate among other things.

The traffic history can be used to check a system’s monthly bandwidth utilization which can be useful to check that you do not hit bandwidth caps or to troubleshoot recurring issues with the Internet connection.

A data traffic menu is activated if traffic is logged on the system which details sent, received and total traffic per day or month.

The data is populated automatically when the program is running and monitoring is enabled. Monitoring can be turned off, which can be useful if you are working with a laptop in multiple locations and do only want to monitor traffic in some locations.

NetSpeedMonitor can display the list of active connections in another program window. Here you see the process, local and remote IP as well as the state of the connection.

The only downside here is that traffic information are not displayed in the window.

Windows users who like to display realtime traffic information in their taskbar, and those who want to record the bandwidth utilization of their Internet connection, can download the latest version of NetSpeedMonitor from the developer website.

There may be users on the other hand who experience Internet connections that are less than optimal. This can range from low data transfer speeds over disconnects, timeouts and other issues.

The free Internet connection optimization software TCP Optimizer has been designed for those users in mind. Experienced users on the other hand will find a lot of options there that they can use to get the maximum out of their Internet and network connection.

You are presented with the following screen on startup. Note that the program is fully portable, which makes it a nice tool for a troubleshooting DVD or repair stick.

Inexperienced users can use one of the default settings after using the slider to configure their maximum connection speed. The settings include Windows default, current, optimal or custom. Only the custom setting enables all menus and configuration options in the program.

As I said earlier, the program offers access to many different settings. To name a few: Direct Cache Access, TCP Windows Auto-Tuning, NetDMA, Time to Live, Windows Scaling heuristics and Congestion Control Provider. The guide at the developer site explains each setting. Tabs lead to even more settings.

Here it is for instance possible to optimize Internet Explorer connections, change the host resolution priority, network memory allocation or configure gaming tweaks.

The Registry tab displays all related Windows Registry settings. Users who prefer to tweak those settings there can do that directly from within the program after enabling Registry editing in the preferences. This can be handy if you find a Registry tweak on the Internet that you want to test.

TCP Optimizer is a free program for two types of users. First for users who experience issues with their Internet connection, and then for advanced users who want to tweak their connection to get the maximum out of it. Users who do not experience issues and who do not need their connections to be 1 millisecond faster are probably best off without the program. Regardless of that, I highly suggest to read the documentation first.

The software can be downloaded from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Twenty years ago, if you wanted to find something out, you’d probably have to visit a library, or look it up in a collection of encyclopedias. If you wanted to buy food, you’d go to the supermarket, or if you wanted to browse for a new TV or gadget, you’d go to an electrical outlet and look around. Now, we can Google virtually any fact we like and get the answer instantly, we can do our grocery shopping online and have it delivered directly to our doors, and for anything else there are a multitude of Internet companies selling electrical goods that offer significant savings to those found in actual shops.

So the question is, with all these services that enable us to do virtually anything from the comfort of our armchairs, are we getting to dependent on our Internet connections? Have you ever wondered what would happen if the Internet were to be disconnected globally just for one day? Is your Internet connection really just as important as your gas or electricity supply?

For many people, especially those who run a business from home, the answer to this question could be a resounding yes! The Internet being down for just a day could devastate a business that operates on a schedule and to tight deadlines. This is why many service providers promise an always-on service with 99.999% uptime, for companies and people who simply must have the Internet at all times. Some people even go to the length of installing more than one Internet line into their homes and offices, just for the occasion when one service goes down. Imagine if you have a small workforce working online. You still have to pay these people, even if they are unable to do their work due to a service disruption. Without electricity, you can run computers on battery backup or a generator for a number of hours, but if your working environment is in the cloud, you’re truly stumped without your Internet.

Many people are also looking at satellite connections and mobile phone technology to provide backups to their primary Internet connections. After all, having more than one cable into your home or office is no good if a construction worker puts a spade through a bundle of cables at the end of your street!

So think to yourself. What would you do without the Internet for a day, or a week? How would you get on? What kind of inconvenience would it be? How much money would you lose? Should you consider backing up your connection with an alternative service?

Sometimes though it is not the Internet connection itself that is causing the connectivity issues. Sometimes it is a configuration on the computer. This can be after installing new network adapter drivers, a Windows update or other software that may interfere with network traffic.

Connectivity Fixer is a free software for Windows that can fix Internet connection issues automatically. The program can monitor the Internet connection actively, to fix any problem or issue automatically when it is discovered.

The description on the developer website mentions IP and Winsock related issues that are repaired by the software.

Two options are displayed when the software is started. The Fix Now button runs the repair of the Internet connection manually when clicked on. The Monitoring button starts the Internet connection monitoring which will trigger the repair program whenever connectivity issues are discovered.

A click on Settings open the program options. Here it is possible to configure the program to start with Windows, to enable the connection monitoring on program startup and to let the program fix problems automatically without notification (the default is set to notify the user when connectivity issues are discovered).

The program can detect connectivity issues for both wired and wireless Internet connections. Windows users can download the program from the developer website. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework to be installed on the system. (via)

I usually start with the game requirements. You find them in the manual, in a faq or readme on the CD, or on the developer homepage usually. A search for “game name ports” should be enough to bring up websites where the ports are listed. Ports? It would be way to technical to write everything there is to know about ports. Think of them as doors to your computer. Doors can be closed from both sides, or only from one side. Incoming traffic is usually allowed, while outgoing traffic is limited. Network traffic can utilize many different ports. Some are standardized, like port 21 for ftp connections, some are not and game dependent.

Once you have the ports, you need to check if and how they are blocked. There are basically two possibilities here. It is possible that software running on the PC is blocking the traffic. The most common software is a firewall that controls the traffic. The second possibility is hardware based, a router, hardware firewall or computer the traffic is routed through. Depending on your access level, you may have access to all configurations, to some, or none at all.

Hardware Connection Issues

Lets assume it is your home network and that you have full access to all devices and programs. It does not really matter if you start to check your hardware or software options first. I usually start with the hardware. Check the manual of the device, e.g. a router manual, to find out how you can access the devices configuration. It is either an IP address that you need to type in your favorite web browser or a domain name that is only locally valid.

I have to enter speedport.ip to open the admin interface of my Speedport W 920V router. You are usually asked to enter the admin password at this point. You find it on the router or in the router manual usually. If not, search the Internet for “device name default password” or “device admin password”.

While you are at it. Check the manual to find out how you configure ports in the device. On my device, I have to click on the Network entry, and then on NAT and Port rules to get there.

Make sure you add enable all ports that are required to play or host the game.

Try playing or hosting the game once you setup the ports. If it works, congratulations and lots of fun playing the game. If not, you may have a software firewall or other device that is blocking the traffic.

Software Connection Diagnostics

The sheer mass of firewall and security solutions makes that part difficulty. It can even happen that you have two different firewalls enabled, the Windows Firewall which ships with the operating system, and a second firewall that you have installed manually.

Lets look at Windows Firewall as this is probably the most common software firewall installed these days. Click the start button and select Control Panel from the start menu. Select System and Security, and in that menu Windows Firewall.

Windows displays the status of the firewall. If you see Connected, the firewall is active. If both are set to not connected, then the firewall is not active. You then need to check your system to see if another security program is running that controls the network traffic.

If it is on, you need to click on the “Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall” to see the access rights of the program or game you want to use. Windows displays a list of programs that are allowed to connect to the Internet. Look for the application or game in the list. If it is not there, add it with a click on Change Settings and another click on Allow another program.

Select the program from the list or click the browse button to add a program or game that is not listed there. A click on the add button in the same configuration menu adds the new program to the list. You can try to connect to multiplayer games or host games.

You can use software to check for open ports. Online tools such as Can You See Me, Port Check or Port Forward can help you check specific ports on a computer system.

Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments.

IPv6 offers a larger address space. The move from IPv4 to IPv6 is difficulty as it requires a coordinated effort from all parties including Internet users. Users with improperly configured computers may experience slowdowns, timeouts or other connectivity issues when the Internet moves to the IPv6 protocol.

Will you have troubles? You can find out if you run the IPv6 test. The test is an Open Source script that runs using JavaScript. Just visit the website http://test-ipv6.com and wait until the test has finished. The IPv6 test runs a series of tests including the browser’s IPv4 and IPv6 capabilities, IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity with and without DNS records and a test that checks if the ISP’s DNS server uses IPv6.

A click on test data reveals details about the tests.

Another click on Technical Info leads to a page that offers technical information about each test which may provide clues to troubleshoot the issue.

The most important test at this point in time for the majority of users is the dual stack test. There will be a transition period where websites and services can be reached via IPv4 or IPv6. The user’s computer now needs to pick one of the protocols and use it for the connection which means that devices that only support IPv4 at this time can still connect to the websites. Connectivity issues occur if this is broken.

Major services and websites will switch to IPv6 for a 24 hour period on World IPv6 day on June 8. Among them Google, Facebook and Yahoo. That’s where the dual stack DNS record support can be tested in a life environment.

It does not make sense for instance to run an email client, a streaming video or music service, or a sftp client without network connection. Those programs usually do not need to run and the majority of users close them manually in those situations.

NetLaunch basically automates the process. The application can be used to configure applications and actions that the program will perform when the net connection drops and becomes available. It is for instance possible to launch applications with the help of NetLaunch as soon as an Internet connection becomes available, or close some that are not needed when no connection is available.

Available actions are to launch a program with command line parameters if necessary, to quit or kill an application or do nothing. NetLaunch monitors the network connection of the computer and will apply the selected actions when a change is noticed.

Situations where NetLaunch may be useful:

• To automatically close programs when the Internet connection drops, to prevent connection errors or to save battery
• To launch applications when an Internet connection becomes available, e.g. an email client to check for new emails or an Instant Messenger for communication

The program settings hold the scan interval and an option to minimize the application to the Windows System Tray. NetLaunch has been developed as part of Donation Coder’s NANY 2011 challenge. It can be downloaded directly from the Donation Coder website. The software requires the Microsoft .NET Framework, a version is unfortunately not listed on the website.

Most speed tests on the Internet let you connect to one of their servers to perform the test. That’s sometimes not beneficial especially if the servers are not located in your country.

Tracert and ping are available on the local system but they do not reveal the speed of the connection.

SpeedTest is a free client and server software for Windows that can be used to test the connection speed of a local network or the Internet.

Users can install the client version to test the connection speed to IPs or Internet domains, or the Server version to allow clients to connect to that server to test the connection speed.

To test the speed users enter either an IP address or domain name in the Server form in the application interface. A click on connect or the enter key will connect to the location and record information about the connection. This includes the time, duration, bytes received and speed in KB/s.

The speed tester creates a visual representation of the connection speeds in a chart automatically.

Results can be printed or copied from the connection log. SpeedTest is available for download at the developer website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

While it is possible to configure the dial up connection to redial whenever the connection gets dropped, it is sometimes better to prevent it from being dropped in the first place.

That’s where software like Connection Keeper come into play. Those programs all use the same methodology to keep the connection alive: Create artificial network traffic.

connection keeper

The program can be configured to request a nonexistent url or an url from a list of configured sites. The first option uses less bandwidth, but may not be enough to keep the connection alive. This depends on the ISP and needs to be tested by the dial up user.

Connection parameters like query interval in minutes, timeout and delay can be configured in the main interface as well. The program supports error logs and an option to email errors to an email address.

Connection Keeper supports all configured dial up connections in Windows.

The application offers several features on top of the keep alive functionality. For one, it can be configured to automatically close popup windows that display a notification to the user asking whether to keep the connection alive. Several methods can be used to automatically deal with those popup windows, including sending a simulated button click, keystrokes or a direct Windows message.

Several command line parameters are available, for instance to test download a web page and report errors that may have occurred, good for troubleshooting the Internet connection.

Finally, Connection Keeper offers monitoring as well. It can monitor web sites and DNS records, and create error reports whenever an error is recorded.

Connection Keeper is a sophisticated free software for the Windows operating system that can be used to keep a dial up connection alive. It is fully compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 95 to Windows 7. The program is available for download at the developer website.

There are quite a few ways to analyze and troubleshoot the Internet connection. Two of the most common ones are using traceroute and ping commands.

The Internet service Pingtest can provide another perspective on the quality of an Internet connection.

It basically works by locating a server near the physical location of the user analysing the connection’s packet loss, ping and jitter. It will then rate the Internet connection based on those factors.

The reliability test has been created by the same company that is providing access to the Internet connection speed test over at Speedtest which can also be helpful at determining the quality of an Internet connection.

Which tools do you use if you want to test the reliability of an Internet connection? Let us know in the comments.

Measurement Lab was founded by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, Google Inc. and academic researchers. It provides access to five tools some of which have been mentioned earlier at Ghacks. The tools in question are:

• Network Diagnostic Tool – Test your connection speed and receive sophisticated diagnosis of problems limiting speed.
• Glasnost – Test whether BitTorrent is being blocked or throttled.
• Network Path and Application Diagnosis – Diagnose common problems that impact last-mile broadband networks.
• DiffProbe (coming soon) -Determine whether an ISP is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic.
• NANO (coming soon) -Determine whether an ISP is degrading the performance of a certain subset of users, applications, or destinations.

Only three of the tools are currently accessible on the M-Lab website. The Internet connection speed analysis can be directly initiated on the website without having to install third party software programs. The only requirement is the latest Java Runtime Environment to be able to run the diagnostics.

Each analysis provides results and the means to interpret those results. To achieve best results a server closest to you should be chosen. The speed analysis provides the means to identify problems with the connection or certain protocols.

A good way to start is to backup the current settings to be able to restore them in case the optimization turns out to make things worse. Inexperienced users might want to use the Optimal Settings button in the main interface to apply changes automatically. It has to be noted that the TCP Optimizer will also backup the settings before making any changes to the system.

Advanced users on the other hand can run a handful of tests that test the latency or the largest MTU value before they change dozens of settings manually. Changes range from setting the MTU value to the maximum connections per server and host resolution priority settings.

TCP Optimizer can be helpful if a user experiences problems with his Internet connection. It can be related to settings of the host system. If that is the case those settings can be optimized using the software.

A software program called Is It On by Erightsoft, the makers of the popular video converter Super, can do that. It is a small portable application for most Microsoft Windows operating systems that can check the status of a connection in a heartbeat and displays a green or gray light depending on the status.

The interface of the software application is as basic as it can get with virtually no settings available at all. It displays three items under Network Status: Direct Active Internet Connection, Lan Connection and Behind Intranet Network Proxy.

Depending on the type of Internet connection of the user’s computer it will display green lights if the connection is active, gray lights if the connection is not (currently) active. Is It On will automatically detect changes to the network status and display the information in a matter of seconds in the program’s interface.

The interface has been designed to be always on top with no option to minimize the window or reduce its size. That’s probably the greatest weakness of the application. It would be nice if the application’s interface could be reduced so that only the lights are shown. Moving it to the Windows System Tray with an option to automatically notify the user of status changes to the Internet connection would be another nice feature.

I was left with no choice but to wait until my Internet connection would be working again. This was an awkward situation for me because it disturbed my usual work flow which sees me working in the morning, getting out some posts, checking stats and creating new content for other sites that I own. All of this was delayed.

What could I do in the time that my Internet connection was down? I decided to run scan disk on all of my hard drives and Smart Defrag afterwards to optimize them. This are tasks that do not require my attention and I went to town earlier than I wanted to grab two Japanese learning books that I ordered and bring in my Nokie N73 cellphone which stopped working suddenly.

But the real question that would interest me is this: What are you doing if your Internet connection is down? Are you doing something else? I suppose that only a few of you are making their money working on the Internet which might mean that it is not tragic if you cannot connect to the Internet for a few hours.

Dial Up users need to transfer data between the local computer and the Internet to keep the connection alive. This can be done manually by refreshing a website every other minute or by using dial up software like Connection Keeper that operates in the background performing the task to keep the connection alive.

Connection Keeper simulates a web browser loading an Internet page every two minutes. Two minutes is the default value which can be changed in the options. The software program can either query existing websites that have been added to the application by the user or simulate the traffic only without querying a real website.

Keep Connection Alive

Connection Keeper provides access to a few features that customize the process further. The user can pick a duration in hours that he wants Connection Keeper to run and decided if the application should terminate the Internet connection after that time.

The same window contains options to set the maximum query time for each request and error reporting which can be set to log errors to a file or to email errors to a recipient.

It comes with a few skins and an option to manually request a query to keep the connection alive. Best of all it is only using 1.5 Megabytes of computer memory in minimized state. Connection Keeper runs on all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 98 to Windows Vista.