Widespread internet instability?

probebly a local major router or something like that.   Blame your local (or 2nd most local) ISP  

especially if you are in the midwest.  Its probebly AT&T's stupid Redbacks being dumb (I work tech support for them, so I know )

Obviously its not the ENTIRE internet (unless you're hearing news of the end of the world)

Run trace routes...  sometimes you'll see a common IP address after which there are problems.

It also could just be YOUR router....   if you haven't tested this on any other connections.

I live in Vancouver and from what I know most of our traffic goes south through Peer1. My favorite TF2 server is based in Seattle and it craps out just like all the others. Even the stardock database went down this morning which borked the forums and even impulse.

Connections are a three-way street; Your PC, the ISP server & whatever target destination you're trying to reach... but i'm fairly sure you all knew this and yet,

The entire connectivity grid is highly dependant and a few key triad_mega_nodes which are strategically located between the many different core ISPs out there. Nobody can fit in without having to snap along this juggle feed through. Some of it might (at times) be soooooo busy with junk mail, piracy, Spam botters & what else that they just happen to be clocked out of the relative switching paths WHEN you simultaneously (as many thousands more every split second of each day!) ping around to connect at the routing flows exclusively aimed at that specific single com call only. Add the crc checks, the rapid but sometimes noticeable lag in remote areas, throw in a few unstable electrical supply infrastructures (yep, that DOES require energy too)... and you'd normally get a direct speed matching YOUR modem and other devices.

Over the last two weeks, Googgle would continually pop me into the wrong connections -- i pretty soon realized i had a Trojan DNS changer lurking around along with its darn Rootkit pusher stuff ON my solidly monitored PC by ** the** Symantec AV. Not so, it seems.

Uninstalled the Norton security program (so they claim) and switched back to an AVG free copy -- and by & wholly luck of a guess what... it DID purge what was hidden all that time when i trusted the other corp to protect me.

My point being... you may have a Virus in your machine, check the browser versions, do yourself a favor and install HiJackThis (scans registry for terrible stuff MISSED & completely ignored by some AV programs) to verify most win registry clugs.

Seriously, nothing can possibly be wrong with the Internet unless a super Hacker got around the triads mentioned above and even so, it'd take about 5 or less seconds to catch the weird but silly geek(s).

I will do some more in depth digging later but the only strange thing I could find was that Spybot S&D lists 6 seperate startup entries for ctfmon.exe, though there is only one instance running in task manager.

ctfmon is linked to microsoft office programs, but the only word processor I have or use on this computer is notepad.

My home internet and the Ironclad office internet has been total crap for the past week or so.

OMG, played WoW last night with some friends, horrible lag, but thought it was just me.  My friends said they also all had terrible times with their connections lately.  Another friend told me the same thing via email 2 days ago (wanted me to come over and try fixing it).  I'm having odd problems/lag too.  This is very strange. . .    

I've also been having internet problems lately. Things go slowly, random websites decide not to load that I've never had problems with before. And this has happened to me on multiple networks (my own, my neighbor's wireless, and my cousin's).

It's Armageddon!  

Any internet problems you guys saw yesterday were probably caused by our friends at cogent.  They are one of the major fiber/internet backbone providers, and they had a major issue in their chicago hub.  

Any time you want to check the health of the internet as a whole just check out http://www.internetpulse.net/ this lists all the major providers and their current response times.

looks like SkyNet is finally firing up.

I dunno, I'm tempted to blame Sprint again.  My net was actually outright down for several hours yesterday (and they're my provider, unfortunately).

But it may not be entirely the fault of any one company.

Pffft... it gets worst -- my eMail box has been receiving soooo much spam lately that it doesn't help either -- but, this IS a normal situation, right?

Bell_Sympatico ISP now has got the "password cramp" to access my pop & smtp feeds for the last three weeks or so - maybe this is another symptom that things ARE really going awry in the communication gears. Maybe some weirdo has thrown in a wrench in the stuff, ***again***!

Why do i get the feeling that "Big Brother" has just been caught dirty handed along with its partnership in crime - re-seller(s) of bandwidths of a multi corporate giga_profits nature?

Skynet (doombringer90) is indeed fully operative, maybe.

Call me a parano type with long arms connected straight to the Johny Mnemonic super web wrecking mess of a possible or feared future.

PS; Triad_Nodes are Hubs, i stand corrected.

IS a very well known Virus snatcher, trick is to determine how to get rid of the right files (possibly hidden by RootKits) without borking up the true ctfmon file.

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

Painful internet speed and reliability.

How would I do that?

My internet seems to be a bit closer to normal now except my ping remains crappy. I usually get 50-150ms for Canadian and US servers but I can't find anything under 400ms now.