Upload speed faster than download speed.

[lungbing]

Last week I had 3bb fibre to the home fitted.  Instead of the usual 100 Mb down  / 50 Mb up they have an offer of 200 Mb down 50 up at the moment.

It was so much faster than the old  rate I was on I never checked the actual speed.  But when I did run speed tests I found I was getting between 18Mb down and about 25 up!  The up was always faster than the down.

 

I rang 3BB, and they sent an engineer out.  He ran the speedtest on 3bbspeedtest on my computer and confirmed the poor figures.  He then ran the same test on the same site  on his laptop and got 10 times the rate I was getting.  He repeated it using my cable on his computer in case that was it, but it was not.  He said the fault was my end and left.

 

I took my PC to our local repair shop who tried a new LAN card and got the same slow  figures on the new card as on my PC, ie the new card made no difference. (His shop doesn't have 200Mb service)

 

Can anybody suggest why I am getting such poor download figures?

Edited November 19, 2016 by lungbing
spelling in title

[sniffdog]

Try to run a CAT 6 lan cable between your modem and your PC.


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[Get Real]

Like advised you can try with the cable, but I might think that it won´t make any difference. Most of the time these kind of things has to do with the operating system and basically how much crap there is in the computer. It can be all from virus and malware to just something changed in the system or gone aways. Computers are supposed to be safe, but that is many times not the reality.

Maybe it works with the cable, otherwise it´s very hard to put a finger on what it is. If not work I would copy all the things I want to save to a second partition, another harddrive or a flash disc and re-install the operating system and software that you have. That works for me when I have a problem, but of course you can make somebody search for what´s wrong. Unfortunately that can take a lot of time.

[KhunBENQ]

With the described scenario I also don't have another conclusion than "something wrong" with your PC.

 

Do you have antivirus/net nanny (internet protection) software installed?

 

If so:

What is it?

Have you tried to disable it temporarily for the test?

 

What operating system do you have and made sure that the drivers for your card are up-to-date?

 

[Anthony5]

I have a similar issue on my Windows 7 PC.on 3BB adsl.

 

Connected by LAN and only 2 meter cable to the Ethernet switch, it get half the speed from all other devices spread all over the house.

 

That are 1 other PC with same OS, a couple of Android devices and my phone over WIFI

 

I have reinstalled OS a few times already, switched off AV, installed drivers from MB manufacturer and from Realtek website, changed LAN Cable, used different port, connected directly to the router but all to no avail.

 

It is only on international speed tests though that the speed is halved, while on Thailand speed tests I get about 20% less.

Edited November 19, 2016 by Anthony5

[sniffdog]

I exchanged all my CAT5 cables with CAT 6 and the speed to all devices increased dramatically. About 180 baht for a 1.8 meter CAT6 cable.


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[Anthony5]

17 minutes ago, sniffdog said:

I exchanged all my CAT5 cables with CAT 6 and the speed to all devices increased dramatically. About 180 baht for a 1.8 meter CAT6 cable.


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Cat5e support 1000 Mbps, so I assume your download speed is somewhere near that, otherwise I don't believe any improvement should be noticeable with CAT6.

[sniffdog]

Wrong. Gooooooogle .... and get familiar why cat6 is superior to CAT5e.


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[KhunBENQ]

And why should the CAT5 cable lead to a worse download rate compared to upload?

I never had a CAT6 cable and my CAT5s to the gigabit switch are good enough to transfer files from PC to laptop with about 500 MBit/s. Far far from rates on the internet.

 

And as the OP already wrote:

Quote

He repeated it using my cable on his computer in case that was it, but it was not.

 

I am clueless about hardware related issues.

[Anthony5]

2 minutes ago, KhunBENQ said:

And why should the CAT5 cable lead to a worse download rate?

I never had a CAT6 cable and my CAT5s to the gigabit switch are good enough to transfer files from PC to laptop with about 500 MBit/s. Far far from rates on the internet.

 

And as the OP already wrote:

 

I am clueless about hardware related issues.

 

 

Even an SSD has a read speed far below the speed Cat5e is capable of.

[sniffdog]

I never said it would work for sure. But the transfer rate for example from my router to my NAS was around 10MBs with a CAT5. When I replaced the cable with a CAT6 it jumped up to 40MBs.


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[Anthony5]

3 minutes ago, sniffdog said:

I never said it would work for sure. But the transfer rate for example from my router to my NAS was around 10MBs with a CAT5. When I replaced the cable with a CAT6 it jumped up to 40MBs. The OP never said what kind of cable he used in his home and shop tests. Maybe the cable was faulty.


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But what you say now is something completely different.

 

If you got 10MB that mean you got 80Mb, which would be more than sufficient for the OP's internet connection.

 

A Cat5e cable is rated at 100Mb, but can actually deliver up to 1000Mb on short lengths or small files, so it was more likely that your cable was faulty instead of the one from the OP.

[sniffdog]

He has 200Mbs so how can 80Mbs be sufficient.

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[JaseTheBass]

Try using a current operating system. Win7 is obsolete and will not perform as well as the current Win or Mac OSs.

[KittenKong]

22 hours ago, lungbing said:

I took my PC to our local repair shop who tried a new LAN card and got the same slow  figures on the new card as on my PC, ie the new card made no difference.

 

Try booting from an Ubuntu USB stick or DVD and doing the same speed test:

 

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/try-ubuntu-before-you-install

 

This will completely bypass your operating system without actually changing anything. It will quickly show if you have some configuration or OS problem. And it's free.

 

I found that even with a bog-standard 18Mbs ADSL connection my old 100Mbs router simply wasnt up the needs of my local network with everything working (my NAS was slow). So I replaced it with a gigabit model and never looked back.

[KhunBENQ]

8 hours ago, JaseTheBass said:

Try using a current operating system. Win7 is obsolete and will not perform as well as the current Win or Mac OSs.

 

Sorry, but this is completely misleading.

Wndows 7 is as fast on the network as Windows 10.

Such basic stuff like TCP/IP stack is unchanged at the base since decades.

Don't tell that Windows 7 could not handle some xxx Mbit/s.

 

[KhunBENQ]

7 hours ago, KittenKong said:

 

This will completely bypass your operating system without actually changing anything. It will quickly show if you have some configuration or OS problem. And it's free.

That sounds like a good idea.

I still suspect that something is badly wrong with the OPs PC software (overall, Windows plus 3rd party components) admitting that I can't guess what it is from the problem description.

A clean system could unveil.

 

[lungbing]

Thank you all for your suggestions.

 

My ethernet card driver was slightly out of date so I updated that first, to no effect.

 

I have run Malwarebytes, Superantispyware and Panda antivirus full scans and they found a few tracking cookies but nothing else.

 

I'm running Windows 7 ultimate.

 

I've tried running the speedtest with VPN enabled in Chrome and without, no noticeable difference there. Same again with Opera instead of Chrome, with/without VPN.

 

I tried 3bb speedtest on my wife's  laptop running Windows XP via wi-fi and that gave the same figures as mine, about 18 Mb down and 23 Mb up.

 

I've tried altering the speed the card works at, in the device manager but I can't improve the download speed.

 

The Ubuntu idea is a good one, thank you.  That's next week's project.

 

 

[Anthony5]

22 hours ago, sniffdog said:

He has 200Mbs so how can 80Mbs be sufficient.

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Cat5e is rated at 100Mb over up to 100 meter distances, but support up to 1Gb over short distances or small files.

 

The 80Mb was only mentioned as that was the speed you received on your Cat5 cable, and has nothing to do with speed rating.

 

You hopefully also understand that there is Cat5 and Cat5e, which have different ratings.

[lungbing]

The cable type has nothing to do with my problem as I used the same cable  as did the 3BB engineers who got 200 Mb download on their laptop as I did 20 Mb on my PC within a minute or so of each other.

[lungbing]

Well that was interesting.  Following KittenKong's suggestion I downloaded Ububtu.  After an initial error where I burned the .iso file to a DVD as a .iso file instead of as the files within the .iso,  I booted up into Ubuntu.  very slow, od course, as it's working from a DVD instead of my SSD boot disc.

 

Firefox is already there so I loaded speedtest and got the figure 232 Mb down and 52 Mb up!  So the engineers who visited me Saturday were right, 3BB are giving me that speed.

 

Back into Windoze and tried it with Firefox again, just in case the browser was making a difference.  8.31 Mb down and 25.3 Mb up.

 

So the problem lies somewhere in Windows.  That's narrowed it down a bit and eliminated the cable and  ethernet card settings which presumably Ubuntu also used.

 

Is there a Windows 7  expert in the house?

 

[sniffdog]

Reinstall


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[tutsiwarrior]

I read this thread and did an ookla speed test and also found that my upload speed was greater than my download...and then I changed the ethernet cable to the router to a CAT6 cable that I had lying around and things were corrected...I'm on a ToT basic package 20/5 and my international speed (S'pore, LA, London) is now almost better than what I am paying for...

[sniffdog]

Good to see that at least one contributor got better results with a CAT6 cable. At least my suggestion was not in vain.


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[KittenKong]

14 hours ago, lungbing said:

So the problem lies somewhere in Windows.  That's narrowed it down a bit and eliminated the cable and  ethernet card settings which presumably Ubuntu also used.

 

OK, the Ubuntu test has done its job and has proved that there is nothing wrong with your hardware at all.

 

However, whilst Ubuntu and Windows both use the same ethernet card they certainly dont share the same settings, and the test has proved that your Windows settings or configuration are out of kilter somehow.

 

Unfortunately there are many possible causes, but try the following separately and see if any help:

 

1. Turn off all other Windows devices. Reboot your machine without starting the other devices. Run the test.

 

2. Turn off all 3rd party security software (temporarily) and run the test again.

 

3. Reboot in safe mode with networking and run the test.

 

4. Create a new admin user account and reboot into it. Run the test.

 

None of the above will result in any permanent changes and are designed just to show where the fault might be.

 

 

[lopburi3]

Does your PC have WiFi?  Turn it off to be sure the wired connection is being used (if you can not easily do on computer do it on modem for test).  I noticed my computer often used the WiFi connection until I removed that option on computer.

[lungbing]

Thanks for the idea , Lop, but no, my PC doesn't have wifi.  

 

I've tried what Kittenkong suggested.

 

1.  Remove all devices  - no effect, still slow.

2. Remove all security including Windows Firewall and Defender and Anti-virus, one at       a time    -  no effect

3. New admin account - no effect  18Mbs down  39Mbs up

4. Safe mode  -  OH YES!   166Mbs down  46 Mbs up.

 

So what does safe mode do for settings or drivers ?  Any help anybody?  I think we're getting closer.  Can I use the safe mode drivers for my ethernet card? (assuming it's the card at fault)

[Anthony5]

3 minutes ago, lungbing said:

Thanks for the idea , Lop, but no, my PC doesn't have wifi.  

 

I've tried what Kittenkong suggested.

 

1.  Remove all devices  - no effect, still slow.

2. Remove all security including Windows Firewall and Defender and Anti-virus, one at       a time    -  no effect

3. New admin account - no effect  18Mbs down  39Mbs up

4. Safe mode  -  OH YES!   166Mbs down  46 Mbs up.

 

So what does safe mode do for settings or drivers ?  Any help anybody?  I think we're getting closer.  Can I use the safe mode drivers for my ethernet card? (assuming it's the card at fault)

 

What is safe mode

 

http://www.viryatechnologies.com/Virya-Blogs/it-support/2010/08/02/what-is-safe-mode-and-why-would-i-use-it.html

[lopburi3]

Expect you have a program installed at startup causing issues - safe mode only installs basic operating system.  You can start to install other programs to try and find the cause. 

[KittenKong]

3 hours ago, lungbing said:

4. Safe mode  -  OH YES!   166Mbs down  46 Mbs up.

 

OK, that's both good and bad as the three other possibilities would have been simpler to fix. Your problem may be tedious.

 

Assuming that it isnt too much of an inconvenience, I would be inclined to back up your data, equip yourself with the manufacturer's recommended drivers and then wipe the hard drive completely and reinstall the OS. Having done so, test the speed. Then do all available Windows updates again testing the speed from time to time. Do not install any third party software of any type until all the Windows updates are done, and when you do install any do a speed test afterwards. This at least should show at what point the speed is slowing down.

 

Another option (assuming that you have a valid version of Win7 which is unlikely as you say you have Ultimate, the pirate's favourite) would be to upgrade to Win10. This can still be done for free. Win10 is unlikely to have the same problem. In fact you could install Win10 and all its updates and all your programmes and use it for a month to test anyway.