EXTREMLY Slow Download Speeds

[Chris Minckler]

I would first like to apologize for the extremely long wall of text here, but unfortunately, I would recommend reading it all to truly understand the very strange situation I am in.

 

Before you even ask, yes I know the difference between megabits and megabytes and that my download speed will be different from what is advertised by the ISP. The speed that I am currently paying for is 100mbps down, so I understand I should be getting around 12-13MBps.. However, what is happening currently is VERY unusual. I'm getting speeds of around 200-300 KILOBYTES per second. Never seen this before or had it happen to me.

 

I have checked speeds between two devices now. One was a semi-outdated laptop, and the device I'm currently using, my very new up to date gaming rig. I started off by downloading a file from a website on my laptop when I realized how incredibly slow the file was downloading. To ensure that it wasn't just the website restricting my download speed I downloaded a test file from this website. The download speeds were still incredibly slow. After that I used Ookla, as usual, to test my network speeds. While my laptop was set on a wireless connection I was getting a reading of about 20mbps download with a ping of 9 (which is obviously not the issue in this case). Strange. So I went to my router and plugged the laptop in with an ethernet cable and my speeds only bumped up to about 75mbps. Again, weird. I checked my network card to make sure that it's drivers were up to date and that it could handle my network speeds, it can. After that I went into my Wi-Fi status in the Network and Sharing center to check and make sure my ethernet connection was good, and it was telling me that I was getting the full 100mbps transfer speeds support as well. Obviously not. One final thing I did on the laptop that I should mention is that I also went into Task Manager and shut down all applications and processes besides Google Chrome (the browser I was and currently am using) that were using network bandwidth on the laptop. Even after I did this Google was appearing to only be using 1-3% of my network bandwidth. This occurred both before and after I shutdown all network transmissions besides Google's. 

 

After that endeavor I moved on to my desktop. As I said, this computer is very modern and meant to handle very high wireless speeds since I don't have a hard-wired ethernet port running from my room to my router. Right now I'm sporting an ASUS PCE-AC68 (here is a link to the adapter). I checked the drivers to make sure they were up to date, and they are. Again, I first went and downloaded a test file from the same site as before with the same download size. I was yet again getting about a 300kBps download speed. I went to Ookla one more time to test my speeds and it told me this time that I was getting the full 100mbps download speed. I clearly wasn't. Finally I started to download the first true file I had originally wanted to download, and still no luck. I also checked my Wi-Fi status on this desktop as well, this time saying that I was supporting up to 300-400mbps and that I have a full connection. Like I did on the laptop, I also checked to see the network usage of my computer while downloading. Google was, like on the laptop, only using about 1-3% of my network bandwidth like before. I had also shutdown all other network transmissions as I had on the laptop and it was still only using 1-3% of the network bandwidth. 

 

One final thing that I should mention is that I am currently using an ASUS dual-band n-series router that supports up to 400mbps speeds. Both my laptop and my desktop are running on the 5Ghz frequency. I do not believe that it is a router issue since I did log in to the router and checked to make sure that my download speeds had not been restricted, and that parental controls were not enabled. I also don't believe that it is a router issue because my router does support all the requirements for my home network. 

 

This situation has thoroughly confused me, and any advice, help, or solution to this problem would be a lot of help. As of now, I am thinking that it may just be my ISP having issues, however I could be completely wrong. Like I said, any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Totallycasual]

I read the title and though to myself this guy has to be Australian lol 

[Deltek]

Speedtest ugh

 

head to pingtest.net and check your jitter. If on a wired connection, then anything above 1ms, would have me rebooting my router ...via a power isolation not software.

 

[Praxis727]

U also have to account for the fact it doesn't matter how fast your connection is if there is traffic issues between you and your desired download.  Do a cmd prompt tracert to an ip or server close to you and it should show you if you are getting some congestion along the way.

 

go to your start bar search line and type cmd.

cd.. till you are at C:/ 

then type tracert google.ca

first few pings are the ones to look at as it will be the common path of your connection

 

 

 

[Julian5]