Commit: Why does my pc cap my download speed
| Why does my pc cap my download speed | 710 |
| Why does my pc cap my download speed | 806 |
| Why does my pc cap my download speed | 785 |
Very strange situation and I would appreciate any ideas please.
Environment is an insurance agency with 6 workstations and one server with active domain. For new PC's I am transitioning the workstations to not log into the domain as most applications have gone to the cloud and the server is only used to store scans at this point.
One new PC I deployed is fine, over 300Mb/s speeds on speedtest and over 100MB/s LAN transfers. New PC is Windows 10 Home and does not log into the domain. Other PC's have no issue and get 100Mb/s+ depending on age.
New Ubiquiti Edge X router last month with basic setup, no QOS or anything fancy.
2nd new PC is capped at 12Mb/s internet speed but has full 100MB/s+ LAN transfers. Same user complained of slow internet speeds prior to the new PC so I suspect the problem was there previously as well.
I have tried all these things with no change:
-ran a cat6 line through the hall to the closet just to test
-plugged this one PC directly to the router instead of switch
-unplugged all workstations and server and ran just the one slow PC alone on the network, all equipment was powered off for 5 min and rebooted for this.
-swapped a temporary known good switch in for whole network
-changed DNS to 8.8.8.8
-created new user account and changed machine name on network.
-Workstations do not use static IP's, they are DHCP from the router.
- Switched to built in wifi to change mac address/adapter in case cap was based on that.
This worked:
-brought PC to my home and got full 400Mb/s speeds
-Plugged one problem PC directly into cable modem at business and got full 400Mb/s speed
I'm stumped as to how it can be getting capped without logging in to the server or using the server for DNS. I am not overly familiar with having a domain server in the network which is why I'm asking for help here. Clearly something in the network is causing this. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks. Edited Dec 2, 2019 at 03:28 UTC
AH Dell
Remove Smartbytes !
I had this issues too , Smartbytes is suppose to Optimizes your Bandwidth. Instead it jacks it Up .
there should be 2 Smartbytes , remove both . there's many threads it causing all kind of issues .
Server 2012 can handle as much as the hardware specs allow it to; the OS is not the limiting factor.
However, in your case I would strongly consider splitting tasks, mostly in order to manage things better. Consider virtualizing your environment -- set up VMware, Hyper-V, Xen or your hypervisor of choice, then create 2 VMs, one for DNS/DHCP/DC (which group together nicely), and the other as your file server. Server 2012 Standard licensing allows you 2 VMs per license on a single host, so there would be no additional license costs, and you'll be able to keep your server roles better isolated.
marlon.balie wrote:
Like I mentioned, I am doing it because that's how it was setup before. I am more than happy having them setup on one IP range on one subnet. I guess I am curious as to how it was setup before and why it was setup this way.
How it was setup was most likely a router with static routes, depending on your router/firewall. It could have been setup for all the clients to use the server as their default gateway, which would be really silly.
The why is an almost unanswerable question. There a ton of reasons it could have been setup that way. Unless we can talk to the person that set it up, we would just be shooting in the dark. We could give a bunch of the most common reason, but we would never know for sure. It is important to know the reason things were setup a certain way, but I am guessing there is no documentation or anything.
If you are taking over the managing of this network, set it up how it works for you. If all you need is for clients to access the server and internet, set it up simple and easy. There is a term "KISS" that we use around here sometimes. It stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. There are tons of ways to do any one thing, but you should make it easy to manage
16 Replies
Such speed caps are almost always done by router or software on computer. I had an MSI machine a while ago that came with software to "optimize internet speed" which didn't work and caused slowdowns.
Your 12 MB/sec is a red flag. Was that truly Megabyte per second? Upper and lower case letter b vs B makes a difference. Just clarifying you used the correct one.
12 MB happens to convert to 100 Mbps as in Megabits. That's a very specific number. Could mean a switch port not running at Gigabit.
When you're having issues check the speed with which that computer is connected to the network. Windows NIC status will show you 1 Gbps or 100 Mbps.
Just reread post. You wrote computer gets 12 Mb/s and in other places used MB/s. Let's get on the same page and make sure that you're using the same units of measurements as they're a factor of 8x different (bits vs bytes). Don't want to assume a port issue where none exists.
I used them correctly, Mb for internet speed and MB for LAN transfers which is how they are reported to me on speedtest.net and file transfer windows. I understand the difference.
It's definitely not software as it does not get capped when plugged directly into cable modem on site. Router is of course possible but I didn't set up anything in the Edge router and no other PC's are experiencing the same.
I would definitely check for software. Every new HP has some weird "Network Quality" software preinstalled on it. Also, if you have one of those computers that is an 'APU' instead of a CPU (there's a bunch of weird models of HPs like this where they look almost like a laptop motherboard just shoved into a desktop case...no power supply, just a laptop power cord even) those machines don't even TECHNICALLY have gigabit network cards. If you do large file transfers the driver or that optimizer software can speed it up over its limit but they have some physical limitation due to the 'APU' speed.
This is very strange. Has to be something on the switch/router as if you plug in directly without those in the mix, they get full connection. Dive into the port settings or policies and see if something is there. Has to be as if this machine gets full speed on the cable modem, yet slow speeds with the router/switch, something has to be capping it there.
Plug in a USB network card,disconnect the onboard, and see if that makes any difference. Perhaps the router is somehow flagging the MAC address of the machine and using a different MAC might show you something.....
You said you tried different ports on the router, right?
If you need something to test internal speeds, IPerf3 works well and is free. You can even use it to test internet speeds, with limitations.
Take a read of this and see if any of these techniques help: https://superuser.com/questions/1330112/windows-10-internet-speed-capped-at-half-the-original-speed-...
In particular try these at the CMD window: (sorry, Spiceworks editor doesn't return to regular text after code block during edit):
I'll double check for software, it's an i5 Dell so no APU. It doesn't have an issue when moved to a different router/straight to modem but I've learned to never rule anything out.
I did think of MAC address and connected by the built in wireless with no change. Definitely a good suggestion. I'll add that to my OP list, I knew I'd forget to list something I tried.
Going to have to scour through the Ubiquiti router again. Just because I didnt try to set up any advanced settings doesn't mean they arn't there, maybe even just reset it to defaults and configure again.
I did confirm that the negotiated link speed is full duplex and gigabit.
Thanks all, I will try these things when I get back on site this week and report back.
Edited Dec 1, 2019 at 15:22 UTC
Flextechs is an IT service provider.
Darren for CDW wrote:
This is very strange. Has to be something on the switch/router as if you plug in directly without those in the mix, they get full connection. Dive into the port settings or policies and see if something is there. Has to be as if this machine gets full speed on the cable modem, yet slow speeds with the router/switch, something has to be capping it there.
Echoing this.
Clearly the ER, might be singling out this PC for some reason.
Seems like you have done your diligence in troubleshooting, best of luck!
AH Dell
Remove Smartbytes !
I had this issues too , Smartbytes is suppose to Optimizes your Bandwidth. Instead it jacks it Up .
there should be 2 Smartbytes , remove both . there's many threads it causing all kind of issues .
Atreies wrote:
I'll double check for software, it's an i5 Dell so no APU. It doesn't have an issue when moved to a different router/straight to modem but I've learned to never rule anything out.
I did think of MAC address and connected by the built in wireless with no change. Definitely a good suggestion. I'll add that to my OP list, I knew I'd forget to list something I tried.
Going to have to scour through the Ubiquiti router again. Just because I didnt try to set up any advanced settings doesn't mean they arn't there, maybe even just reset it to defaults and configure again.
I did confirm that the negotiated link speed is full duplex and gigabit.
Thanks all, I will try these things when I get back on site this week and report back.
A reason why it doesn't always happen even if you do have such software installed is because some of those packages try to be smart. Plug into a different network, they detect that they are now elsewhere and won't apply the same settings. It's possible a previous configuration issue has instructed that program to limit Internet to 12 Mbps when it's on that particular LAN. Maybe the program was told "My Internet connection is 10 Mbps" instead of 100 for example (simple typo) and it then shapes the traffic accordingly with the upper cap set. Plugging straight into cable model, or at your house, means it's detected a different device/LAN so it doesn't use that same profile.
Other programs try to figure out the max speed by running a speedtest periodically. If the speedtest website used in the background is slow from the location it's run, it can have applied incorrect upper limits.
If your router isn't singling out that one computer and you have gigabit over the LAN already then there's not much left to blame.
A last option to check into is VPN usage. If that computer finds itself connected to a VPN service, all Internet traffic could have been funneled through such a tunnel and slow things down considerably. If you can't find local software like this, just head to a site like www.whatismyipaddress.com and compare output from that computer to a properly working computer and make sure the same public IP is detected.
This is really perplexing, OP, please update this thread as I am curious as to what it might be.
Thanks!
Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!
Got back on-site this morning and....
It was Smartbyte preinstalled by Dell. Clearly it did its magic on the first boot and stored those settings for that network. Subsequent networks the machine was plugged into were not capped which is why swapping to my house and straight to the cable modem gave full speed as those were considered different networks and had their own settings.
Thanks to everyone for the help, you are all wonderful people!
Wow, so this was software! That was my first gut-feeling, but since you said when you changed networks it ran fine, I naturally moved on to other potential issues.
So glad you got it figured out!
Michael588854 wrote:
AH Dell
Remove Smartbytes !
I had this issues too , Smartbytes is suppose to Optimizes your Bandwidth. Instead it jacks it Up .
there should be 2 Smartbytes , remove both . there's many threads it causing all kind of issues .
Nice work on this!
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