Downloads seem to be capped at 10Mbps

[bigandclever]

This situation occurs using a WiFi dongle and using Ethernet

I have a new to me, refurbished HP ProDesk 600 G1. It's an old-ish machine, original specs are here
i5-4570
16Gb RAM
Windows 10 Pro
128Gb SSD and 1Tb HD
Intel I1217LM GbE Network Connection (integrated)

But when I download anything, or run speedtest, it looks like I'm only getting 10Mbps throughput.

Everything I've checked says I have a 1.0Gb capability and nothing I've seen should drop this to 10Mbps. So I've done all indicated Windows and driver updates; run the Intel Cable, Connection & Hardware tests and they all Pass; turned any Eco settings off; and looked at pretty much everything I can find online.

I haven't got another machine to test with, but the IPad, PS4 and my Android phone all get over 200Mbps on the same network.

Googling around seems to be full of 'check the cable' so I've tried with different Cat 5 (not 5a or 6) cables and no difference - but since I have the same low throughput using a wireless dongle I'm not surprised. The other 'answer' that comes up a lot is 'the motherboard is knackered' which would be a pain.

What could be throttling the throughput? I'm usually OK technically, so I hope I'm missing something daft.

[eltawater]

One of the HP supplied utilities does network traffic management, I forget the name of it, but you need to kill that off.

Might be HP Connection Optimizer, I've uninstalled most of my HP bloatware so I can't confirm it.

Edited by eltawater on Thursday 18th February 15:40

[bigandclever]

Perhaps should've said, this is a stripped back 3rd party refurb ... there doesn't appear to be any bloatware on it at all. I'll have a further dig around.

[hyphen]

If a new machine, and so no data backup concerns. Perhaps re-install windows from scratch?

[eltawater]

Boot it to a Linux Live USB and re-run your connection tests there to rule out hardware issues.

[bigandclever]

eltawater said:

Boot it to a Linux Live USB and re-run your connection tests there to rule out hardware issues.

I might have to do something like that.

One other consideration is the Virgin router admin page is saying that all the devices connected via Ethernet are at 100Mbps. But that might just be a default value.

By comparison the iPad on the 5G wifi channel is, apparently, 846Mbps.

If I unplug the ethernet from the PC and use the cheap wifi dongle as supplied it connects at 28Mbps on the 2.4G channel. There doesn't seem to be a way to make it use the 5G channel; drivers are up to date. Although a speedtest just now gets me 16.9 Mbps down and 13.98Mbps up so some improvement from this morning and I haven't changed anything

I think I'm going to walk away and have some wine, the download speed is fine for this machine's purpose.

[mcflurry]

Is one of the network connectors a 100mb rather than gigabit one?

[bigandclever]

mcflurry said:

Is one of the network connectors a 100mb rather than gigabit one?

Not according to the diagnostics I've done, but that's why I think (hope?) I might be missing something obvious.

Having said that, the ethernet is all Cat 5 cabling, so I believe that while theoretically it can handle gigabyte speed I appreciate that's not guaranteed. I wouldn't expect it to drop to 10Mbps though. The network card is a 1GbE card.

Edited by bigandclever on Friday 19th February 15:56

[plasticpig]

Have you tried switching off Windows Firewall and running a speed test?

[bigandclever]

plasticpig said:

Have you tried switching off Windows Firewall and running a speed test?

Just switched off Domain, Private and Public network firewalls and run speedtest; no discernible change, still <10Mbps

[biggiles]

Do you have another laptop you can stick the ethernet cable into?

Do you have another machine on the same LAN that you can try doing a file transfer to/from at high speed? Or iperf3.

How fast does your router say your internet (presumably fibre) is?

[plasticpig]

bigandclever said:

Just switched off Domain, Private and Public network firewalls and run speedtest; no discernible change, still <10Mbps

Ok. Run Powershell and run this command: wmic NIC where "NetEnabled='true'" get "Name","Speed"

What result do you get?

[Fore Left]

A few suggestions;

Run the Win10 network troubleshooter - right click the Start Menu then Network Connections. It's under Advanced Settings on the status page.

Reset all network properties from the same status page above.

Check the network card drivers are up to date from Intel rather than Microsoft. Install and run the Intel Driver & Support Assistant.

Check the card isn't rate limited in settings. From the same properties page, select the Advanced tab and scroll through to see if there is a setting that's limiting the transfer rate to 10mbps.

Edited by Fore Left on Thursday 18th February 18:15

[bigandclever]

plasticpig said:

bigandclever said:

Just switched off Domain, Private and Public network firewalls and run speedtest; no discernible change, still <10Mbps

Ok. Run Powershell and run this command: wmic NIC where "NetEnabled='true'" get "Name","Speed"

What result do you get?

PS C:\Users\Jon> wmic NIC where "NetEnabled=true" get "Name","Speed"
Name Speed
Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I217-LM 1000000000

[bigandclever]

Fore Left said:

A few suggestions;

Run the Win10 network troubleshooter - right click the Start Menu then Network Connections. It's under Advanced Settings on the status page.

Reset all network properties from the same status page above.

Check the network card drivers are up to date from Intel rather than Microsoft. Install and run the Intel Driver & Support Assistant.

Check the card isn't rate limited in settings. From the same properties page, select the Advanced tab and scroll through to see if there is a setting that's limiting the transfer rate to 10mbps.

Edited by Fore Left on Thursday 18th February 18:15

In order ...

"Troubleshooting couldn't identify the problem; No issues detected"

I have the most recent Intel driver for the card...
Provider Intel
Version 12.19.1.32
Date 5/11/2020
Manufacturer Intel
Availability Running at full power
Status This device is working properly.

In the Properties, Advanced, Speed & Duplex setting I have manually selected "1.0 Gbps Full Duplex" .. Auto Negotiation doesn't make a difference, neither does 100Mbps Full Duplex for that matter.

[plasticpig]

bigandclever said:

PS C:\Users\Jon> wmic NIC where "NetEnabled=true" get "Name","Speed"
Name Speed
Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I217-LM 1000000000

You need to test the internal network speed. That's a bit tricky without another PC. But I would download the iPerf 3 app for your iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/iperf-3-wifi-speed-t...

iiPerf is a handy little utility that measures network speed. The IOS app will guide you through setting up your PC as an iPerf server. By default the speed test is run by sending data from the client to the server so that will test the download speed of your PC on the local network.

[bigandclever]

I’ll have a go with iperf tomorrow.

One extra thing I’ve just tried is creating a hotspot on my phone, so (in this case) using giffgaff WiFi rather than virgin media WiFi or Ethernet. I still didn’t get past 10Mbps on speedtest. So I suppose I’m happier it’s another pointer it’s something in the PC not my network.

[eltawater]

bigandclever said:

I’ll have a go with iperf tomorrow.

One extra thing I’ve just tried is creating a hotspot on my phone, so (in this case) using giffgaff WiFi rather than virgin media WiFi or Ethernet. I still didn’t get past 10Mbps on speedtest. So I suppose I’m happier it’s another pointer it’s something in the PC not my network.

Linux Live USB, take the current install of Windows out of the equation.

[bigandclever]

eltawater said:

Linux Live USB, take the current install of Windows out of the equation.

Can you point me towards how I will test it? I’m ok with creating the USB stick.

[eltawater]

Most live distributions boot you into a desktop of some variety with access to a browser like Chrome or Firefox. Just use one of those and perform a speedtest using your favourite speedtest website or whatever you've been doing on Windows to measure your data transfer rate.

Kubuntu is good if you like familiarity with Windows, other distributions are available.

https://kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/

USB maker:
https://unetbootin.github.io/

Edited by eltawater on Thursday 18th February 20:24