[SOLVED] Desktop Ethernet performing at 20-30Mbps on a 400Mbps internet connection

[Tenchi555]

Ran a few speed tests and most this computer gets has been 80Mbps but usually is around 20-30Mbps. Ran the same speed test on my other devices, all perform FAR better (phone does just under 200Mbps, iPad does over 400Mbps, laptop on wireless does around 200-300Mbps but when connected to the same ethernet cable and router port does just under 400Mbps). So I don't believe the issue is with either the router or modem then if other devices are performing fine.

I also updated the ethernet card drivers (Killer E2400, now running 9.0.0.50) with no real change. Installed an old wireless card just to see how it'd fair and there was no difference. I then tested the wireless card in the machine it was originally in and though it still under performed it did much better (60-80Mbps compared to 20-30Mbps), so it doesn't seem to be a hardware issue (unless it's something with the motherboard itself).

Motherboard: MSi 170A gaming M5 with the onboard Killer E2400 ethernet.
OS: Windows 10 Pro version 20H2.
CPU: Intel i7-6700k @4.00 GHz

I use a VPN but speeds are the same with the VPN on or off. I also use my VPN on my tablet and phone which both performed very well while the VPN was active.

I really appreciate any help and advice, this has been very frustrating.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You should ideally be on 21H1. As for your motherboard, what BIOS version are you on at the time of writing? As for the drivers, did you source the driver for the E2400 controller off of MSI's support site? If so, see if you can install the driver in compatibility mode, Right click installer>Properties>Compatibility Mode>Windows 7/8.

Just for the sake of relevance, what is the make and model of your router/ISP modem?

 

[Tenchi555]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You should ideally be on 21H1. As for your motherboard, what BIOS version are you on at the time of writing? As for the drivers, did you source the driver for the E2400 controller off of MSI's support site? If so, see if you can install the driver in compatibility mode, Right click installer>Properties>Compatibility Mode>Windows 7/8.

Just for the sake of relevance, what is the make and model of your router/ISP modem?

Windows wasn't offering 21H1 when doing an update check so I looked into how to fix that and update to 21H1 and that's what I'm on now. My bios version is 1.I which is the latest offered on MSi's website. As for the drivers for the E2400, Killer Network Manager and the MSi site as well as Windows only offered version 9.0.0.42 and kept telling me I had the latest version. It ended up being AVG's driver updater that managed to update it to 9.0.0.50, but there's no difference in performance either way.

 

[bill001g]

It is really strange we have a number of questions about killer in the last day or so maybe microsoft pushed another bad driver patch.

So killer has a history of crap drivers partially their own fault and partially microsoft. It is all related to their silly software they pretend can make games run faster but they can't actually impact any traffic outside the machine where all the problem actually are.

The "normal" fix for this used to be to get the drivers from their site without the killer features and to uninstall the killer app. Now that intel purchased killer it is unclear what drivers are best. I know intel has some performance suite. I don't know what that does exactly but I would try to uninstall it if that is possible.

These so called QoS or game priority programs cause all kinds of strange errors and server almost no purpose. There are some bundled with video cards also so look to see what is installed.

 

[Tenchi555]

It is really strange we have a number of questions about killer in the last day or so maybe microsoft pushed another bad driver patch.

So killer has a history of crap drivers partially their own fault and partially microsoft. It is all related to their silly software they pretend can make games run faster but they can't actually impact any traffic outside the machine where all the problem actually are.

The "normal" fix for this used to be to get the drivers from their site without the killer features and to uninstall the killer app. Now that intel purchased killer it is unclear what drivers are best. I know intel has some performance suite. I don't know what that does exactly but I would try to uninstall it if that is possible.

These so called QoS or game priority programs cause all kinds of strange errors and server almost no purpose. There are some bundled with video cards also so look to see what is installed.

I had originally uninstalled the Killer Network Manager when the computer was brand new and only re-installed it recently to try and update the drivers, so the issue was before this. I'm not sure if there's other "gaming performance" shovel-ware that I maybe missed but the manager doesn't seem to be the cause at least. Though I will note something that I don't know if it'd related to the problem at all. So in KNM under settings when I click "Download Latest App Priorities" it always gives an error message "There was a problem while updating." No idea if this is just the bad software or related to my main issue. I also get a error message when I click "Update Speed" it always says "The Bandwidth test was not able to accurately measure your Internet Speed. Please check the Internet speed with your provider or run the test again." Again, no idea if it's related to my problem but seemed somewhat note worthy.

 

[bill001g]

The problem with killer stuff is they used to have part of the application priority stuff in the driver itself. You had to download a driver without this feature and then uninstall the application. I have no idea what you do now that intel is running all this stuff.

You could try a USB linux boot image and then run speedtest on that. Most linux images have drivers that will work on these chipset. The problem is if it works it only confirms it is something in windows that is causing it but does not give you much clue

 

[Tenchi555]

The problem with killer stuff is they used to have part of the application priority stuff in the driver itself. You had to download a driver without this feature and then uninstall the application. I have no idea what you do now that intel is running all this stuff.

You could try a USB linux boot image and then run speedtest on that. Most linux images have drivers that will work on these chipset. The problem is if it works it only confirms it is something in windows that is causing it but does not give you much clue

This is what I've been considering. Was going to look for a linux boot image later to put on a flash drive to use, assuming Ubuntu as it's the last one I remember ever using before, though not sure if I used it as the actual boot or the drive was used to install Ubuntu on the actual HDD.

If it doesn't work it tells me it's probably something with the motherboard though, possibly the bios or a setting I'm unaware of. Not really a better outcome though. If it DOES work then a fresh install of windows might fix it, though would be a major pain to do and I'd have to test the connection as I reinstall drivers and stuff to see if any of those may have been the cause.

UPDATE: So tested the connection via Ubuntu and sure enough, speed test was fine (reached almost 500Mbps in fact). So I at least know it's not the motherboard or bios. So possibly a driver issue? Might try rolling back to older drivers for the ethernet. Just not sure how far back. I feel like I'm going to end up doing a fresh install in the end though...

(Mostly) SOLVED UPDATE: So I went through a list of network suggestions and one suggestion was to disable windows' auto-tuning, but when I went into command prompt I noticed it was already disabled. So I enabled it and tested and I'm performing at just under 300Mbps. BIG improvement. It seems there is still something interfering though as under Ubuntu I was getting over 400Mbps but this is wonderful progress! I'm going to keep doing tests and see if I can get more performance out of this machine but this seems to have solved the main issue. Thank you for the help and suggestions!

 

[bill001g]

What you can try is a old program called IPERF if you have a second machines. This should show transfer rates over 900mbps. This is a really stupid program and tests pretty much just the drivers it is not affected by things like cpu or browser type etc.

Auto tune is a strange issue and a lot of the confusion is microsoft messed it up on a patch but then later fixed it so you have lots of different so called "solutions" depending on what patch level. In general it should be on because it allows windows to use the feature related to dynamic tcp window size. Not sure why microsoft did it this way this feature has been in linux almost 30 years. We used to deal with this when you ran old style overseas data connections on satellite. Without this dynamic window size feature the transfer rates used to cap out at about 1mbps because of the high latency on satellite.