Question I'm experiencing low download/upload speeds with high latency - - any advice ?

[GeorgeBurton]

I'm having issues with my internet speeds and seeing very low download/upload speeds (around 30 Mbps), even though my friend, who is in the room next to me (which is further away from the router 1 floor below), consistently gets around 500 Mbps download on the same network. We both have similar-aged PCs, but his specs are a slightly better than mine. The broadband package is 1 Gbps but I am not expecting to be getting that.

The inconsistent, high download/upload latency is what I’m struggling with, ranging from 11 to 745 ms.

So far, I’ve tried a few things:

• Changing DNS servers
• Resetting my IP address
• Ensuring no background apps are hogging bandwidth
• Restarting my router multiple times
• Tried using a powerline adapter

None of these have improved my situation much.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what could be causing such a drastic difference in speeds?

 

[bill001g]

You posted this in the wireless section. I assume you are using a wifi card.

Is it possible to test even if you temporarily move the pc using a ethernet cable. This is most to see if it is some wifi setting or if there is some more generic issue with the pc.

It is highly likely it is the wifi. Things like DNS or ip addresses do not affect speeds. If the ip address had issue it tends to not work at all and DNS issues are not directly speed related. It would only be slow when you say opened a new web page. It must translate the name to a IP address. It only does this one time until the session is closed, it actually keeps for a period of time even after the session is closed.

Make sure you are using the 5ghz or (6ghz if you have wifi6e or wifi7). If you are on 2.4g it would not be uncommon to only get 30mbps. Unfortantly the default on many routers is to set all the radios to the same SSID name and then hope the pc and router figure out the "best" option. They are not so smart sometimes. I always set them different so I can force a connection.

 

[cruisetung]

router & yours and roommate's wifi adapters brand/model ? Are the antennas behind the case of the PC ?

 

[GeorgeBurton]

You posted this in the wireless section. I assume you are using a wifi card.

Is it possible to test even if you temporarily move the pc using a ethernet cable. This is most to see if it is some wifi setting or if there is some more generic issue with the pc.

It is highly likely it is the wifi. Things like DNS or ip addresses do not affect speeds. If the ip address had issue it tends to not work at all and DNS issues are not directly speed related. It would only be slow when you say opened a new web page. It must translate the name to a IP address. It only does this one time until the session is closed, it actually keeps for a period of time even after the session is closed.

Make sure you are using the 5ghz or (6ghz if you have wifi6e or wifi7). If you are on 2.4g it would not be uncommon to only get 30mbps. Unfortantly the default on many routers is to set all the radios to the same SSID name and then hope the pc and router figure out the "best" option. They are not so smart sometimes. I always set them different so I can force a connection.

Yes I use a Wi-Fi card and I am using 5ghz. I used an ethernet cable with a powerline adapter but didn't change anything. I am looking at buying an ethernet cable from the router to my PC as the next option, but I am not sure if its my general PC that is the problem since it is very old. Thanks for your advice.

 

[GeorgeBurton]

router & yours and roommate's wifi adapters brand/model ? Are the antennas behind the case of the PC ?

Me and my friend both have a Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Adapter and the antenna is internal. Our Router is a Virgin Media Hub 4

 

[bill001g]

There should be a screen in the wifi that is called something like status. Microsoft loves to make changes to stuff like this.
What you should see is something that I think they call speed. It is not really speed, it more represent the data encoding.

Most times you see two number xxxx/yyyy. One is transmit and the other is receive. For ethernet cables you see 1000/1000.

What are these numbers. I will assume the numbers on the other pc are different,larger. The router and the pc will attempt to negotiate the fastest data encoding rates they can. This is affected by many things but mostly it is related to signal strength and quality. Things like interference from a neighbor can greatly reduce the speed.

 

[cruisetung]

Do a network reset first see if any difference.

If not and it's PC but not laptop and the adapters are the same then see if you can swap the PCIe cards, reset again and see if it makes any difference.