Question Infuriatingly unpredictable connection.

[NightHawkRMX]

OS: Windows 10 Pro
Old Wifi adapter: Cudy WU600mbps dual band USB (included driver)
New WiFi adapter: Rosewill 1300mb/s dual band PCIe x1 (latest driver available online)
Arris (Xfinity provided) modem/router combo. My internet speed is rated for 300mb/s
PC is maybe 20 feet from the router with no walls blocking it.

My internet is horribly unpredictable. Awhile ago i got good internet speed averaging over 100mbps download on phone and PC. I had no internet issues. Slowly my games starting rubber banding intermittently and downloads slowing down. This has only gotten worse over time. Early today i played online games trouble free, but right now games have bad rubberbanding or flatout disconnect me. Even when my connection allows me to play games it is usually still slow anymore. Sometimes webpages won't load and YouTube wont play smoothly in HD.

Large data transfers are not happening. I have been trying to download GTAV off and on for about a week and it is still less than halfway downloaded. I have not seen the download speed break over 1mbps. I tried to restore a 300gb backup file off of my nas that is hard wired into the modem and it said it would take multiple days to complete and inevitably gave me a network error and wouldn't work.

Previously i got over 100mbps download on both my PC and phone over wifi. Right now my PC got 3mb/s download in speed test and the upload test didn't even complete. My phone (LG Stylo 4 from 2018) got 13mbps download and 2mbps upload. This is close to to my LTE connection with poor reception in my area, and infact LTE has a higher upload speed.

What i have done:

Bought a decent PCIe wifi card.
I have reinstalled windows since my old SSD died, but still same issue.
Reconnecting to wifi and restarting PC. Have also tried changing DNS to google.

What gives?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Here is a screenshot after i reran test.
The upload test doesnt go over 0mbps
https://ibb.co/MkqFnZ2

Here is a screenshot from settings with my IP and other personal info removed
https://ibb.co/vLpgJfQ

 

[bill001g]

You need to first rule in or out that it is a wifi problem. You could have a router issue or a problem with your connection. You want to run on ethernet just to test even if it means running a cable across the floor.

In some ways you kinda hope it is a issue with the internet connection because that is simpler to get fixed.

Wifi gets affected by so many things. You have few actual options. You could try switch from 2.4g to 5g or reverse. You could try to change the radio channels you use but it is not likely you will find any radio bandwidth that does not have lots of neighbors already using it.

A pcie card tends to have better power and antenna so that is a plus but being so close to the case the signal can be blocked. Make sure that antenna face the router.

Since it seems it affects both your phone and PC it might be a issue with the router wifi radios. It is kinda rare but it does happen. You would seldom see both radio chips fail so if you have issue on both 2.4g and 5g it is something else.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I seem to be confusing myself. Yesterday my brother was redownloading his steam library over wifi, so that may explain something. He also complained of slow speeds.

Today with less strain on the wifi i reran speedtest on my phone and got 33.7 down and 6 up.

On my desktop I reran speedtest and got 4mbps down and 4mbps up. Then I noticed it was running on 2.4ghz and manually setting it to 5ghz in window gave me very similar speed to my phone, but Windows keeps setting it back to 2.4ghz and tanking speed randomly. How do i force it to only use 5ghz? I tried changing the preffered bandwith to 5ghz and reset network connections in settings.

I really can't move my PC near router and dont have any long ethernet cables so I ran a test on a laptop.

Acer Nitro 5 on wifi 100 down (i forget up)
Acer Nitro 5 ethernet 230 down.


So now my phone and PC are very slow over wifi but the laptop is fast over wifi.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Any ideas? I am still having issues running any game.

I tried my old wifi adapter and got higher numbers in speedtest but still have rubberbanding and disconnects in game.