[SOLVED] Paying for EPB 300 Mbps but only getting around 80 Mbps?

Qu9ke

Distinguished
Dec 21, 2013
150
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18,680
Router: Netgear AC1900 Nighthawk

A few months back we upgraded EPB services from using a set top box to using their “EPB Fi TV” app through a fire stick, and apparently my dad also paid for 300 Mbps internet. Once the first EPB employee set our TV up, a second person came to our door and worked on our fiber optics on the outside of our house. He said then we should have the 300 Mbps now, but I tested it that day and today months later. The highest readings I get is roughly 85 Mbps from fast.com and speedtest.net which by the way I’m pretty sure is the speed we had originally.

I tested the speed both wirelessly on mobile devices as well as through ethernet on our laptop (HP model # 15-bs013dx). Same numbers show. I don’t know if this is normal or not, but I want to be sure my dad is getting his money’s worth here. I checked in our router settings and found that the 2.4GHz frequency is set up to 600 Mbps while the 5GHz frequency is set up to 1,300 Mbps, so I don’t think the router is limiting the speed. I don’t think the ethernet cable is limiting speed either because the laptop says on screen it supports 1 Gbps.

I am at a loss, so any help would be appreciated.
 
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Solution
That is expected results from wifi. The number they state are as close to lies as they can get away with. You seem to have found the first one where they add the speed of the 2.4g and 5g radio together.

The new "scam" in many ways is that you can actually use fancy features in your router like qos or firewalls or other stuff. When you have high speed connections the CPU in the router will bottleneck your speed. Even the very fastest router cpu will still have issues even keeping up with your "slow" 300mbps connection. To solve this they bypass the cpu chip to get gigabit speeds to the wan but the hardware that does this is simplistic and can only do very basic stuff like NAT. So if you have a really fast internet a lot...
How old is the laptop ? try a different device. Maybe the laptop ethernet card is bottlenecking
Shows how much I know. I didn’t know an ethernet card was a thing, and I built a computer. Wow. Well, the model of the laptop is 15-bs013dx, and according to support.hp.com the network interface is integrated 10/100/1000 GbE LAN... is that what you were looking for?

If the laptop is bottlenecking, we don’t really have another device in the house that won’t potentially bottleneck except for this desktop pc I built that has been sitting unused for a while. I don’t really like the thought of getting all that together just so I can test my internet speed though. I can give you that PC’s specs if you want, but I am confident that it is better than that laptop. It was built for gaming back when I actually used to do that. Wasn’t really powerful but it did the job.


 
Okay. So after even more research I happened upon the suggestion to turn off the QoS feature in the router. After having done that I am experiencing up to 300 Mbps, but only when standing right next to the router for the best possible signal. That is still a huge improvement, so I’m fine with that
 
That is expected results from wifi. The number they state are as close to lies as they can get away with. You seem to have found the first one where they add the speed of the 2.4g and 5g radio together.

The new "scam" in many ways is that you can actually use fancy features in your router like qos or firewalls or other stuff. When you have high speed connections the CPU in the router will bottleneck your speed. Even the very fastest router cpu will still have issues even keeping up with your "slow" 300mbps connection. To solve this they bypass the cpu chip to get gigabit speeds to the wan but the hardware that does this is simplistic and can only do very basic stuff like NAT. So if you have a really fast internet a lot of the of software feature on the router can not be used.
 
Solution