Question Slow ethernet speed ?

[RadioMatic]

I'm having a speed connection issue with my Windows 10 PC wired to a Hitron 5712 modem/router using an Intel 1219-V ethernet card, which came on an ASRock Z390 Pro 4 motherboard.

My ISP package provides 600 Mbps download speed . My laptop actually gets 680 Mbps on WiFi, but my PC tops out at at 430 Mbps at the most, going through the same router/modem.

The ethernet driver was last updated in 2020. I downloaded some alleged updated drivers, but it came in a big zip file and I'm embarrassed to say I'm not sure what to do with it. Lots of folders in there.

My ISP sent a new modem, but the problem still persists. I've tried changing cables, connection ports (only one on the PC). I've also tried uncapping download speed in Device Manager from Auto to the highest value to no avail.

EDIT: I did update the drivers. No change.

I still don't know what the problem is. Thanks for any help.

 

[Aeacus]

My ISP package provides 600 Mbps download speed . My laptop actually gets 680 Mbps on WiFi, but my PC tops at at 430 Mbps at the most going through the same router/modem.

600 Mbps is "up to" and not "constant". So, it varies and usually is lower. Rarely higher.

With wi-fi connection, there is priority connection as well, whereby, your laptop is primary, thus getting the most bandwidth, while desktop is secondary and is getting less.
You could cap the bandwidth for laptop to 500 Mbps or 400 Mbps and look if speeds increase on desktop.

Or you can call ISP tech on site, who then does it for you, if you don't know how.

 

[bill001g]

I am very surprised that you can get over 600mbps on any kind of wifi. Generally you must be very close to the router to get anywhere near that.

My guess would be there is some software loaded on pc that is limiting the speed. The common one is some of the so called "gaming" network software that claims to make games run faster. It is many times loaded with the bloatware that comes with motherboards and video cards. Not sure about asrock but I am pretty sure asus still ships this garbage with even their newest boards.

After that you get into the complexity of stuff like which web browser you are running and even being very sure you are speed testing to the exact same location.

So a couple things you could try but it will just confirm the issue is some setting in windows or software on the pc. If you laptop has a ethernet port you can run a very old tool called IPERF on both machines. This is a very simplistic command line tool. Because it is simple it is not affected by the cpu/memory and it does not use complex software like web browsers. You generally get well over 900mbps between machines in your house. A second option would be to boot a USB linux image. These are designed for repair and testing of a machine. They run completely from the USB. They are somewhat limited but they have a web browser pre installed and you can directly run speedtest. This though would just confirm that it is not some hardware issue or some strange router setting it does not tell you what inside your windows install you need to change.

 

[RadioMatic]

600 Mbps is "up to" and not "constant". So, it varies and usually is lower. Rarely higher.

With wi-fi connection, there is priority connection as well, whereby, your laptop is primary, thus getting the most bandwidth, while desktop is secondary and is getting less.
You could cap the bandwidth for laptop to 500 Mbps or 400 Mbps and look if speeds increase on desktop.

Or you can call ISP tech on site, who then does it for you, if you don't know how.

Thanks the for the reply. I get the same download speed whether or not the laptop is on or off. So, I'm not sure that's it.

 

[RadioMatic]

I am very surprised that you can get over 600mbps on any kind of wifi. Generally you must be very close to the router to get anywhere near that.

My guess would be there is some software loaded on pc that is limiting the speed. The common one is some of the so called "gaming" network software that claims to make games run faster. It is many times loaded with the bloatware that comes with motherboards and video cards. Not sure about asrock but I am pretty sure asus still ships this garbage with even their newest boards.

After that you get into the complexity of stuff like which web browser you are running and even being very sure you are speed testing to the exact same location.

So a couple things you could try but it will just confirm the issue is some setting in windows or software on the pc. If you laptop has a ethernet port you can run a very old tool called IPERF on both machines. This is a very simplistic command line tool. Because it is simple it is not affected by the cpu/memory and it does not use complex software like web browsers. You generally get well over 900mbps between machines in your house. A second option would be to boot a USB linux image. These are designed for repair and testing of a machine. They run completely from the USB. They are somewhat limited but they have a web browser pre installed and you can directly run speedtest. This though would just confirm that it is not some hardware issue or some strange router setting it does not tell you what inside your windows install you need to change.

The Laptop is indeed right next to the router (and close to my PC) on my desk.
I've gone through all the running processes on my PC and eliminated anything that I couldn't verify. Didn't see any bloatware.
Unfortunately, my laptop doesn't have an ethernet port. I'll check into the USB Linux deal. Thanks for the reply!

 

[Ralston18]

Have you tried another known working (at speed) Ethernet cable between desktop PC and router?

Is the desktop PC's network adapter set at Speed & Duplex = Auto?

Run "ipconfig /all" on both the desktop and the laptop.

Post the full results from each computer.

You should be able to copy and paste the full results without needing to retype everything.

Be sure to note which results are from which device.

 

[RadioMatic]

Thanks for responding!
Here are the IPconfig results:
PC:
Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : DESKTOP-N3Q50L5
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : ht.home

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : ht.home
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (7) I219-V
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 70-85-C2-A3-A9-7A
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::980:a8c0:1087:be3c%8(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.10(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, February 24, 2025 5:29:39 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, February 25, 2025 5:33:59 AM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 359695810
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-23-FF-56-40-70-85-C2-A3-A9-7A
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

*******
Laptop:
Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : ht.home
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 98-8D-46-A4-CA-40
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::58d:ac56:7dc4:4b33%15(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.12(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday, February 19, 2025 12:52:04 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, February 25, 2025 5:53:38 AM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 177769798
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-28-92-C0-0A-98-8D-46-A4-CA-40
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Ethernet adapter Bluetooth Network Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network)
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 98-8D-46-A4-CA-44
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

 

[Ralston18]

The first thing I looked for was to determine if the desktop happened to have both a wired and wireless network adapter enabled; Appears to be "no".

Both desktop and laptop are requesting a DHCP IP address from a router with IP address 192.168.0.1. Subnet masks = 255.255.255.0 also normal and expected. Likewise for the DNS Servers.

What did get my attention is the lease times.

Desktop (wired) being one day ~ 24 hours.
Laptop (wireless) being six days ~ 144 hours.

Did you make any intentional changes to the router's lease time?

Lease times can be different. And technically should not make a difference. However, "too short" can be problematic.

I would start by changing the wired lease time to match the wireless.

Determine if doing so improves the desktop's performance.

Other changes to consider remembering that you should only make one change at a time and allow time between changes.

Focus on the Desktop. Leave the laptop alone and as as is.

Disable IPv6.

Change the DNS Servers to Google at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

There may be other ideas and suggestions.

 

[RadioMatic]

I see the desktop lease time, but it doesn't give me an option for 6 days.
Options are: 30 mins, 1 hour, 2 hours, 6 hours, 1 day, 2 days, 1 week, 2 weeks and Forever. I changed the desktop lease time to 1 week.

Don't see the Wireless lease time anywhere in the router settings...?

Where would I make changes to the DNS servers in the router?
I did change from Automatic DNS to the Google DNS servers in the Ethernet Properties settings in Windows.


Again...thanks for the help. Learning a lot.

 

[bill001g]

DNS settings are in the network settings under IPv4. There is also the ability to turn off IPv6 in the same menus.

I do not think your problem is DNS. It might be IPv6 but I have my doubts on that also. Both are very good suggestions even if it doesn't fix your issue, both those things cause strange issues at times.

The reason I don't think it is DNS is DNS is only used when the session is first opened. It must find the IP address that maps to the name of the site. Once it gets the IP and starts the transfer it does not care what the name of the site is. In addition will cache the ip/name lookup for a short period of time so it can open mulitple different sessions without talking to the DNS server. A DNS issue tends to be web pages that seem to stall and load slowly. There are massive numbers of small files being loaded from many sites....you know you have to have all those advertising and tracking sites loaded.

 

[Ralston18]

The lease time for the desktop is now 1 week (168 hours) - correct?

I am curious about why the laptop's lease time is (or maybe was) different (144 hours) to begin with... ?

Both devices should be getting 168 hours now via the router.

Is that shown in "ipconfig /all" for both desktop and laptop? No need to repost if the lease time is indeed now 168 hours for both.

If the lease time is still different then post the Lease Obtained and Lease Expired settings for the desktop and the laptop.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

wifi usually has an extra buffer so its sending more data at a higher latency than the wired network.

Its the reason why I run a real gateway server (with IPFire currently) so I can tune connections and serve the network faster than the store bought router.


That is why I have 5ms-9ms connection latency to most of the internet on a CATV cable modem.

 

[RadioMatic]

The lease time on the router is set for 1 week, but I'm not sure if that applies just to the LAN connection or to wireless/laptop as well. Desktop seems to actually be for 8 days below. The Laptop lease expiration time is almost identical but a few seconds off. However, the lease obtained time is still last Wednesday.

PC:
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, February 24, 2025 5:23:51 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, March 3, 2025 5:25:28 PM

LAPTOP:
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, February 19, 2025 12:52:04 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, March 3, 2025 5:25:13 PM

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

The lease time on the router is set for 1 week, but I'm not sure if that applies just to the LAN connection or to wireless/laptop as well. Desktop seems to actually be for 8 days below. The Laptop lease expiration time is almost identical but a few seconds off. However, the lease obtained time is still last Wednesday.

PC:
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, February 24, 2025 5:23:51 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, March 3, 2025 5:25:28 PM

LAPTOP:
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, February 19, 2025 12:52:04 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, March 3, 2025 5:25:13 PM

That can be a setting in the router as some of those wifi + wire modems split the connection between two networks with a virtual hub instead of the connections on one managed backpane.

 

[Ralston18]

That is sort of what I am wondering about.

The PC gets to keep its' lease for 7 days.

The Laptop about twice that.

Too short of lease times can be problematic - I do not see "too short" in either case.

One thought being that the desktop was getting its' DHCP IP address somewhere else.

May have gone down the rabbit hole there....

= = = =

Is this your router?

https://us.hitrontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/QIG_CODA-5x1x_2020-03-10.pdf

@dev_cyberpunk

Thanks. Not sure if the lease times are an issue or not. Would like to resolve that one way or another.

Just seems a bit amiss.

 

[RadioMatic]

That is indeed my modem. DHCP seems to be the same on both laptop and desktop, if I'm looking at the IPCONFIG correctly.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

Thanks. Not sure if the lease times are an issue or not. Would like to resolve that one way or another.

lease times are not an issue. Its more of a hardware architecture and the Wifi is intentionally buffered more. Which in some network setups it could cause the network anomaly called buffer bloat.

But the lease times are adjustable in the router's web gui. There are several DHCP servers out there, but you can pool groups of ports and interfaces to have different lease times. Which might be this situation.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

That is indeed my modem. DHCP seems to be the same on both laptop and desktop, if I'm looking at the IPCONFIG correctly.

you would have to log into the router itself to look at the dchp server settings. Because some dhcp servers you can adjust lease times across groups of ports or interfaces.

If we had SSH access into the modem, then I can walk you through altering things, but ISPs re-flash the modem so you don't have access to that if it was available when it wasn't provisioned. Because they use the ssh connection to adjust MOCA WAN's bandwidth in the router and reserve it for them.

 

[Ralston18]

Delving deeper....

What modem/router port is the desktop connected to and what type Ethernet cable is being used to make the connection?

What LED activity do you see on the modem/router and the desktop?

= = = =

Are you able to log into the router's admin functions by using a browser and entering 192.168.0.1 ?

You will need the router's admin login and password.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

You will need the router's admin login and password.

the default is printed on a sticker on the modem/router. But usually the default is Custadmin or Cusadmin and the password is password.

scary isn't it?

 

[RadioMatic]

Delving deeper....

What modem/router port is the desktop connected to and what type Ethernet cable is being used to make the connection?

What LED activity do you see on the modem/router and the desktop?

= = = =

Are you able to log into the router's admin functions by using a browser and entering 192.168.0.1 ?

You will need the router's admin login and password.

I've moved the cable between the yellow and orange ports. No difference in performance/download speed. The cable is CAT 6, which I swapped out in place of the CAT 5e cable I was using. No change.

The LED is white which, according to the manual, indicates the router is working normally.

Yes I can and have logged into the router to turn off IPV6, which I also turned off in Windows Ethernet settings.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

Yes I can and have logged into the router to turn off IPV6, which I also turned off in Windows Ethernet settings.

so is QOS turned on in the router? if so, turn it off or change the priority so the LAN has a higher priority than the wifi

You shouldn't have to use QOS on a cable modem/router and only use it when you start having bandwidth issues because it adds a software buffer and increases the latency of the connection.

 

[RadioMatic]

Not seeing any QOS settings in the router interface.

 

[Ralston18]

@RadioMatic

If you are willing to try another approach then I suggest using some Powershell "Get" cmdlets.

Get cmdlets are safe and do not change anything. They simply get information from the host system.

For example:

Get-NetAdapter

Get-NetIPConfiguration

Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name "*"

(AdvancedProperty likely being the most useful for immediate comparative purposes. Especially DisplayName and DisplayValue.)

Feel free to google the cmdlets - overall, stay with Microsoft links and focus on just the basic cmdlet.

= = = =

On both the desktop and the laptop open and run Powershell. Admin rights should not be necessary.

Run each cmdlet (you can type in the cmdlet directly or copy & paste).

You will likely notice some things that you have seen before. Either via "ipconfig", the network adaptor settings, or in the router's admin screens.

Some things will be identical with respect to desktop and laptop. Other things will be different (wired vs wireless).

The end objective being to go into more details about the respective network configuration settings of the desktop and the laptop.

 

[RadioMatic]

Desktop:

Name InterfaceDescription ifIndex Status MacAddress LinkSpeed
---- -------------------- ------- ------ ---------- ---------
Ethernet Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (7) I219-V 8 Up 70-85-C2-A3-A9-7A 1 Gbps

PS C:\Users\radio> Get-NetIPConfiguration

InterfaceAlias : Ethernet
InterfaceIndex : 8
InterfaceDescription : Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (7) I219-V
NetProfile.Name : Network
IPv4Address : 192.168.0.10
IPv4DefaultGateway : 192.168.0.1
DNSServer : 8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

PS C:\Users\radio> Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name "*"

Name DisplayName DisplayValue RegistryKeyword RegistryValue
---- ----------- ------------ --------------- -------------
Ethernet Flow Control Rx & Tx Enabled *FlowControl {3}
Ethernet Interrupt Moderation Enabled *InterruptMo... {1}
Ethernet IPv4 Checksum Offload Rx & Tx Enabled *IPChecksumO... {3}
Ethernet Jumbo Packet 1514 *JumboPacket {1514}
Ethernet Large Send Offload V2 (IPv4) Enabled *LsoV2IPv4 {1}
Ethernet Large Send Offload V2 (IPv6) Enabled *LsoV2IPv6 {1}
Ethernet Protocol ARP Offload Enabled *PMARPOffload {1}
Ethernet Protocol NS Offload Enabled *PMNSOffload {1}
Ethernet Packet Priority & VLAN Packet Priority & VLAN Enabled *PriorityVLA... {3}
Ethernet PTP Hardware Timestamp Disabled *PtpHardware... {0}
Ethernet Receive Buffers 256 *ReceiveBuffers {256}
Ethernet Software Timestamp Disabled *SoftwareTim... {0}
Ethernet Speed & Duplex Auto Negotiation *SpeedDuplex {0}
Ethernet TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) Rx & Tx Enabled *TCPChecksum... {3}
Ethernet TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6) Rx & Tx Enabled *TCPChecksum... {3}
Ethernet Transmit Buffers 512 *TransmitBuf... {512}
Ethernet UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) Rx & Tx Enabled *UDPChecksum... {3}
Ethernet UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6) Rx & Tx Enabled *UDPChecksum... {3}
Ethernet Wake on Magic Packet Enabled *WakeOnMagic... {1}
Ethernet Wake on Pattern Match Enabled *WakeOnPattern {1}
Ethernet Adaptive Inter-Frame Spacing Disabled AdaptiveIFS {0}
Ethernet Link Speed Battery Saver Disabled AutoPowerSav... {0}
Ethernet Energy Efficient Ethernet On EEELinkAdver... {1}
Ethernet Enable PME Enabled EnablePME {1}
Ethernet Interrupt Moderation Rate Adaptive ITR {65535}
Ethernet Legacy Switch Compatibility... Disabled LinkNegotiat... {1}
Ethernet Log Link State Event Enabled LogLinkState... {51}
Ethernet Gigabit Master Slave Mode Auto Detect MasterSlave {0}
Ethernet Locally Administered Address -- NetworkAddress {--}
Ethernet Reduce Speed On Power Down Enabled ReduceSpeedO... {1}
Ethernet System Idle Power Saver Disabled SipsEnabled {0}
Ethernet Ultra Low Power Mode Enabled ULPMode {1}
Ethernet Wait for Link Auto Detect WaitAutoNegC... {2}
Ethernet Wake on Link Settings Disabled WakeOnLink {0}