Slow Upload Speed

[Alphonse1]

Lately I've been having a really slow internet conection. As I did a speedtest to check it out, I found out my upload speed was under 0.10 mb/s. As I was connected via Wi-Fi, I plugged an ethernet cable, just to be certain of those values. After repeating the test, upload speed remained roughly the same (max 0.18 mb/s). I checked for firmware updates, but found none. Also tried to disable Large sent offload but it didn't improve it at all. All my internet activity is getting slow and laggy due to this.

Any ideas of what to do?

 

[Herc08]

Well, if WiFi and and Wired are having the same issue, it could be your ISP. Are you plugging it directly to your modem or your router?

 

[Solandri]

Reboot your router. If that doesn't work, reboot your modem. if that doesn't work, call the ISP and request they reset your modem (some ISPs let you do this yourself if you login to your account on their website).

You can also run traceroute to try to see where the slowdown is coming from. Traceroute actually finds latency, not low bandwidth. But usually low bandwidth is accompanied with latency. Open up a command prompt and type:

tracert 8.8.8.8

You can use any valid IP address, not necessarily 8.8.8.8. But usually the problem is pretty close to you so the endpoint won't make much difference. It functions like ping, but gives you a ping time to every hop along the network route. First hop will be your router, second your modem or gateway the modem is connected to, then the upstream node from the gateway, etc. The problem hop will show up as a large increase in ping time compared to the previous hop. If you determine that the problem is at your ISP and not your modem/router, sending them a copy of your traceroute results can help them troubleshoot the problem at their end.

 

[spdragoo]

Check with your ISP. Most companies give you a lot more download connection speed than an upload connection -- for example, my connection with Earthlink (previously via Time Warner, now via Spectrum) is rated at 20Mbps down, plus the Cable MAX boost, & my download tests are generally in the 20Mbps range. My uploads however, never go higher than 1.5Mbps (although they always stay at least above 1Mbps).

It's just the nature of the service, though. ISPs figure that customers are primarily interested in downloading content vs. uploading it, so you're generally going to see your upload speeds be much, much lower. It's primarily 'business-class' customers that need to have a more balanced load -- not just actual businesses, but anyone who has a need for high upload bandwidth/upload speeds (i.e. someone who has a static IP address because they're running a file/game server).

The big question is, when you ran the speed tests, did it give you a QoS percentage and/or a ping value, & what were your download speeds? Again, unless you're gaming or uploading a lot of files (either because you're uploading large files or because you're running a file server), your download speed is going to have the most effect on your Internet experience. And if you're gaming, you can have a "slow" upload speed, but if your ping is low (<100ms) that'll have the best effect on your gaming experience. If your QoS (Quality of Service) is low, however, then it doesn't matter what your speeds are, because low QoS means your connection isn't consistent. Whether that's due to in-house issues (i.e. lots of people sharing a connection, bad router/modem, etc.), "last mile" issues (i.e. squirrels have chewed on the cables a lot -- happened once to us, & I don't know how many times to my brother-in-law), or even true ISP issues (i.e. bad equipment in the local node/central office, malfunctioning boosters/repeaters, network issues, etc.), will depend on the results of troubleshooting.