Something throttling download speeds on my PC?

[killianbell]

Hey guys,

I'm running a PC I built myself with a TP-Link TL-WN851ND wireless networking card. When I first set up my machine, internet speeds were fairly good. I have unlimited fibre broadband with Sky (U.K.) that should deliver 40Mbps down and 10Mbps up, but I only ever get 30Mbps down on any of my devices.

But over the past few weeks, the download speed on my PC has been incredibly slow -- the best is about 10Mbps down, but it's usually around 3Mbps down. However, I'm still getting 10Mbps up.

What's most frustrating is that on any other device -- smartphone, tablet, laptop -- I get at least 25Mbps down sat right in front of the PC!

With that in mind, I'm convinced something is throttling the speed on my PC, but I cannot work out what it might be. I use an AMD graphics card, and I've read it may be the AMD "Quick Stream" program, but I don't have that installed. I do use McAfee anti-virus, but I've checked the internet settings and as far as I can tell, it shouldn't be throttling anything.
a
I've double-checked my drivers are up to date. I cannot connect my PC via an ethernet cable, unfortunately, because the router is in a different room. Are there other common connection throttling programs I should look out for? Or any settings I may have missed?

Thanks in advance.

 

[TBRAND68]

If you have access to the router, log into it and make sure that a QoS function wasn't turned on or misconfigured. If you don't have access to the router, sounds like someone at the house didn't like you "hogging" all the bandwidth and and has limited your connection speed. (if you have another network card to try, you could see if this is the case. Most routers limit based on MAC address). You could also try by turning your cell phone into a hotspot...connect your PC to the cell phone. If your connection speed improves, it shows it probably isn't anything to do with the PC and something further upstream.

 

[killianbell]

If you have access to the router, log into it and make sure that a QoS function wasn't turned on or misconfigured. If you don't have access to the router, sounds like someone at the house didn't like you "hogging" all the bandwidth and and has limited your connection speed. (if you have another network card to try, you could see if this is the case. Most routers limit based on MAC address). You could also try by turning your cell phone into a hotspot...connect your PC to the cell phone. If your connection speed improves, it shows it probably isn't anything to do with the PC and something further upstream.

I do have access to the router, so I'll check that out. Thanks for the suggestion.

I know it's not the network card because if I unplug that and use a USB Wi-Fi dongle instead, I get almost exactly the same speeds.

Unfortunately, testing with a cellphone won't be an option because I only have 3G, so the best speed I'll get is around 3Mbps anyway.