[SOLVED] Why am I missing a part of my internet?? pulling 6 out of 15mbs, but 9mbs are not there. Help plz!

[CottonAz]

Hello and thanks for any info you can give me on this issue.

My Isp is Dakota pro my family and I are paying for 15mbs, but as we are discovering today that something weird is happening.
So here is the story. When my computer is off/ disconnected from the internet and my father runs a speed test on his computer we pull 15mbs like what we are suppose to be getting, but the minute I turn on/ connect to the internet and he tests the speed and it drops to 1mbs or less. Now I know it sounds like my computer is pulling all of it, but when I check the internet on my computer through task manager it shows that I'm only pulling a varying amount between 0.5 and 6mbs at a time (Which there is only one task using the internet "Host Service: Network Service").
The part that doesn't make sense to me is where is the other 9mbs when I'm pulling 6 are going? shouldn't my father still be seeing 9mbs (roughly) in the speed test when I'm only pulling 6? Also when I'm off line we have other devices connected to the internet but no matter when he checks the speed its always around 15 until I get on and pull 6 then all of a sudden we lose 9mbs! And end up at less then 1mbs... Why is it that all the other devices can be only line with my fathers computer and be fine at 15mbs, but when my computer comes online and pull 6 do we lose all of the mbps! Sorry if I went an talked in circles.

 

[bill001g]

Try the network tab in the resource monitor it tends to give better display of usage. Be careful some values are in bits/sec and other bytes/sec.

If that still does not show you load wireshark and capture all the data. It has a number of reports that show the list of sites you machines is talking to and the rates. This tends to be using the sledge hammer method but it gets all traffic that sometime you do not see with the tools built into windows.

 

[SamirD]

Two potential problems--if your system is sucking that type of bandwidth the second its plugged-in, it's probably infected with something. Boot a linux live cd and see if the same problem happens when you plug it in. If it doesn't, then your windows is borked and you should plan on reinstalling it from scratch at some point before you try to plug in again.

The other problem is that with that little amount of bandwidth, you run into problems with switching as you have more collisions, and the collisions will cause retries which will eat bandwidth. Keep in mind that 15Mb is near the original 10Mb Ethernet spec and almost nothing expects so little bandwidth.

(I still have some $900 10Mb switches that we bought when they first came out and did an experiment once where I connected that switch inline with our isp which is well over 100Mbps download. I expected a speed test through the switch to be 10Mbs, but the highest I could ever get it to go was 6Mbs--there's just a lot more impact from the overhead of Ethernet on 10Mb connections.)