Question Windows 10 is throttling my WiFi (and ONLY my WiFi) ?

formulafox

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Hey, everyone, so I recently upgraded to Gigabit fiber. It's been awesome, despite the fact that the distance from the router has only allwoed mt to utilize about 400Megabits of it so far(threading through an ethernet cable is going to be...a project, so we have yet to do it), but just today I began having a weird problem: The wifi is suddenly being throttled to 50Megabits on my PC. It's ONLY the wireless - when I plug the old ethernet cable fro mthe OLD internet(service for which does not end until December 5th since we'd already paid through that period), I get the full 100Megabit speed it had, but if I plug into the wifi for the old internet, it's also throttled to 50(the wifi for it was able to get 80-90).

Now, of course, first thought is dying network card. Fortunately I have a USB wifi dongle with 100megabit capacity(I know this from using it with the old internet before I got the wifi card) to test with, so I disabled the network card, plugged in the dongle, and... same results.

ALL other devices that connect to the new internet wifi are getting proper speeds - 200-700 megabits depending on proximity to the router. It is ONLY my PC that is suffering this, and it is apparently not the network card.

So where do I look to fix this?

Oh, and since I'm sure someone will ask, I might as well mention this info: I use a VPN, but the issue is happening even with the VPN shut off - the only difference is a much faster ping with the VPN off. VPN being on/off made a difference of about 70Megabits in speed before this.

EDIT: I have also already tried disabling tcp autotuning and it had no effect.
 
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kanewolf

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Hey, everyone, so I recently upgraded to Gigabit fiber. It's been awesome, despite the fact that the distance from the router has only allwoed mt to utilize about 400Megabits of it so far(threading through an ethernet cable is going to be...a project, so we have yet to do it), but just today I began having a weird problem: The wifi is suddenly being throttled to 50Megabits on my PC. It's ONLY the wireless - when I plug the old ethernet cable fro mthe OLD internet(service for which does not end until December 5th since we'd already paid through that period), I get the full 100Megabit speed it had, but if I plug into the wifi for the old internet, it's also throttled to 50(the wifi for it was able to get 80-90).

Now, of course, first thought is dying network card. Fortunately I have a USB wifi dongle with 100megabit capacity(I know this from using it with the old internet before I got the wifi card) to test with, so I disabled the network card, plugged in the dongle, and... same results.

ALL other devices that connect to the new internet wifi are getting proper speeds - 200-700 megabits depending on proximity to the router. It is ONLY my PC that is suffering this, and it is apparently not the network card.

So where do I look to fix this?

Oh, and since I'm sure someone will ask, I might as well mention this info: I use a VPN, but the issue is happening even with the VPN shut off - the only difference is a much faster ping with the VPN off. VPN being on/off made a difference of about 70Megabits in speed before this.

EDIT: I have also already tried disabling tcp autotuning and it had no effect.
Do you have a dual band router? (My guess is yes)
Are the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WIFI different names?
 

formulafox

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Do you have a dual band router? (My guess is yes)
Are the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WIFI different names?
Yes, they do. The difference in names is small - 2.4GHz named X, 5GHz named X5GHz. Both networks suffer the same issues, but the 5GHz can take a few minutes to realize it even has internet access before I can test it.
 

kanewolf

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Yes, they do. The difference in names is small - 2.4GHz named X, 5GHz named X5GHz. Both networks suffer the same issues, but the 5GHz can take a few minutes to realize it even has internet access before I can test it.
Is your WIFI setup to connect to both 2.4 ang 5Ghz? If so, it may be that the 5Ghz WIFI signal is poor enough that your card is switching to the 2.4Ghz signal. 2.4Ghz could reasonably be expected to have 50Mbit vs 400 on 5Ghz.
 

formulafox

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The 5GHz network only started doing this delayed acknowledgement of the internet connection when this issue began today - prior to that it connected fine and had an identical speed to the other devices connected to it.

Using the Speedtest app to test wifi networks on my phone, from here at my PC where it's identical distance(and the same walls) from the router, the 5GHz is getting 390 down, 189 up. The 2.4 is getting 129 down, 60 up. I was getting numbers close to that on my PC before this(the 2.4 could sometimes get 250 down, 200 up, but it was usually about 150/100 and the 5GHz was effectively identical to what I just listed).

Right now, my PC is getting 50/50 on both networks, as well as both the 2.4 and 5GHz network for the OLD internet, which has an advertised speed of 100/10 - which is the speed I still get when I plug in the ethernet cable.

I think the cable I bought to thread through the walls might just reach from the modem/router to the PC without going through the walls, so I'm going to check that out and run a speedtest if it does reach just to see.
 
That is a very strange that it does the same thing on multiple routers as well as multiple radio bands. That also is a very strange speed to get.

You start to suspect there might be some software limiting the speed. I assume you are getting this number from speedtest. Have you tried another browser. Maybe try to download something from say steam but be aware most game downloader display the rates in BYTES/sec.

Your ethernet test is your best next step to see if it is the wifi. I always prefer ethernet it seem to always just work and not get random strange errors like wifi.
 

formulafox

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Sorry I didn't get the ethernet test done right away - something slightly more important popped up. But it's done now, and the result...

Down: 937 Megabits
Up: 893

I use the standalone Speedtest program on Windows, but even browser tests get the same behavior. So as I suspect from the old interenet ethernet test, only wireless is being throttled, regardless of adapter, regardless of source.
 
So if it is the pc it must be some kind of software issue that only affects wifi. Generally unless it is some special app the only difference between wifi and ethernet from the OS viewpoint is drivers. Microsoft are idiots and they will sometime update drivers with generic ones.
It is less likely it is a driver issue since you have used 2 different wifi nics unless they just happen to run the same wifi chip.

After this you do not have much left. The only other large variable will be the location of the pc. It takes very little to block wifi can be as simple as a door being closed or open. Since you have a USB wifi nic maybe get a long USB cable and move it around the room and see if there is any difference.
 

formulafox

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The thing is the PC itself hasn't been moved - it's been in the same spot it was when it was getting the much faster speeds. So I don't see how it's location could be influencing things differently to how it was before. (and I don't have a USB extension cord to test the dongle anyway)
 

formulafox

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So interesting development: We finally got the ethernet cable threaded through and conencted, so I can enjoy my full gigabit of speed, but... Now the standalone Speedtest app is throttling tiself and consistently giving me 250megabit download speed... and 900 gigabit upload. But the in-browser Speedtest gives my full gigabit speed when testing. Clearly something in my system is throttling the Speedtest app, and this might be connected to the weird wifi issue.

How best to track down possible causes of this?
 
Stop using microsoft pile of massive bloatware :).

There is so much garbage in windows itself that can cause this and then you have all kinds of different add in software.

I do not know what the speedtest app is. Would have to dig around looking at stuff like port numbers etc. If this is one of those new android things that run in compatibility mode with win11 it is even more complex.

A couple of very common things people have issues with but it may not be your case.

Windows firewall setting, mostly this is private/public setting, you want private network. It tends to only allow web type traffic.
Check if IPv6 is turned on. For whatever reason ipv6 does not perform as well as ipv4 for some people.
Check if there is so called "gaming" network software installed on your machine. This software pretend it can reduce latency etc but it can not affect traffic outside the machine so it is pretty worthless. Many time this comes bundled with motherboard or video card software. A common name is CFOSspeed.
Uninstall anything like that.

In the end it may not matter if it is just that one app. Although it also has issues what do you get for download rates say on steam or epic. Note these by defualt have the rates in BYTES/sec rather than bits.
 

formulafox

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I do not know what the speedtest app is.

It's literally an official standalone app for Speedtest.net

If this is one of those new android things that run in compatibility mode with win11 it is even more complex.

No, it's a Windows app and I'm on Win10.

Windows firewall setting, mostly this is private/public setting, you want private network. It tends to only allow web type traffic.
Check if IPv6 is turned on. For whatever reason ipv6 does not perform as well as ipv4 for some people.

IPv6 is indeed on.

Check if there is so called "gaming" network software installed on your machine. This software pretend it can reduce latency etc but it can not affect traffic outside the machine so it is pretty worthless. Many time this comes bundled with motherboard or video card software. A common name is CFOSspeed.

No such software present(that I can find)

In the end it may not matter if it is just that one app. Although it also has issues what do you get for download rates say on steam or epic. Note these by defualt have the rates in BYTES/sec rather than bits.

It's not just this app. This weird ethernet behavior is exclusive to the app, but the WIFI issues I'm having, solving which is the primary point of this thread, are NOT exclusive to the app - they happen on the website as well.
 
When ethernet works but wifi does not you have eliminated pretty much everything except the wifi. You have also eliminated hardware as the cause by using a different wifi nic device. I guess it could be some strange software but I have no idea how you would find it.

Maybe try to boot a linux USB image. These images have chrome preinstalled so you can run speedtest. They also support most wifi cards so it should allow you to test the wifi.

I guess you could also move the computer near the router and see if it is a signal strength thing.
 
It doesn't have to be the pc it can be as simple as new piture hung on a wall that has glass with a metal coating. Maybe one of your nieghbors got a new router and is close to that pc that other devices.
Way too much stuff, would be easier if we could actually see the wifi radio waves but even expensive tools do not always tell much.
 

formulafox

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No way could it be the neighbors - on top of the fact that other devices use the wifi just fine, our neighbors would need routers that blast wifi with the strength of a cell phone tower to be an issue. We don't have a HUGE property, but our wifi signal doesn't even reach the edges of what we do own. (there's also no other networks detectable to us within our property)