Wired connection to router much slower than wired connection to Modem

[swy000]

Hello - first post but long time reader and a well rounded IT person. Looking for help/thoughts.

I have a Trendnet router TEW-639GR v1.0R.
I am on Timewarner internet here with a speed of 200Mbps/20 Mbps. I just received my new ARRIS modem, hard wired into my desktop and went to speedtest.net. The results were 215/21 Mbps which was spectacular.

I then wired the desktop through the Trendnet router and went to speedtest.net again. The results showed 78/21 Mbps. The downstream seemed to be significantly cut. I went into the setting of the router to look at firewalls or QoS, but no luck. Here is an emulator in case anyone wants to try:
http://www.trendnet.com/emulators/TEW-639GR_v1.0R/internet/wan.htm

The cables are short.Tried different cables. I shut off radio/wifi. No other devices are wired in. Happy to try anything at this point or maybe just buy a new router.

-swy

 

[ko888]

If you're using Windows OS did you check the Local Area Connection Status applet to see what the Connection Speed is between the PC's Ethernet port and the router's Ethernet port? It's probably 100.0 Mbps.

 

[rhysiam]

The router is the device that's handling NAT, which is not an insignificant load for consumer grade routers. My guess would be that the router just isn't able to keep up NAT requests for 200mbps worth of data. If you had another router you might be able to test it, but I can't think of a way to confirm that without being able to place the connect the router to an existing Gb network.

Might be time to buy a new router, though others might have other ideas.

 

[swy000]

If you're using Windows OS did you check the Local Area Connection Status applet to see what the Connection Speed is between the PC's Ethernet port and the router's Ethernet port? It's probably 100.0 Mbps.

I opened up the connection status and read "Speed: 1.0 Gbps". Both my network card and the router support gigabit cxns. Good idea though, forgot to check that one.

 

[swy000]

The router is the device that's handling NAT, which is not an insignificant load for consumer grade routers. My guess would be that the router just isn't able to keep up NAT requests for 200mbps worth of data. If you had another router you might be able to test it, but I can't think of a way to confirm that without being able to place the connect the router to an existing Gb network.

Might be time to buy a new router, though others might have other ideas.

That will be my last resort if I can't get any good idea here. Bought router back in 2011. I actually called Trendnet to get their thought and they tried to charge me $14.99 to fix it "over the phone". I giggled and said that he should fix it first, then I would pay (and i would have). But we parted ways.

 

[rhysiam]

Depending on your IT knowledge you could actually test it with 2 wired computers/laptops, but you'd have to allocate a couple of static IPs. Basically you set it up to place one computer 'behind' the router, with the router's WAN port on the same network as the second computer (second computer and router's WAN IP must be on the same network). Try to initiate a file copy from the computer 'behind' the router between the two computers and see what sort of bandwidth you get (choose a single large file to minimise overheads). In that case the 'bottleneck' should be the router's ability to route and NAT the traffic between the computers. If it looks very similar to the 78mbps of your internet, then there's your issue.

They recently launched 100mbps fibre in my area and the sales & tech guys were really paranoid about which router you were using, mainly because many routers are unable to sustain route & NAT @ 100mpbs (let alone the 200mbps you're aiming for!) and they didn't want people accusing them of sub-advertised internet speeds.

If you got a high end router back in 2011, I'd be disappointed. But asking an entry-mid range 3yr old router to handle 200mbps is actually a pretty big ask and I'm not that surprised it's not up to the job.

If you do want to test it as I've suggested above I'm happy to post some clearer instructions if that would be helpful.

 

[swy000]

Depending on your IT knowledge you could actually test it with 2 wired computers/laptops, but you'd have to allocate a couple of static IPs. Basically you set it up to place one computer 'behind' the router, with the router's WAN port on the same network as the second computer (second computer and router's WAN IP must be on the same network). Try to initiate a file copy from the computer 'behind' the router between the two computers and see what sort of bandwidth you get (choose a single large file to minimise overheads). In that case the 'bottleneck' should be the router's ability to route and NAT the traffic between the computers. If it looks very similar to the 78mbps of your internet, then there's your issue.

They recently launched 100mbps fibre in my area and the sales & tech guys were really paranoid about which router you were using, mainly because many routers are unable to sustain route & NAT @ 100mpbs (let alone the 200mbps you're aiming for!) and they didn't want people accusing them of sub-advertised internet speeds.

If you got a high end router back in 2011, I'd be disappointed. But asking an entry-mid range 3yr old router to handle 200mbps is actually a pretty big ask and I'm not that surprised it's not up to the job.

If you do want to test it as I've suggested above I'm happy to post some clearer instructions if that would be helpful.

Thanks. your test is pretty clear actually. I get what you are trying to do. Might try that over the weekend. Still, if it confirms, i guess I do need a new router.

 

[swy000]

New router fixed the problem.

I guess the old one was.... too old.

Thought I would post this as the solution.

 

[npc9]

New router fixed the problem.

I guess the old one was.... too old.

Thought I would post this as the solution.

May I know which new router did you get?

I'm experiencing the same download speed cut as you - with Cox Ultimate in Irvine, I'm getting 190Mbps/25Mbps when connected directly to my ARRIS SB6183, but when I connect through my TP-LINK TL-R600VPN (a gigabit router that I bought less than a year ago), I'm getting 100Mbps/25Mbps.

 

[rhysiam]

New router fixed the problem.

I guess the old one was.... too old.

Thought I would post this as the solution.

Yeah, thanks for finishing the story. As suspected, that older router just couldn't NAT that much traffic. Unfortunate that the solution required money, but at least it's all working I guess.

 

[rhysiam]

May I know which new router did you get?

I'm experiencing the same download speed cut as you - with Cox Ultimate in Irvine, I'm getting 190Mbps/25Mbps when connected directly to my ARRIS SB6183, but when I connect through my TP-LINK TL-R600VPN (a gigabit router that I bought less than a year ago), I'm getting 100Mbps/25Mbps.

You'll have exactly the same issue. The product features for that device you have actually list the "NAT Throughput" at 120Mbps (http://www.tp-link.com/lk/products/details/?model=tl-r600vpn#spec). At least they actually list it on the spec-sheet, that's pretty rare. You're not going to get much more than 100Mbps down out of that device unfortunately.