07 February 2016

A Bleg for Help/Advice

One step forward and two steps back.

Here at the homestead, we have a 100 Mbps 'net connection. My router has been channeling about 65 Mbps of that to the PC, and spreads the rest around to various iThingies, Tivo, etc.

Three nights ago, the speed slowed to .6 Mbps. Definitely ungood, so I went to Big Buy and picked up new, slightly faster router. Got all the cables reattached, and powered everything back up.

The result?  .6 Mbps.  I don't get it.

What are the chances of getting a brand new router with the same problem as the old one? Or is it a setting on the PC?

I don't know, and it's frustrating. But I'm taking the new unit back to the store this morning, and hoping for a better result from a different one.

Does anyone out there have any ideas about what might be causing the bottleneck?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

We had the same issue last year. Replaced the router, still slow. Checked all the settings on the pc, still slow. Upgraded to windows 10 - viola! Why? Turns out, for whatever reason, the adapter in the PC was using some sort of outdated driver. Updating included new drivers. It also helped to get the cable co out to put bigger cable from our house to the pole. More bandwidth. Also, we were getting water in our cable. If you look at the outside connection and unplug it, look at it and see if there's water dripping out of it. If so, replace that cable.

Rev. Paul said...

I've been using Windows 10 for several months, without issue until Thursday. And the modem is still sending 101 Mbps to the PC without a problem - until I hook up the router. And there's no liquid water outside, in Alaska in February. :) But thank you anyway.

Matt said...

When you tried the new router, did you use the old cables or the new ones? I've seen cables give up the ghost for no obvious reason.

Rev. Paul said...

I tried both, just to be sure. It didn't make a difference, dang it.

Matt said...

Have you isolated the other components to the router to make sure they are bogging down the system?

Matt said...

S/b aren't bogging down...

Rev. Paul said...

It's a wifi system, so nothing but the modem was connected to it.

Matt said...

I'm wondering if the wifi unit in your PC has gone bad in some way. On my current computer it's embedded on the motherboard, on my old one it was an after thought that was added to one of the slots, if I remember correctly. In either case the network cable port was/is separate on both computers from the wifi. So it's possible that hooking up directly to the modem you'd still get a fast connection because you bypass the wifi part.

I hate to revisit the driver issue but I'd check and make sure the drivers are up to date if you haven't already in case Windows updated and caused an issue. If they are, it would seem to me that you're down to the hardware side of things.

Other than that, I'm stumped at this point.

Rev. Paul said...

Matt, that's not a bad guess, but there are three other family members using the wifi signal, and they're all experiencing slow speeds, too. If only one device had the problem, you'd have been onto something.

As things stand, it just makes my head hurt.

Matt said...

Ah... didn't see that above. If you haven't isolated each component on the wifi and see if it affects anything.

Turn off one item at time and see what happens. May not fix it but at least you'll know what ISN'T the problem if and when you call a tech out to look at it.

Ed Bonderenka said...

I had a similar issue earlier this year, Out of the blue, didn't touch anything.
Cable guy comes out and changes my jumper cables and splitter.
Voila.
I'm a former microwave tech and I don't get it.
He said the old stuff was analog quality and not digital and was marginal.
Also they were push on connectors.
Of course you won't see this for days at that speed.

Rev. Paul said...

In this case it was the router itself which was bad, Ed, and a second new router fixed the issue.

We weren't really sure until it was plugged in and working, because it's yet another new generation of device on different frequencies, and the various devices and repeater (to get the signal to our daughters, next door) had to reconnected manually. So far, so good.

Ed Bonderenka said...

Well, that's good. but really bad, considering you'd already swapped a new one in once.