Windows 10 power management reducing Fibre speed

I have just taken 900 MBPS fibre to the premises and can log (by wire to the router) 887 with Ubuntu but only about 300 with Windows 10. Zen, my ISP, says there is a problem with the power management in the current build of W10. They say they have noticed this during this month.

Does anyone else have this problem, and, possibly, a solution, please

Presume testing is with the same machine either running Ubuntu as W10? I’ve got the odd box running W10 and not noticed any power management / save issues with any recent updates per se. These boxes run 24/7.

What’s the adapter make? Check network performance again once you toggle Large Send Offload on the advanced adapter settings in W10.

Are you running any other third-party firewall, AV or VPN software under W10 or is the machine vanilla? All these can have a significant impact on network throughout.

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 24-Apr-21 08:54:35)

With such a vague answer from Zen it's hard to know what they mean. They might be talking about Energy-Efficient Ethernet. If so, it looks like this is something you can control in Windows: see here and here. I don't have any Windows machine, so I can't check those settings.

In reply to a post by JMaples:

a solution, please

Get rid of Win10 and use PCLinuxOS

Thank you very much candlerb for your prompt and helpful response. Both your references took me to the same spot where I found that there was no "Power Management" tab on the properties of either my wireless or ethernet devices. But thank you. That is what Zen were pointing to. I have, of course written to them asking them what they propose.

In reply to a post by JMaples:

That is what Zen were pointing to. I have, of course written to them asking them what they propose.

OK, but I'm afraid it's not really their problem if you don't have a PC capable of using a gigabit connection.

There have been some good suggestions made by others: firstly uninstall any third-party antivirus or security packages, and if that doesn't work then buy a different network interface card (Intel NICs work well, and a basic Intel PCIe NIC can be had for under £20)

Realy need to know what NIC card is?
On my system I have 2
Intel I211 Gigabit Nework Connect (1Gb)
Realtek PCIe 2.5GbE (2.5Gb)

Also can some times (no so much now) but what is motherboard model, if you know?

I know that doing 300Mb so that could suggest to me using USB2 to Ethernet connection.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plugable-Gigabit-Ethernet-C...

If you've ever had Hamachi VPN software installed on your machine, it makes some naughty changes to the Windows network settings which have the effect of drastically reducing throughput.

I just got Zen 900 and similarly was much disappointed by performance. Though likewise, it affected windows but not Ubuntu on same laptop.

After a bit of digging, my PCs turn out to have some disabled TCP tuning options. (Receive side scaling and receive window autotuning)

A bit of further digging, and I found many complaints of similar linked to Hamachi, and it deciding to disable these in a way which persists even after uninstalling!

If anyone wants to see the state of these settings; from administrator command prompt:

netsh interface tcp show global

If they are disabled, the fixes are:

netsh interface tcp set global rss=enabled

and:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal


I cannot vouch for whether Hamachi is well behaved with these settings turned back on in all scenarios. It seems to at least work for me here, but they’ve obviously disabled them for some reason. Maybe there are situations where their network driver doesn’t function correctly with them enabled. ☹

The thread about this at Logmein’s forum is here:

https://community.logmein.com/t5/LogMeIn-Hamachi-Dis...

I'm sure there may well be other software out there that pokes bits it shouldn't do in the Windows networking stack...

Re: Power management; you could test with the mains connected, and change the power profile on your laptop to performance instead of whatever mode it is in.

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:

I know that doing 300Mb so that could suggest to me using USB2 to Ethernet connection.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plugable-Gigabit-Ethernet-C...

Don't even think about a USB2 to ethernet adaptor. Whilst the theoretical *peak* speed of USB2 is 480Mbps, achievable throughput is lower than that.

If this is a desktop PC then you want a PCIe NIC. For a laptop, then Thunderbolt to ethernet is best, and failing that, USB3 to ethernet. (Beware that there are some fake brands out there that advertise themselves as "USB3", and even have the USB3 connector colour, but are actually USB2)

Thank you very much Pheasant for your prompt response and helpful suggestions.
Unfortunately there is no “Large Send Offload” option on my adaptors where you suggest, although I can see the logic in following Zen’s advice.
Yes, I do have both Bitdefender and Malwarebytes running but saw no change when I switched both off.
Not that it is related to what you suggested but I noticed when doing tests that there is an incorrect balance on the PC between download and up load speeds. The upload speeds are substantially more: About 60:100. As that is not the case with the speeds at the same point on the iPhone, I conclude that it is the download speeds not the upload speeds which are being choked by Windows 10.