In reply to a post by Rytenuff:

AVG (disabled when testing.

Disable doesn't quite do what you hope then. I suspect it stops on-access scanning of the disk, but doesn't stop checking network connections. Even "disabled" the third party software is changing Microsoft's product, and making a mess of it. The only way to be sure is to uninstall and reboot and then run any wipe tools available to completely remove the product.

It’s good you proved the connection is fine. Did you put the SH2 back in play and test behind it for good measure, or was that with it in?

Goes to show just how much a decently fast internet connection can show up all the other weakest links in the setup and home network.

You’re getting what you paid for 👍

I cannot get the i5 machine to connect directly to the ONT which is a pity as it appears to be the fastest of my PCs. However, I took the advice to test using a Live USB Ubuntu and the results I cannot complain about. The best test with Fast.com was 940 Down and 98Up and ThinkBroadband Speedtest was 908D 94U
The NIC on that machine is Intel I219-LM
The NIC on the slower machines are Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller (not the best)
Bottom line...I am getting what I paid for. Maybe invest in a faster PC once the price of CPUs and chips return to a more normal price. If ever!

Thank you for your help.

You've proved that the hardware is quite up to the job. It's the software that's the problem: Windows network drivers and/or antivirus.

When you're using a wired connection, is this using an ethernet port built-in to the laptop, or an external USB one? Many USB-ethernet adapters are only USB2, which has a peak speed of 480Mbps. But a Thunderbolt2/3 or USB3.0/USB3.1 adapter should be able to saturated a gigabit.

Some built-in ethernet ports come with terrible drivers (I've seen this with Realtek in particular). For a desktop PC, an Intel-based PCIe ethernet adapter may work much better, and can cost as little as £25.

Otherwise, as has already been suggested, strip back your Windows to completely uninstall any third-party anti-virus and other add-ons, and see if that solves the problem.

I mean from what it sounds windows is doing, which happened to me once.
A windows update caused network speeds to drop in a similar way till I updated and did a complete reimage of windows so if your deleting everything you might as well just go to the reimaging options and start fresh in settings. I know that solved my issue it might solve yours, just make sure you know what specialist software you have on your PC and have the license keys, but also any drivers that are for that computer.

In reply to a post by Rytenuff:

The NIC on the slower machines are Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller (not the best)

Interesting comment. I have one of those in my ASUS motherboard for my i7-4790 and I have no problem managing sustained 900 Mbps to my Synology NAS across my switch. Win10 20H2 driver version = 10.34.307.2019 dated = 07/03/2019

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

A windows update caused network speeds to drop in a similar way till I updated and did a complete reimage of windows

That sounds like a sledgehammer to crack a nut! Some of us have to solve problems in corporate environments where wiping 1000 or more computers is not an option. My guess is that you have some other (non Microsoft) software that was conflicting.

This is where Apple & Microsoft diverge in ideas, Apple will update macOS and if it breaks an application that is the application vendors issue. Microsoft spends time updating Windows and ensures older software continues to run. Look at 32bit Visual Basic 6, or Word for Windows 6.0 which are both ancient and still run.

Its not important at home, but in enterprise/corporate settings not having to upgrade some seriously expensive systems (e.g. Oracle, SAP etc) each time Windows is patched is quite important.

Edited by jchamier (Sat 10-Apr-21 11:10:30)

I've never been able to get good speed results at Thinkbroadband.com with my 1Gig connection.

Single threaded tests are around 300M and multi threaded about 600M no matter on the time of day. However using other test sites, for example speedtest.net I get around 900 on multi download tests and about 800 on single tests. Just tried fast.com as mentioned in this thread and 890M. So somewhere there is a bottleneck to Thinkbroadband for me.

Regarding Windows 10 and network performance, I've found if you are using Virtual machines in Windows 10 that usually sets up software switches which can considerably slow things down. Also it is often worth doing a 'Network Reset' to restore default network settings plus also disabling power management on the Ethernet connection which occasionally can case some reduction from the max throughput.

I do understand that for the thinkbroadband site however i meant more across the board generally.

Network Reset

I have done a few of these although they don't seem to work as well as they should, even as you say checking the power management settings did not make any difference in my case.
I did check what software i had running and there was no software that seemed to cause the issue. It literally was networking at 100% in task manager which seemed quite odd.

I have used virtual machines in windows 10 pro however that is on another more powerful machine and that seems to handle everything perfectly fine.

In reply to a post by E300:

So somewhere there is a bottleneck to Thinkbroadband for me.

That will be more common the higher speeds get. Seb, Andrew have shown the Thinkbroadband site and tester can run much faster than 1Gbps, however there are a lot of networks interconnecting between an end user ISP and Thinkbroadband where speed can be lost.

Its usually my ISP, Virgin Media, whom has the problems