Fibre Broadband Speed Issue

Hi All,

My name is Martin and I am (very) new to this forum. I have a fair technical knowledge but am no way close to being any form of expert.

I have recently had a 1Gb home fibre connection installed. A speedtest normally gives me around 960Mb down and 260Mb up.

My problem is that multiple times a day my connection to my main PC (ethernet) drops to about 30Mb down, but up stays around 260Mb. I can resolve it by rebooting the modem or unplugging my ethernet cable and plugging it back in, but I am looking for a permanent solution.

Is this something that other users experience, or do I have some kind of issue with my setup?

I have a Huawei OptixStar modem, Netgear Orbi Mesh system and three other routers around the house. Almost all my connection are by ethernet as I need to expand the Mesh network.

Any help or suggestions would be very gratefully received.

Hi Martin, welcome.

I assume you have more than 1 device on the network? If so, when your PC goes to 30Mb/s do all the other devices still perform as normal or do they also drop speed as well?

Have you tried updating the network card drivers on the PC?

Edited by ian72 (Tue 23-May-23 08:33:31)

In reply to a post by MartinTheFlyer:

or unplugging my ethernet cable and plugging it back in

Could be as simple as a dodgy cable, have you tried a different one?

Hi Ian and thanks very much for your reply.

The network consists of 4 PCs, 1 Formuler box, 2 Smart TVs and 1 PS5.

I haven't checked the speeds on all the other devices, but everything seems to work okay when mine has slowed down.

All my drivers are up to date and I have just been through and checked them again.

Hi Bill and thanks for the reply.

The ethernet cable was replaced when the fibre upgrade was done, but I have tried both the original cable plus another new one and the problem remains.

Make sure it's a genuine CAT5e/6/6a cable, which is round and contains 4 twisted pairs - not a flat ethernet cable - although over short distances, the latter will probably work fine.

Can we narrow this down: can you confirm that doing nothing more than unplugging and replugging the ethernet cable makes the problem go away? (That is, you don't *need* to reboot the Huawei or any other device)? And can you confirm exactly which device the PC's ethernet cable plugs into? (It's unclear to me what model of Huawei you have, and whether it's just an ONT, or it's also a router)

My first thought was that the ethernet link has changed from 1G/full duplex to 100M/half duplex. However, if you're still seeing upload speeds of 260M then that's not going to be it.

If your PC is the only device affected in this way, then it seems to me most likely to be a problem with the PC's NIC or drivers. You could try running from an Ubuntu live USB stick for a whole day to see if the problem recurs. For a solution, you could buy a new NIC for your PC: the Intel ones generally work very well and have very good drivers.

In reply to a post by MartinTheFlyer:

I haven't checked the speeds on all the other devices, but everything seems to work okay when mine has slowed down.

OK, it looks like an issue with your computer, but it could be a faulty router port (it can happen).

Have you tried swapping the ports that a couple of the computers are connected to, to see if the problem is associated with a particular computer or a particular port on the router? It won't tell you what the issue is, but at least you'll know where!

Beyond that I can't help- I'm no router expert and I use Macs not PC's (and I'm no expert on the innards of Macs either!).

In reply to a post by MartinTheFlyer:

Hi Ian and thanks very much for your reply.

The network consists of 4 PCs, 1 Formuler box, 2 Smart TVs and 1 PS5.

I haven't checked the speeds on all the other devices, but everything seems to work okay when mine has slowed down.

All my drivers are up to date and I have just been through and checked them again.

Are you able to set up a file share on two of the PCs and check what speed they are able to transfer files between them? This would eliminate your internal network and cabling.

If it is an internal network issue, are there any PCs with Realtek cards? This is the sort of issue often seen with them.

Thanks for the reply.
The ethernet cable currently installed is the brand new one that came with the new modem, so should be okay.
Although ethernet is my preferred method of connection I tried an experiment three days ago and removed the ethernet cable and connected using Wi-Fi. Since then I have not had the issue and, also, my connections both up and down are marginally quicker!
I guess I will just stick with that.
Thanks again.

Hi, changing ports doesn't seem to make a difference, so I have just switched to Wi-Fi and that seems to have resolved it, but I have no idea why.
Thanks again for your help.