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I followed your instructions, but did not have any success. Same result. I'm going to run spybot and see if it finds anything. Will let you know what I find. Thanks so much for your time.

I just used IE 11, and it tested fine. Must be a problem with Chrome (which I prefer) but I just don't know what it is. Thanks for your help and the time you've taken.

One other thing that can make quite a surprising difference on Wi-Fi is how the antennas are positioned, assuming the router has external antennas. Generally I find Wi-Fi performs noticeably quicker with the antennas positioned in a V for 2 antennas or W for 3 or more antennas. On a router with 2 or more antennas, they each transmit or receive independently for diversity / MIMO, so depending on how they are positioned, extra bandwidth is achieved bouncing the signals of various objects compared to having the antennas all facing directly up. 4G networks use a similar principle, using horizontal and vertically positioned antennas to effectively double the bandwidth. This is why 4G modems with external antenna support have two antenna connections.

You should be able to stream without issues... except when your speed looks like this. https://testmy.net/db/3jtqGbupv At that time you may experience quality fluctuation but I would still bet it wouldn't cause major buffering issues. If you're able to hook directly into the modem and get better results we should look to improve your wifi. Could be as simple as better router placement or changing the channel in the router settings. For all of your testing in this instance, pick a size and stick with it throughout your testing. In your case, 50 MB should do the trick. You're already doing the right thing by focusing on the download test. Just navigate to the download page and manually select the size. * I know you already did but test directly to the modem again, reset the power to have the modem get the computer Mac address. Make sure we get a nice baseline from right now. Run the download test like 3 times. * Next plug the router in, reset the power on the modem, plug directly into the router this time and run 3 more tests. Keep the test variables the same for a more scientific comparison. The only thing that should change is the router being added. * Do 3 more tests on wifi about 10 feet from the router. Do another 3 tests further away in an area you often use the wifi. Bring your laptop near your TV and test the wifi to that location too. Compare those results. If the wifi results are terrible you may just have interference in the area. Sometimes going into the router settings (often found at http://192.168.1.1) and changing the wifi channel helps. Change it and test to see if there is an improvement. Also look at the placement of the router. You want it away from other electronics, even devices that don't emit wifi can and will interfere. The best placement is at the center of your home (away from any brick), the worst is in the corner. Most routers have omnidirectional antenna, so the radio waves go in 360 degrees. If you place it in the corner of your home you're only effectively getting 90 degrees of the total output where you need it, 270 degrees is going away from your home. Having said that, the router in my own home is placed in a way that wastes 180 degrees and I get great performance everywhere. You can actually take a reflective surface (in a pinch the inside of a Pringles can works) and place it behind the antenna in a way to make it reflect the signal back to the house. Just make sure it doesn't have lines, crinkles or wrinkles, nice smooth reflective surface.

i reformatted my desktop. installed steam / dota2, ms office, chrome, enabled windows firewall and defender... i'll check my speed now... (fingers crossed) :-s

It will probably be Wednesday before I get a chance to do some testing with the 4G networks. With the Ookla App, I was able to force it to use port 80 with the help of the NoRoot Firewall App. Basically I ran the speed test with all its ports opened (Speedtest used port 8080 like the browser test) and then repeated the test with only TCP ports 80 & 443 enabled. Indeed there was a stark difference with the Vodafone 4G network, with the default test on the left and port 8080 blocked on the right: While on my way to work, I stopped in an area where I get a strong 4G signal and used TestMy with HTTP vs HTTPS: The Three network here seems to be throttling HTTP again, so there's also a stark difference between HTTP and HTTPS again: So now I'm curious to repeat these tests with HTTP vs port 8080, especially with Vodafone which does its speed demonstrations using Ookla's App. I suspect it will be faster than the HTTPS test above as it seems to throttle even HTTPS after about 20MB of data is transferred: https://testmy.net/db/F8iglHK5a

I find this disturbingly hilarious, not to mention in a sense, falsifying throughput details. Hell, why don't we simply create a test on ou[r] local network to get 'interwebz' speeds. Oo