100/20 connection going at way lower speeds almost everywhere?

[Onira]

Hello testmy.net community!

 

For the last 2 years i've been having a difficult love/hate relationship with my ISP. I live in a rural area in Italy and haven't had access to even the most basic ADSL up to 2016 or so, but then things changed and I had the luck to get a VDSL2 connection, a 30 mbps line which got upgraded to 100 a few months later. However, for the last 18 months or so, i've been having recurrent issues about the effective speed of my connection.

I started having doubts when on Twitch.tv (i'm just using Twitch as example as it's a renowned streaming website) I would end up seeing streams buffer, way more than usual, and definitely not something you'd expect of a 100mbps connection, but my Ookla speedtests always gave results of up to 90mbps, which is what effectively arrives to my router and what it appears on the router page itself, so at first I thought it was some issue with Twitch itself; however, after finding testmy.net and similar sites, my speedtests started getting more and more like this one:

 

 

It was here at first that I learned about the difference about Singlethread and Multithread speedtests, and after going back to other sites which also showed the same options, I realized that while my multithread tests average about the expected 90mbps, singlethread gave me way lower results, with huge variation even within a few minutes difference, but still way lower than the 90 (usually it's been about 5 to 20 mbps, but this number is getting always lower).

 

Obviously I tried contacting my ISP about it, and while this issue has been resolved a couple of times already, it's always coming back after a few weeks or so. I mentioned the difference in the results between single and multithread, but they say that i shouldn't "bother with it", as if to say that these value mean nothing. Obviously, they claim the only reliable speedtest is the one on their website, which in the last weeks turned out to be the only one giving results close to the 90mbps - yep, even Ookla multithread tests now give me way lower values! However, nothing changed as for what gets to the router (which still shows around 90mbps), and honestly i have no issues with download with a few services (for example, Steam keeps downloading at about 80-85 mbps), but many other sites are reached by visibly low speeds: Twitch.tv (again, only an example) is at times straight up unwatchable.

 

To be honest, I really don't know what to do. Should I press about the significance of the singlethread tests to my ISP? They claim it's worthless but i've seen a few posts, here and elsewhere, where it's states that single and multi should have similar values. If the problem is indeed related to this, what can I do to put some pressure on the ISP?

 

Thanks to anyone who'll take the time to read this.

 

 

[CA3LE]

Hi Onira, welcome to TestMy.net!

 

It definitely matters. 

 

By the way, Steam is multithreaded... that's why it's able to download so quickly for you.

 

6 hours ago, Onira said:

they say that i shouldn't "bother with it"

 

You definitely should bother with it because it's affecting your speed.  Which is causing issues with your streaming and normal file transfer.

 

?t=c&d=10-30-2019+%2F+11-01-2019&l=25&q=1697447640522's Speed Test Results

 

You're testing from Italy to the UK so distance isn't the issue.  To only get an average of 4 Mbps, that's a joke.  

 

Please run some multithread tests here.  First make sure you're selected to test against the UK then click multithread at the top and test like you did before.  Also wouldn't hurt to run a quick latency test ... click "Test My Latency" so we get see what you get around the world.  

 

Just let me know when you're done and I'll pull up your results and share them here for everyone else to look at.  ...and also give you some more recommendations.

[Onira]

Hi, thanks for the answer!

 

I ran a few multithread tests (forgot at first to switch to London server) and I'd say that sadly it's what I've been expecting, 10-12 Mbps, considering I'm getting about a 30 elsewhere on Telecom Italia's Rome server. This really leaves me wondering, what's different in Steam (and who knows, maybe something else? Can't really say though) that manages to get to the max cap while the speedtests themselves, even multithread, give way lower results?

Anyway, the low results even on multithread are quite recent and I'm inclined to believe that the situation evolved somehow, but thinking about it i can feel that general navigation is slower pretty much everywhere, lately, compared to when my only issue was the singlethread and the likes of Twitch.

 

I ran a latency test as well as you suggested, it doesn't look that bad and generally i have close to no ping issues in games for example, so at least I got that I guess...

 

If necessary I'll try to run a few more tests tomorrow at different times of the day. Thanks for your time!

 

?t=u&d=11-01-2019&l=25&q=Onira's Speed Test Results

https://testmy.net/latency?q=Onira&n=100

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by CA3LE
Embedded your results for others to see...

[CA3LE]

So you maxed at 65 Mbps in multithread here.  You should also try manually selecting 200MB from the download test -- you'll probably be a higher result.

 

And then you maxed out at about 13 Mbps using the classic single thread test.

 

Yeah, your latency graphs actually look really good.  For a comparison here's what it looks like on a poor quality satellite connection.

 

https://testmy.net/latency?q=52705179518882&n=100

 

How is your computer connected to your connection?  Does the connection come into the DSL modem, to a router and then wired to your computer... or is it wifi to your computer... or is your modem directly connected to the computer with a cat-5 cable?

[Onira]

Somehow the results today manage to be even worse. I gave up on the 200 MB test cause it was taking way too long. Amazing.

 

Anyway my setup is as follows: connection directly into Modem/Router (TP-Link TD-W9970), then Cat-7 table into a Pci-E network card (TP-Link TD-3468). This has been the same for pretty much a year or so, when I already had similar issues which then got fixed, even not for much time.

Just to be sure, I also tried connecting my PC through Wi-Fi but the results are pretty much similar.

 

I'll definitely go for a call to my ISP on monday and see what they say. Probably the usual stuff - "the router shows the connection getting 90Mbps up to the modem, so as far as we are concerned there's no issue".

At this point i'm wondering, is there any possibility that there might be some software related issues causing this?

[mudmanc4]

@Onira , I am curious why you went with a CAT7 cable. Did you terminate or is this a purchased finished product? Shield shorts or grounds can be tricky. (I did read you mentioned wireless results were similar)

 

On 11/1/2019 at 10:31 AM, Onira said:

I had the luck to get a VDSL2 connection,

When this transition went down, were the lines inside the house replaced, and or the drop or buried cable?

 

On 11/1/2019 at 10:31 AM, Onira said:

Obviously, they claim the only reliable speedtest is the one on their website

Simply due to the fact they (the ISP) will only guarantee  speeds to their equipment, (intranet, not internet), therefore when testing, your simply testing the connection from the modem to {place wherever on their local network of choice the test server located}

 

Are you able to get frequencies from the stats page in the modem ?

 

I would imagine the provider is just overloaded and attempting to disperse available bandwidth somewhat equally over clients, considering you mentioned the issue "gets fixed" for a couple off weeks" then reverts, manual QOS is likely at play in your favor for a time-span, or dynamically assessed due to load requirements.

 

 

[Onira]

Hi @mudmanc4, thanks for your post.

 

1 hour ago, mudmanc4 said:

I am curious why you went with a CAT7 cable. Did you terminate or is this a purchased finished product?

 

At the time I just bought whatever i found without really making any particular research - i had to replace my previous cable which got damaged. Would it have been better to go for a cat5e?

 

1 hour ago, mudmanc4 said:

When this transition went down, were the lines inside the house replaced, and or the drop or buried cable?

 

Not at first; however, after some months and a few calls about the issues, Telecom (the infrastructure owner) checked the wiring on their part and, on their suggestion, i had new wiring to bypass the old one so I could get it as close as possible to the room where the PC is.

 

1 hour ago, mudmanc4 said:

Are you able to get frequencies from the stats page in the modem ?

 

What frequencies are you referring to? I'm sorry, i don't really know that much about all this, I checked a bit around and couldn't find anything about any frequencies at first glance.

 

1 hour ago, mudmanc4 said:

considering you mentioned the issue "gets fixed" for a couple off weeks" then reverts, manual QOS is likely at play in your favor for a time-span, or dynamically assessed due to load requirements.

 

Whenever I got the chance to talk with the guy from the ISP who showed most interest in addressing this issue, he was naming, if i recally correctly, mostly some routing issues with NaMeX, which got addressed in at least two occasions and effectively resolved the slow speeds. I don't have to knowledge to say if this is true or not, if they can actually intervene in most cases, or whatever.

What I can say is that there has been in the past a correlation between slow speeds and usually high traffic hours, if that's what you're referring to in the last part, but for the last month or so there has been less of this correlation, pretty much since when the multithread speedtest started to drop as well (they were always at 90 mbps or so before).

[mudmanc4]

5 hours ago, Onira said:

What frequencies are you referring to? I'm sorry, i don't really know that much about all this, I checked a bit around and couldn't find anything about any frequencies at first glance.

 

 

Try this:

Navigate in your preferred browser to :

http://192.168.1.1

 

Once there try and login with :

username = admin

password = admin

 

Look around, see what there is to be seen, possibly find:

Menu >> system tools >> statistics

 

If not there, data would be elsewhere, get to know your device.

 

Take a screenshot if you like and post it here.

[Onira]

This is all the System tools -> Statistics page shows. Not sure if it has what you ask for. I tried to look everywhere else on the modem page but i saw nothing about frequencies, nor did I find any info related to my specific modem model.

[Onira]

Hey, sorry for bringing this thread up again, but I don't know who else could help with this.

 

There are some news.

 

The problem seems to be most definitely in my OS. Both my phone and a friend's PC with Win 10 as well do perfectly fine on the Singlethread test. What's interesting is that on my PC as well, with a Linux installation, everything works fine, but on Win 10 it is somehow capped at 10-15 mbps constantly, depending on the site: here on testmy.net, for example, as I can also see through task manager, it is permenantly at 9.9 mbps or so, no fluctuations whatsoever.

 

Now, I would really prefer not to perform an OS reinstall as it could very well end up being totally useless. Could there be some Windows setting that's dragging me down so much?

[Sean]

The constant ~10Mbps throughput seems to indicate the link speed between your PC and the router is connected at 10Mbps.

 

To check this:

1. Right-click the Start button and in the menu click "Network Connections"
2. Under the heading "Change your network settings", click "Change adapter options"
3. Go into "Ethernet" (or the icon showing two blue screens)
4. Check what the "Speed:" line says.

 

If the "Speed:" line says 10Mbps, try another network cable between your PC and the router.  This should show 1Gbps and possibly 100Mbps with an older router. 

[Onira]

Unfortunately, it already shows 1 Gbps. Just to clarify, I have no issues with multithread downloads (Steam, for example, gets close to the ~90 Mbps that arrive to my router, and the same goes for multithread speed tests), it's only an issue with singlethread downloads, which have never been an issue even when in the recent past the problem seemed to be different: yes, the speed was not on par with multithread speed tests, but it never felt "capped", it was just very fluctuating.

I personally don't recall any settings change I did to anything network related in these last few months, and having no issues on a Linux installation or another Win10 PC I can't really ask my ISP to solve this...