The R8000P is running slow because of its wired connection. Why does that matter?
The R8000P is running slow because of its wired connection. Why does that matter?
Hi, recently I decided to try my wired internet connection in my house and realized it was moving slowly (I have 500 MBPS download/upload plans with Verizon FIOS). I expected faster speeds when using Cat 5e or better Ethernet cables because those are usually great for internet. However, my speed test on WiFi showed about 70%, but wired connections got me down to just 45-50%. So I went down to the basement and plugged my laptop directly into the back of my Nighthawk R8000P router. The speeds stayed exactly the same at 45-50%. Since everything was the same, I thought maybe the wiring wasn't right, so I bought a brand new, super-rated Cat 8 cable (3 feet long) and tested it again - no change in speed. I also tried a different port on my router and another laptop; all gave me the same result: 45-50% download. I'm thinking I might need to get a Mesh router soon, but I wanted to know why this is happening first. Could you give me some tips on how to figure out what's causing this slowness?
Maybe the PC has something weird going on. Have you tried another computer? Edit... don't worry, I saw you try a second laptop. A fancy mesh router will only make your wallet smaller. Even a cheap $50 router with gigabit ports can pass full gigabit speed over ethernet. The real differences between routers are more about their other features and the types of wifi radios they have. Now I guess it could be a defective router but that would happen very rarely. I'd try the standard factory reset on the router and then only change the admin password and the wifi password. Leave all the other settings to default. Although unlikely, there are some settings that can limit traffic speed. If this still makes no difference, I'd plug directly into the Verizon fiber termination box. I assume you're not using your own router and had them activate ethernet on the ONT? Cables could be suspect but usually a bad cable won't work at all or it will just slow things down to 100mbps. It is a very different problem if test results show speeds like say 95mbps or 110mbps. Test results in the low 90mbps are almost always just a cable running at full speed of 100mbps.
Try plugging both laptops into two ethernet ports on your router. Then copy big files back and forth just to check for a read vs write problem. You can see the speed from the Resource Monitor Network tab. Watch out though, some values are MBytes while others are Mbits. Also try an old program called iperf. It's very simple and won't care about your computer or file systems. You should see over 900 mbps going both ways. Mostly this is to stop replacing a router just to find that it isn't broken. You could also boot a USB linux image on one of the machines. This would test if strange window settings are causing issues. You can actually run through a full speed test on your router too, but be prepared for some messiness. First, hook up one PC like you did before. Then hook the other computer to the WAN port. Next, set the IP on the router and the PC using a different network than the LAN. Finally, use file transfers or iperf to check. If that works well at good speeds, then it's probably something strange about web traffic.