Question Bottlenecked @ low speed w/new Internet

[Motaro38]

Hello,

I have new 2,100 mbp/s internet, confirmed by tech. I have an older win 7 machine, so I upgraded network card to a 2.5g ethernet card (pci xpress x1) and bought new router (Flint2 w/OpenWRT) which has 2x 2.5g ports.

Ive worked for days now on this, and even though wifi works fine (phone gets 900Mbps+), wired only gets 600!!!
All cables involved are cat6.
Also checked and its newest ethernet card driver.

TP-Link 2.5GB PCIe Network Card (TX201)​

Not sure what is wrong, any help is appreciated!

Pics show 2.5gbps is confirmed, if these help at all.

(Left Image) From Everest program
(Center Image) Pic of Comcast tech's phone, showing modem is getting more than 2,100mbit (2,408mbit)
(Right Image) Network Card properties showing 2.5gbps
​

 

[In2Photos]

What speed do you get if you use the port built-in to the motherboard? Have you tried a different cable? Are there any wall jacks or other connectors between the router and PC?

 

[Motaro38]

What speed do you get if you use the port built-in to the motherboard? Have you tried a different cable? Are there any wall jacks or other connectors between the router and PC?

Built in mobo port was like 250ish, and upon network card install, this increased it to 600-700 mbps but thats it....should be ~2000+.

Yes have tried 3 different cables for each port pairing. There was only 20 mbit or so difference from old Cat5E cable to brand new Cat6 patch cable.No wall jacks or anything at all between router and pc - just a straight shot 4 ft new Cat6 patch cable.

Attached below are computer specs if anyone wants. I did read somewhere to check i/o on cpu while downloading, as older cpu/mobo can cause net problems @ the computer, but, I saw no issue there, and not sure how my mobo could be the bottleneck if pci-e x1 slot can operate at 250MB/sec, which is more than 2100 mbit requires. Only thing on on pci bus is video card; nothing in PCI or PCI express x1 slots, besides new network card.

Here is image supporting the notion that my cpu is unaffected by downloading large files at max speed:

---

My PC Specs (Everest)

 

[MangoX]

I think you're limited your cpu and platform. Thats a really old pc. But I did have gbit speeds andal router back in the day of the q6600 so that's within your generation. I didn't have gbit+ internet at that time, but I did have a small LAN with a nas and multiple pc's and I didn't have trouble transferring over 100MB/s over the local lan.

If you have another device, say a laptop or pc, can you do a smb file transfer over the network and confirm what speeds you can attain?

 

[mindless1]

I don't have an answer but I do know that with nothing else going on to take CPU cycles, there's no way your Phenom should be at 31% load to merely download files. What else does task manager show is using CPU cycles?

Further if your mobo port is getting 250Mb, then we know it's at least a 1Gb port, so that's far too low.

Can you do a lan speed transfer test to see what you get from that? If lan speed between clients is good then I'd think the router is the bottleneck.

 

[mindless1]

I think you're limited your cpu and platform.

Not at all. That system is >5X faster than needed to achieve more than 600Mb. Pretty much anything new enough to have PCIe (and GbE) should be higher, "IF" it is the only load on the system.

I have a similar box on my lan which ironically enough, also runs win7, and it saturates GbE on the lan (granted SSD's are the key there) , including through the router's built in switch.

 

[Shmee]

I am not certain, but I looked at your system, and I noticed you have one smaller SSD and it is in IDE mode? That should be in AHCI mode for better performance, though you would need to fix windows to boot in AHCI mode. Also, how are you testing your download speeds? Also if you are downloading to an HDD, your speeds will likely be bottle necked by that at some point.

 

[Motaro38]

I think you're limited your cpu and platform. Thats a really old pc. But I did have gbit speeds andal router back in the day of the q6600 so that's within your generation. I didn't have gbit+ internet at that time, but I did have a small LAN with a nas and multiple pc's and I didn't have trouble transferring over 100MB/s over the local lan.

If you have another device, say a laptop or pc, can you do a smb file transfer over the network and confirm what speeds you can attain?

I dont have any network device over 1gigabit to try wired xfer on, but do remember getting 85 megabytes(MB)/sec or so once when testing speeds from this pc to a laptop.
[[Edit: I have a laptop in car that has ethernet port on it and is a few years newer than this pc. Ill try in morning. My much newest Win 11 laptop has no Ethernet port; would have to buy usb one or something. Rather avoid that, unless recommended.]]

Not at all. That system is >5X faster than needed to achieve more than 600Mb. Pretty much anything new enough to have PCIe (and GbE) should be higher, "IF" it is the only load on the system.

I have a similar box on my lan which ironically enough, also runs win7, and it saturates GbE on the lan (granted SSD's are the key there) , including through the router's built in switch.

I get this speed (100MB/s min, 200 max) from the 2 better HDDs and the SSD to one another, though this is over sata within pc; hdd to hdd/ssd not over lan.

I am not certain, but I looked at your system, and I noticed you have one smaller SSD and it is in IDE mode? That should be in AHCI mode for better performance, though you would need to fix windows to boot in AHCI mode. Also, how are you testing your download speeds? Also if you are downloading to an HDD, your speeds will likely be bottle necked by that at some point.

Not sure why its n0t in AHCI mode , but just fixed that. That's the drive windows is on.

I'm testing dl speeds via 1 of 3 dif sites; ookla, comcast, and google fiber. Tried others too; all say same.
Would restarting in Safemode w/Networking and trying bandwidth test there produce different results possibly?

---

As you can tell by how much time I've put into fixing this and my comprehensive responses, I am deadset on fixing it; so thank you to everyone helping me and plz don't give up!

 

[In2Photos]

The main issue you have is not having any other devices that can do more than gigabit wired. Really hard to narrow down the problem this way. Do you have any friends or colleagues that have something you can test with?

On the router make sure that QOS is turned off.

Is it possible that openwrt is the culprit? Did you test it with the original glinet software? Or other versions of openwrt?

 

[mindless1]

Can you connect the system straight to the modem (ONT?) with ethernet cable, removing the router from the equation? Might need to reboot both. I'd only do this long enough to run a test, not leaving the system sitting exposed with a public IP longer than that, and ideally, firewall all but these to the browser. There are apps like Windows Firewall Control (which does work on Win7) to make that easier:

https://support.ookla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360027274852-Which-Protocols-and-Ports-am-I-Required-to-Use

Also I have vastly different speed test results depending on time of day and which server I use, though you should still get closer to the wifi speed or higher still, except GbE being a bottleneck then too. If you're paying extra for the 2.1Gb, I'd consider downgrading to 1Gb if that's a lower cost option, unless of course you have multiple client, concurrent high bandwidth activities going on.

I don't know about all speed tests, but many including ookla's, write to memory, not HDD or SSD. A lan test client to client was just to see what network speed could be obtained without being routed then over the internet.

 

[Motaro38]

The main issue you have is not having any other devices that can do more than gigabit wired. Really hard to narrow down the problem this way. Do you have any friends or colleagues that have something you can test with?

On the router make sure that QOS is turned off.

Is it possible that openwrt is the culprit? Did you test it with the original glinet software? Or other versions of openwrt?

I could not find QoS in OpenWRT (im navigating it via LUCI gui of OpenWRT, as OpenWRT is new to me,Im used to DD-WRT.
This is only reference to QOS I found:

Here is a snapshot of the ports. This also shows 2.5, while before those 2x2.5 port showed g when they were hooked up to my old 1g onboard eth mobo port.


----------------------------
"Is it possible that openwrt is the culprit? Did you test it with the original glinet software? Or other versions of openwrt?" - Might be. And no, went straight to OpenWRT, and really dont ant to flsahback to default. The only changes I made to Openwrt were a few ports forwarded as well as setting a static P which im not sure was done perfectly since now 2 similar instances exist. See Here:



------__________________________________--------------------------
The main issue you have is not having any other devices that can do more than gigabit wired. Really hard to narrow down the problem this way. Do you have any friends or colleagues that have something you can test with?
No, I don'tm unfortunately. I'm disabled and live alone and solitary. Maybe a USB>RJ45 wired usb adapter for 2023 laptop, or something similar, would be worth buying?

 

[In2Photos]

Well it certainly looks like everything is showing you should have 2.5 gb. Not sure what else you could try. Does openwrt have an Internet speed test built-in? That would eliminate the PC as the bottleneck.

A USB to lan adapter is not very expensive and could come in handy.
USB type C

https://a.co/d/fc22W5C

USB type A

https://a.co/d/fypMUWQ

 

[Motaro38]

Will take all of your words @In2Photos and get back to you. Going to go try the other laptop now w/1gig port - at least see if my lan bandwidth is up to speed.

 

[Motaro38]

Will take all of your words @In2Photos and get back to you. Going to go try the other laptop now w/1gig port - at least see if my lan bandwidth is up to speed.

Well, laptop moves back and forth at around 100MB/sec.

[[ minldess1: "Can you connect the system straight to the modem (ONT?) with ethernet cable, removing the router from the equation? Might need to reboot both. I'd only do this long enough to run a test, not leaving the system sitting exposed with a public IP longer than that, and ideally, firewall all but these to the browser. There are apps like Windows Firewall Control (which does work on Win7) to make that easier:" - [[minldess1 ]

Yes, I will now try to bypass router and go straight to pc>>modem; check that speed. That should confirm if its router.

 

[Motaro38]

So, I made a little progress. I moved network card to different pcix1 port, which barely fit since its right beneath gfx card. It seemed to fit more snugly/properly in this x1 socket for some reason. Once I got it in. I restarted pc/router/modem, then did speed test, and its about double what it was before - was ~600, now its 1100.

I'm thinking it truly is my hardware. Does pcix16 gfx card share same bus as the pcix1 ports? Just trying to think of what might be preventing the x1 poirt(s) from getting max resources, Thanks again guys.

 

[mindless1]

I'd shine a flashlight in and have a good look at the previous PCIe slot it used. Possibly it has contamination on the contacts or bent contacts, or less common but something I've also seen is a dodgy case with a bent back mounting bracket that doesn't let a card sit true and completely into the slot.

Might be worth a try to spray contact cleaner into the old slot, move the card back and retest if you would be better off with the prior slot for purposes of GPU cooling.

You still have some other bottleneck, considering only getting 1Gb with a 2.5Gb card and only 250Mb with the integrated 1Gb port. I still wonder if the router is a bottleneck. OpenWRT may be an issue.

I use DD-WRT on my routers and have for years, and with it I find that some versions have little bugs, so I would advise to check for a newer, or even roll back to an older version of OpenWRT and check their forum to see what performance others are getting.

Lastly I would do an effort:benefit analysis to determine how much more work or expense is worthy of achieving more on speed tests. If you're downloading large games then it may matter, but otherwise I would do concurrent speed tests on two different systems, simultaneously to see what each gets. 2.1Gb is more about concurrent connection performance, in everyday use, you won't be getting 2.1Gb through a single system due to internet congestion and caps on the other end of the connection.

For everyday use, I hardly noticed any difference when my ISP upgraded me from 100Mb asymmetical to 500Mb symmetrical u/l, except on speed tests. Games download faster but not as high as 500Mb, and that's not a real-time activity where it matters much.

 

[Motaro38]

I'd shine a flashlight in and have a good look at the previous PCIe slot it used. Possibly it has contamination on the contacts or bent contacts, or less common but something I've also seen is a dodgy case with a bent back mounting bracket that doesn't let a card sit true and completely into the slot.

Might be worth a try to spray contact cleaner into the old slot, move the card back and retest if you would be better off with the prior slot for purposes of GPU cooling.

You still have some other bottleneck, considering only getting 1Gb with a 2.5Gb card and only 250Mb with the integrated 1Gb port. I still wonder if the router is a bottleneck. OpenWRT may be an issue.

I use DD-WRT on my routers and have for years, and with it I find that some versions have little bugs, so I would advise to check for a newer, or even roll back to an older version of OpenWRT and check their forum to see what performance others are getting.

Lastly I would do an effort:benefit analysis to determine how much more work or expense is worthy of achieving more on speed tests. If you're downloading large games then it may matter, but otherwise I would do concurrent speed tests on two different systems, simultaneously to see what each gets. 2.1Gb is more about concurrent connection performance, in everyday use, you won't be getting 2.1Gb through a single system due to internet congestion and caps on the other end of the connection.

For everyday use, I hardly noticed any difference when my ISP upgraded me from 100Mb asymmetical to 500Mb symmetrical u/l, except on speed tests. Games download faster but not as high as 500Mb, and that's not a real-time activity where it matters much.

I only have air compressor to blow air into pci ports, if thats acceptable.

And yea, definitely a bottleneck. Since last night, its actually dropped back to 600-700mbps. Go figure.

I've mostly used DD-WRT, too, but OPEN-WRT was recommended for this router. Not sure I even want to mess around w/rollbacks and whatnot. I might.

RE: effort:benefit, I've been thinking same thing. It's really eating at me now. I HOPE ISP didn't sell me some bogus "sometimes 2.1g" internet. My Phone works @ 900mb/s consistently, though, so I dunno.

"For everyday use, I hardly noticed any difference when my ISP upgraded me from 100Mb asymmetical to 500Mb" - that's demorlizing, lol

"2.1Gb is more about concurrent connection performance, in everyday use, you won't be getting 2.1Gb through a single system due to internet congestion and caps on the other end of the connection." - If I cant get 1800mbit+ ish speed, whats the point of habing 2100mbit net?

What a conundrum,,,

 

[Motaro38]

I tried yet another(the third and final) Pci-Express X1 port, and same yield; 600-7--mbps. Its in the port nice and snug, too.

I dont think iits router, since router feeds out 900mb/sec over 5g wifi easily, but i could be wrong, and the issue could be with wired LAN only. Just not sure how id address that - maybe post on OpenWRT forums?

I might as well buy a new pc with built in 2.5g/5g port in mobo at this point. I was considering that route, anyway, since this rig is 12 yrs old.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I might as well buy a new pc with built in 2.5g/5g port in mobo at this point. I was considering that route, anyway, since this rig is 12 yrs old.

Phenom II X4 is from 2009, that's ancient in tech years. Definitely time for an upgrade.

 

[mindless1]

Hook the system directly up to the modem/ONT... only way to rule out the router.

It is incredible to me that this wasn't the first thing you tried after power cycling the modem and router.

Stop getting distracted. It's no proof at all what the router is doing for wifi, to merely get a higher score with wifi. Are you even directly connected to the router or going through some switch too, with potentially dodgy dirty port contacts or failing capacitors causing a lot of packet loss? Hooking the system up directly to the modem, and trying a different ethernet cable, are the first things to do.

 

[mindless1]

I only have air compressor to blow air into pci ports, if thats acceptable.

It's acceptable if there's only dust in the slot, no other issue of fouled or bent pins.

And yea, definitely a bottleneck. Since last night, its actually dropped back to 600-700mbps. Go figure.

Not hard to believe or expect at all. Cable internet providers can seldom consistently provide 1Gb or higher in densely populated areas. Even ISPs have turned people on to streaming TV, so bandwidth "up to" plans, often don't get up to their ratings.

"2.1Gb is more about concurrent connection performance, in everyday use, you won't be getting 2.1Gb through a single system due to internet congestion and caps on the other end of the connection." - If I cant get 1800mbit+ ish speed, whats the point of habing 2100mbit net?

What a conundrum,,,

It's not a conundrum. Most people who pay for service over ~300Mb are wasting their money, unless downloading a lot of big games, or a premises with several concurrent users, or due to the higher download speed, they get higher upload speed too and have cams putting video on the cloud, or do video conferencing, or content creators on youtube/etc that upload a lot... the list goes on, there are several reasons for each incrementally higher internet speed, but very few people benefit much from 2.1Gb over 1Gb, then a few more from 1Gb over 500Mb, then more from 500Mb over 250Mb, and so on.

I would take a hard look at what your needs are since you didn't mention them.

 

[Fallen Kell]

One problem is your PCIe port version and lane count. A PCIe version 2.0 port using 1 lane will only allow 500 MBps, which is only 4000 Gbps, which is less than the 5000 Gbps needed to support 2.5Gbps full-duplex (i.e. 2.5Gbps each direction). You are also need a decent CPU to handle the network traffic, the offload engine in windows for that card needs about 3-4x more CPU usage than most of the Intel 2.5Gbps cards (which is why the Intel cards run hotter and many have a heatsink+fan since it is offloading quite a bit more workload, and almost all those cards are PCIe version 3.0 so that they have the full bandwidth needed to support the actual 2.5Gbps speed).

 

[mindless1]

^ It's not using 2.5GBps both directions simultaneously for a speed test. Further the CPU usage was showing only 31% and even that is high for a phenom only getting 600Mb.

I have an old box with an Athlon X2 4050e that gets 600Mb on internet speed tests (on a 400Mb ISP plan, no less, the ISP is the bottleneck) without hitting 50% CPU utilization (including other background processes, I didn't shut all those down to check CPU % during speed tests) using the integrated Realtek 8211 GbE, on a PCIe 1.1 lane with 250MB/s.

There's just no way OP's system is bottlenecking to a mere 600Mb unless something is misconfigured on it, but then we saw that already when the lan file transfer test was hitting 104MB/s and even that is a 1GbE + HDD bottleneck? There are more advanced network tests that can rule out storage by copying direct to memory.

My bet's still on the router (and then the firmware on it). Whether the system supports the full 2.1Gb, I feel is immaterial because the ISP's congestion probably won't sustain that most of the time anyway, but it should still get a LOT higher than 600Mb.