Download goes at full speeds, speed goes down to 0, then restarts to full speeds??

[awaisuk]

Hello,

I am having a weird problem.


Lets say I am downloading a large file, it will download at full speeds of my internet, but then after a minute or so, the speed will go down to almost 0, and then it would go back to full speeds. The same process repeats until the download is finished.

I am downloading using WIFI AC. It is not related to the WIFI dropping as when the speeds goes down to 0, I am able to still browse.

This same problem happens over Ethernet as well.

The thing is, when the speed goes down to 0, the internet is still very much active. I can browser, and run speed tests on speedtest website.

Is it the hard drive that might be causing the problem, where it is not able to store the file when downloading at fast speeds? I have a HD, and no SSD.

Or is this not related to the HDD?

Any help appreciate, I have been trying to figure this out for awhile.

 

[Red Squirrel]

What's the nature of these downloads, is it torrents by chance? It may be that the other person has a setting to throttle up/down between various other torrents that other people are also downloading.

When it goes slow, pause it and try to run a speed test to see what happens.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Some big download sites do that on purpose - they "fill your pipe", then throttle your connection to fill other people's connections, and vice versa. If they are sending you files from HDD-backed storage, it's actually more efficient that way.