FullFibre900 speed to hub vs. speed to PC

[Slazeus]

So I have FullFibre900 and when I check my speed via the BT website it says the speed between the bt exchange and my hub is 928 Mb/s. Yet when I test my speed on my PC (via speedtest.com) it's usually around 500 Mb/s and never been higher than 600 Mb/s. 

How come when the hub is getting 900 down and my pc is wired via gigabit cat 6 cable (although via a 30m cable shorter ones have the same speeds) I'm still just getting a little over half that at the PC. Maybe I'm missing something but shouldn't I be able to get those speeds (or close) straight to my pc when everything supports those speeds?

I'm also aware that speedtest.com can have issues with accuracy and varies wildly based on server but I can't figure out how else to reliably test the speed to my PC. the BT website only tests exchange/hub speed and there isn't a dedicated app for w10 that I've been able to find. If anyone has any suggestions on more reliable ways I can test the downloads between the hub and pc let me know!

[pippincp]

Use Fast.com.

[Slazeus]

So with Fast.com I only pull about 220 Mb/s.

[NigelB72]

The BT speed test is the speed to your hub. The speed to your actual device will vary massively depending on your hardware. Just because you have a gigabit Ethernet card doesn't mean you'll get gigabit speeds because there are so many variables that can and will caus bottlnecks. These can be harddrive speed and capacity, RAM speed and size, processor type and speed amongst many other things. A gigabit rated card just means under perfect conditions, it is capable of delivering gigabit speeds

[Slazeus]

Absolutely! Though system is pretty beefy. I have m.2 drives with write/reads around 4 or 5 Gb/s, an i7 8700k with a stable 4.8 Ghz overclock, 32 Gb fast DDR4 RAM. The motherboard itself is a Maximus X Hero. So the system shouldn't be bottlenecking network speeds to that extent.

I've also seen plenty of people in other threads that have achieved much closer to those full speeds (in the 8-900 area) with weaker systems so I still feel I should manage to get much better speeds with my set up no?

[pippincp]

Then set up a direct PC to ONT PPPoE connection. This will rule out the not so smart hub.

[Slazeus]

That's connecting straight to the modem right? (I'm a total novice with networking stuff)

Seems like ruling out the hub is a good idea though, I'll look into how this works and try it tomorrow!

[pippincp]

Yes, a direct connection would either rule out the hub or show a configuration problem with your PC.

Just go into Network and Sharing center and click set up a new connection or network, select PPPoE and enter Username : bthomehub@btbroadband.com Password: BT.

[VTallGuy]

It almost looks like you've got wi-fi max out speed - does your system have wi-fi that it could be using in preference to the ethernet NIC ?

Have you checked your NIC settings ? It's probably set to auto on the speed and duplex settings. Try manually setting the speed to 1GB/s (send and receive if you have separate settings for them) and full duplex and see if that helps. Also try another Cat 5e/6 patch cable if you haven't already. Quite a lot are marginal with regards the specs and won't allow full speed.  

I assume you've tried fast.com, speedtest.net and the BT speed checker ? The latter often gives me odd readings while the other two show a pretty consistent 910MBit/s

[Slazeus · Accepted solution]

Quick update:

I tried a direct PC to ONT PPPoE connection and found no difference in speed. I then tried with my old macbook and straight away got a consistent 900-920 down. So knowing it was something to do with the PC I just did a fresh install of windows, I'd been meaning to for a while now anyway and now I also get a consistent 900-920 down to the PC. Don't know what it was though I tried to reinstall LAN drivers etc. a windows mystery I guess!

Thanks for the help and suggestions!