Broadband upload speeds

[chrisjp]

I have FTTC broadband service, 4 computers in my house, 2 connected by ethernet cables to my SH2, 2 connected by Wifi via a BT Wholehome mesh system

All 4 computers give me download speeds of around 60Mbps which I'm very happy with. The upload speed on 3 of them is around 12-13Mbps which is also acceptable. 2 mobile phones, connected via the WiFi, also show pretty much the same download and upload speeds.  All speeds are measured using Ookla Speedtest

However, the 4th computer, which is my main one and is connected to my SH2 by ethernet cable, only gives about 2-3Mbps upload speed, occasionally getting up to 5Mbps. I've swapped over ethernet cables, used new Cat 6 ones and also replaced the motherboard ethernet card with an expansion slot mounted TP-Link 1000Mbps card. Nothing has made any difference to this one computer, which also happens to be the newest, a Dell Inspiron 3881.

Of course, this is of no huge consequence, but I'm mystified as to why this one computer shows such a poor upload speed, despite my FTTC broadband clearly performing pretty well.

Has anyone experienced this issue or have any idea why it might be happening?

[NonnyM]

A very sideways thought , I am no expert !

There maybe a conflict or assistance , depending on the situation if the PCs / laptops are using wifi and ethernet at the same time both connections accessing the same source on the same network or running on a network but also looking to connect to another network SSID.

Maybe ?

Rgds

[pddco]

Don’t know for sure, but my new Dell came bundled with a some form of Broadband optimiser software which supposedly gave you the best performance from your broadband connection. I did a bit of googling and apparently it can do the opposite and maybe  better to disable  or uninstall it. Perhaps this may be the case for you too?

[countrypaul]

This my be obvious, but since you don't mention it thought I would just check. Have you tried connecting the PC to different ports on the router to make sure it is not the router port causing restrictions. On that line of thought, is it by any chance connected to port 4 with that port being set to fttp (I have no idea if it would work at all like that but at least the obvious(?) can be ruled out.

[chrisjp]

Thanks for your reply. I have indeed tried swapping over the LAN ports on my SH2 that my portable and my desktop computers are plugged into. But no change - the Laptop still gives 13Mbps upload speeds, while the Desktop gives a measly 2-3Mbps. And neither of them are using the WAN port on the SH2 - although I have turned off the FTTP for this port anyway, since I'm on VDSL FTTC.
The mystery remains!

[gg30340]

I would have suggested that you try updating the network card's drivers by using  the card manufactures' website for the drivers rather than Windows drivers or if you can not find the card manufactures' drivers try the  Dell website for their drivers the card with a different card that would tend to rule that out.

To see if the problem is with your computer or somewhere else are you able to take the computer to a friend or family member's house and plug it into their connection to see what sort of speed you get? 

[rbz5416]

This was the solution to a similar problem, worth a try:

Go to Start->Control Panel->Device Manager->Network adapters->Your adapters name (mine is Atheros AR8152/8158 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.20), right-click then select Properties. On the Advance tab, find property Large Send Offload (IPv4) and change its value to Disabled then click OK.

If you have a Large Send Offload (IPv4) v2 try setting that to Enable (with the other one disabled of course).

[chrisjp]

Thank you for this suggestion. I've accessed the original network motherboard incorporated network adapter as you suggest, but only found Large Send Offload (IPv4) v2 and Large Send Offload (IPv6) v2, not the non-version 2 ones. So I've left them both Enabled. In any case I've now disabled this controller before installing a TP-Link one: Realtek PCIe 2.5GbE Family Controller, in the hope that it might give better upload speeds (it didn't).
However, on the Advanced tab for this controller the list of properties was much smaller and didn't include any Large Send Offload entries, only Interrupt Moderation, Network Address, Priority & VLAN, Receive Buffers, Speed & Duplex, Transmit Buffers (This last one set at the maximum 128).
So I didn't make any changes.
Curiously, after this messing about I tried Ookla Speedtest again and upload got to 9Mbps. However, on trying it again a few times, the upload speed dropped back to around 3Mbps.
The mystery remains! But thank you for your suggestion.