Edit: at risk of preemptively saying “solved” - disabling the QoS on the router bumped the desktop browser speedtest from the ~600 up to >950Mbps.
My internet plan with my ISP is for 1000 Mbps. This is far more than I need almost always, but it is what they say I am paying for. However, I can’t get any speed tests to read more than ~650 Mbps, which is around about what my old package was.
My router itself has a speedtest functionality and that is what I’m getting off of that. As I’m writing this post, I did a speedtest on my wired-in desktop and got ~590Mbps on speedtest.net.
One thought I had was that maybe the ethernet cables themselves are the limit. All of them say ‘cat5e’ (actually, just checked and the modem-to-router is cat6), though, which should be 1000Mbps, yea? I swapped out the cable from the modem to the router once and got the same speed with the new ethernet cable.
Maybe the router is just too weak? Well, I used iperf3 between two desktops that are both hardwired in and I got ~940 “Mbits/sec”. Unless I’m messing up the unit conversion (which I certainly am annoyed by the difference between “megabytes per second” and “megabits per second”), that is the 1000Mbps that I’d expect to max out the ethernet cables. So, since those two machines are going through the router, it doesn’t seem that the router is the bottleneck for my speed to the great outdoors.
The modem? The modem’s specsheet says it can do 2.5Gbps (well, actually I assume there is a funny typo - it says “10/100/1000/2500 Gbps RJ-45 port”, but I don’t think it is doing 2.5 terrabytes/bits per second). The little led on the modem is lit up the color for “an ethernet device is connected at 2500 Mbps”.
So, should I start hassling my ISP about my missing 350 Mbps? Is there some other obvious thing I should test before I hassle them? I certainly don’t want them to say “have you turned it off and on again”? (once I wrote that, I did go and unplug the modem and router, stand around for 30 seconds, and then plug in the modem and then the router. after I did that, I got one speedtest from the router at 820Mbps, and then the next two tests are back to ~550).
Edit: I do not have fiber, I have a coax cable coming into the house. The person trying to sell me fiber said “your current internet is shared with the neighbors”.
is something already pushing 300Mbps worth of traffic across the router? speed tests that are good at power cycle, but quickly deteriorate after, can sometimes indicate that you have unaccounted for traffic crossing a bandwidth limited i/f (your ISPs service).
check your router stats for the missing traffic.
edit: also, almost all ISPs have a “burst bucket” for quick but intensive bursts of traffic. you get super speed for a few seconds while your bucket fills up. once full/overcommitted, your ISP starts rate limiting your service again. that may be why you get nice initial speeds, but they drop off quickly. does your ISP give burst speeds and sustained speeds in its
terms of servicecontract on your kids?that makes sense, and I’m looking now. However, the only thing that has anything other than zero in the ‘Real-time rate’ on the router is the computer i’m typing this on, which is at ~30KB/s up and down
if you really want a deep dive (cuz your post suggests that), fire up wireshark on a speed test PC and capture the traffic while you test. look for out-of-order, missing and corrupted packets. you will also get awesome stats on the traffic - wireshark is your best friend. be warned, this is the entrance to the rabbit hole.
edit: because at some point you are going to want to slide wireshark between the cable modem and your router - for general troubleshooting (and funsies!) then things get interesting as you figure out how to do that properly.