Today my internet on my notebook is suddenly VERY slow. I have 100 Mbps internet - I notice it was very slow, ran speedtest.net, and I’m getting about 1 Mbps download. Rebooted the router, rebooted the computer, no help. I thought it must be my internet but testing with my iPhone, sitting here next to my laptop, and I’m getting a consistent 100 Mbps on the phone. So it must be the computer.
What in the heck could the problem be???
Do you have any anti-virus installed that would monitor internet to “protect” you?
I’m running Defender and Malwarebytes.
Looking at task manager I’m not seeing any process using unusual network bandwidth.
Does your notebook have an Ethernet port? Plug that into your router and run speedtest.
Well THAT was magic.
Disconnected from the Orbi wireless signal, connected laptop directly to Orbi router via ethernet. Back to 100 MBps. OK - good data. Something related to wireless, something specific to this computer since no problem in same room, same location with iPhone.
Disconnected the ethernet, sat back down on the sofa, reconnected to the Orbi wifi. Tested again. 101.3. With wireless.
The ONLY thing I did was disconnect from the wireless signal (and I’d done that several times, even had rebooted) connect via ethernet to the router, then disconnect the ethernet and reconnected to the Orbi router wireless.
Why in the world would that fix it???
This used to happen to me all the time when I lived in L.A. The problem turned out to not be on my end though. Time Warner had over-sold in the area and, when they neared capacity, it caused a subset of the customer pool to get throttled down to 1mbps. Sometimes plugging directly in to the router would fix it because it would move me through a different subnet that wasn’t currently being slowed.
It was an ongoing issue for several months. I finally got fed up and moved to a different provider.
If it happens again, contact your provider and ask if they can move you to a different loop. In some cases they accidentally overload one loop while a different one has plenty of capacity. As long as they don’t overbook the loop they move you to, it will permanently fix the issue.
I don’t have an Orbi, but with our aging airport units (one is from 2009) it is a regular occurrence to need to disable wifi on devices for a couple of seconds.
Is the laptop old? Maybe update your wifi drivers on it. I know there’s been a progression of different wireless hardware on mobile devices…
Well, it happened again. And the only way I could fix it was once again to turn off the wireless, plug it into the router directly, then remove it from the router, turn on the wireless again, and I was back at 100Mbps instantly.
So it sounds like I need to talk to my provider; not knowing the level of expertise of the tech I get, what exactly should I ask them to do?
Thanks
Jeff, if your iPhone is getting correct speeds and you are as well via ethernet, I don’t think your internet provider is going to be able to help you (assuming that’s what you mean by provider).
I’m with @wumpus, it sounds like it might be a driver issue of some sort.
But if it is a driver - why would turning off the wireless, plugging it directly into the router, checking the speed (100) then pulling out the ethernet cable and turning the wireless back on immediately fix the problem? If I just turn wireless on and off, that doesn’t do anything. I have to actually connect directly via ethernet on the router then go back to wireless to fix it.
This is a weird one, but check your wireless device settings in the Device Manager. If you have either a “Green” setting or a “Power Save” setting enabled, check it off. The power saving mode in a wireless card can make things wonky if the card thinks it should enter power save mode and then fails to come out of it.
The driver is up to date. Checked the advanced settings in the device manager, there was a setting that was something like minimize power usage, I disabled that.
But what makes me think it’s not my computer is that I run this thing probably 10 hours or so a day, and this has only happened twice. Both times in the last couple of months. And the ONLY thing that fixes it is to disable the wireless, connect it directly to the router, then disconnect it and turn the wireless back on. Rebooting, turning the wireless on and off (without connecting it directly to the router,) nothing else fixes it. It’s hard to logic that it is something like the wireless card shutting down in some way that it would throttle the speed to 1 Mbps randomly.