Windows 10 HP laptop slow on network speed test

Markee

So here’s a bit of a conundrum.....

I have a FTTP 300Mb fibre connection into my house. The ISP modem/router is in bridge mode with all the network managed (wired and wireless) networks going through a Netgear Nighthawk R7000.

Now, my MacBook Pro reports 300Mb correctly (up/down) connected to WiFi on speedtest.net.

But, my work Windows 10 HP ProBook laptop reports around 80Mb on the wired adapter (1Gb) and 95Mb on WiFi.

Can anyone throw any light on why there is such a large discrepancy?

Thanks in advance.

The Dude

Sounds like it only has a 100mb wired network card installed, or the NIC is managed by work policies and set to connect upto 100Mb (this isn't standard practice, but not uncommon either).

Could very well be a similar story with the wifi too, what's the model number of the laptop?

If the laptop supports gigabit wired and faster wireless and is only connecting at the speeds you're getting i'd suggest it's been deliberately nobbled by work.

Markee

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

In the network adapter properties, the speed is showing as 1.0Gps.

I am not aware of any policies at work limiting the network speed, but will check when I’m back.

The work laptop is a HP ProBook 640 G2.

ChuckMountain

Was about to reply to say you will more than likely have a Gigabit adaptor.

I have had issues with speedtest in the past not necessarily reporting the right figures as there are quite a few things going on behind the scenes that can mess up the test.

1) It does not like my current setup with Virginmedia, router in modem only mode and a Linksys balanced router.  If I do the speedtest on a VM provided server then I am around the 100Mbps or so.  Choosing a local non VM one I get the full 380/20 speed test returned.

2) By coincidence, I have an older HP laptop which is running Windows 10 but was Windows 7 as a result not convinced by some of the drivers.  The max I can get on speedtest is around 180/20Mbps (wired) download.  However on a quicker connection I have had 180/980Mbps so go figure

I would recommend hardwiring both the Mac and the HP and running iPerf on both and seeing what speed you actually get.

iPerf - The TCP, UDP and SCTP network bandwidth measurement tool

Try a few other speed tests sites too.

mickevh

I concur with ChuckMountatin - if you want to test the performance of a networked device, don't use Internet based speedtest site - use local resources such as NetIO or iPerf - both free and cross platform. With these tools you essentially create your own "speedtest" server within your local environment and thusly don't have anything out on the Internet muddying the water.

As I am fond of saying, these speedtest tools don't actually test the "speed" of anything: They send a measured amount of data, time how long it takes and compute an average. It's kind of like the speedometer in a car versus trip computer. It's a useful enough indicator, but pros' wouldn't be getting in a twist because the speedtest said one number and the "link rate" is another (the two are not at all the same thing in any case.) So, if one were testing a Gig ethernet NIC and were getting back iperf/speedtest numbers in the 800-900 range, we'd be happy - we wouldn't be worrying that is wasn't 1000. But if it was 80-90 (ie an order of magnitude lower) we know something was "up"  - like there's a 100mbps link in the pathway somewhere.

I have seen instance where rather than group policy settings nobbling the rates, some on-machine firewall and/or proxy can clobber the rates also. Again, something else to check out with your company's ITD.

Markee

Thanks for all your help and taking the time to reply.