[Question] slow internet speed

[loserjames]

I have Rogers Gigabit (1Gbps) unlimited service. I am not a gamer and I do not over my usage to cause Rogers to throttle down my speed.

I use 3 Windows PCs frequently (Lenovo E15 G4 with AX200 wifi card; Surface Pro 7 with AX201 wifi card; Dell Optiplex with Asus AC55 USB wifi stick).

When I first boot up these PCs and run speedtest (eg. Rogers/Shaw speedtest; speedtest.net), I get very fast speeds (650-690 Mbps on AX200; 680-720 Mbps on AX201; 400-450 Mbps on Asus USB wifi stick). However, after a little while (say 15-20 minutes), re-testing the speed shows that it has dropped to only around 150 Mbos - the same on all three PCs.

The interesting thing is that - by disabling and then re-enabling the wifi driver, I get the fast speeds back - and again, after 15-20 minutes, the speed drops back to around 150 Mbps

This indicates it is not the problem of my PCs or wifi cards. I have already done a factory reset on the gateway but the problem persists. The Xfinity app always says the internet connection and speeds are normal.

I think for some reason, Rogers is throttling the speed of my line. Why??

*Added Labels*

[-G-]

@loserjames I don't think that Rogers is throttling your connection; it's probably your Intel Wi-Fi drivers.  I have had all sort of issues with the ax201 and the ax210 chipsets and drivers not playing nicely with the XB7 and XB8 gateways.  Even Comcast has a support article about updating Wi-Fi drivers to resolve issues, and even makes special mention of Intel.

If speed tests using the Xfinity app show that you are getting full speeds with your connection, you need to broaden your troubleshooting.  The stats for your Wi-Fi connection will show link speeds and other key stats.  If the RX and TX rates are low and the RSSI is fluctuating across a broad range, that's an indication that your Wi-Fi driver sees a problem and likely dropped your Wi-Fi link speed to improve the stability of the connection.

Wi-Fi speeds can vary depending on a number of factors, so it's handy to a USB Ethernet adapter for performing speed tests over a wired connection.  I use a TP-Link UE300C adapter for my laptops.  I happened to pick that one because it is inexpensive, works well with macOS, and also works out-of-the-box with most modern operating systems.

[loserjames]

As I mentioned, this happens to all 3 PCs with different wifi cards (AX200, AX201, ASUS AC5 USB wifi stick with I think Mediatek chipset). This is not only a problem with Intel cards.

I have done all the troubleshooting I can think of:

see my post on reddit 

which concentrate on power delivery to the wifi card.