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Strange Internet Issues with the Laptop

edmac
I've been here awhile

Hello!
I've been at my wit's end trying to diagnose my issues. To start, my internet connection is fine, and speedtest tells me speeds are somewhere in a good range. With that said, if I try to download any larger files from sites like wetransfer, the downloads begin and immediately the download ETA ramps up and tells me it'll take 5 days to download a 2 gb file, then the file transfer just halts. If I unplug my modem and plug it back in, the downloads work as they should only temporarily, then it's back to being unable to download. Several webpages regardless of the browser also kind of perpetually load, or fail to load unless I refresh multiple times. It seems like this issue is only with my laptop as my phone connects and downloads no problem. I also tried tethering my pc to my phone's mobile connection and the downloading was ok. It sounds like it might be some issue between my laptop and the gateway then? Is it a DNS thing maybe? 

Does this issue sound familiar? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

 

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Re: Strange Internet Issues with the Laptop

edmac
I've been here awhile

Hey thanks so much for the reply!

Actually about 10 minutes before I saw this I solved the issue. It turns out that upon close inspection via rogers ignite (this information is strangely absent when I access the router itself through my browser) my laptop was connected to a "pod" while all other devices were connected directly to the gateway. I unplugged the pod and the connection's been 100% stable and downloading works as it should with me connected to the main gateway. 

Not sure if this is a known issue, but I'm running a Dell XPS 9700 with a Killer network adapter. The pod wasn't all that distant from the main gateway itself, so it might have been some compatiblity issue with my laptop. My phone was working flawlessly connected to the same pod which might reinforce this theory. 

Thanks again for the help! 

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Re: Strange Internet Issues with the Laptop

-G-
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

@edmac wrote:

Is it a DNS thing maybe? 

Does this issue sound familiar? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!


It might be a DNS issue if you were experiencing problems establishing the network connection.  However, that worked for you.  What you are seeing is a problem at the TCP protocol level that is causing the connection to slow down; most likely a TCP window scale -related issue... and since this is a download, it would likely be a receive window -related issue.

 

I presume that you are running Windows 10 and if that is the case, the following article may be of help: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/technologies/network-subsystem/net-sub-pe... , specifically the part pertaining to TCP receive window autotuning and changing the Autotuning levels.

 

This is just an educated guess on my part and an easy potential fix for you to try.  There's no way to tell for sure what is going on without looking at a network analyzer trace.

Re: Strange Internet Issues with the Laptop

edmac
I've been here awhile

Hey thanks so much for the reply!

Actually about 10 minutes before I saw this I solved the issue. It turns out that upon close inspection via rogers ignite (this information is strangely absent when I access the router itself through my browser) my laptop was connected to a "pod" while all other devices were connected directly to the gateway. I unplugged the pod and the connection's been 100% stable and downloading works as it should with me connected to the main gateway. 

Not sure if this is a known issue, but I'm running a Dell XPS 9700 with a Killer network adapter. The pod wasn't all that distant from the main gateway itself, so it might have been some compatiblity issue with my laptop. My phone was working flawlessly connected to the same pod which might reinforce this theory. 

Thanks again for the help! 

Re: Strange Internet Issues with the Laptop

-G-
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

My hypothesis was partly based on your statement that your speed test was fine, and that this was a specific problem pertaining to your download... so it could still be a TCP RWIN-related... based on how your system was responding to network conditions.  However, it's impossible to say for sure what the actual problem was without looking at a network trace.  It could also be a compatibility issue between the Pod and your WiFi NIC; others have reported those as well.

 

Regardless, I'm really glad to hear that you were able to get this sorted out, and that it was not some other issue that would have taken longer to resolve.

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