topic Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's in Broadband & Landline

Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

AlanFretten — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:14:16 GMT

I've just switched to EE and at the same time upgraded my BB speed to 900mbps, I have 2 PC's on wired connection but when I run a speedtest one of them gets 900+ as the download speed and the other only half of that. I've tried all of the suggestions that I could find on google but no change. The PC has 2 different built-in LAN ports and I've tried both, updated drivers , changed parameters but still only half speed. I've also tried different cables, router ports (It's a TP-Link AX3000) nothing works although one speed test did actually show 900+ but then reverted after a reboot. As the PC is quite old and as a last resort I bought new USB3 to Gigabit converter but still only get half speed.

I'm open to any suggestions as to what to try next

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

JimM11 — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:21:30 GMT

@AlanFretten Nothing, old PC's with older cpu/HD/ram etc will just not get up to speed.

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

jak26 — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:49:29 GMT

Although 900Mb/s sounds a lot it should be easy enough for a PC to handle - though one issue with an old PC would be whether it supports W11. An older mechanical HDD would still be transferring at over 100MB/s (bytes) unless pre SATA 3, and an SSD anything from 600MB/s to 14000MB/s according to interface

One way to check what the PC, cable, and router are capable of, assuming you've a couple of PCs or a PC & NAS, is a file transfer, it should be in the high 900Mb/s range with gigabit ports on PC and routers and cat 5e or cat 6 cable.

A 20GB+ file should take long enough to transfer to watch the graph in the Windows dialogue, or there's test tools that wouldn't maybe involve writing to disk to eliminate that as one bottleneck

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

AlanFretten — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:06:57 GMT

When I say it's an old PC it does have all solid state disks including an nmve drive, 16gb memory and an I7 processor . I just tried what you suggested and it was quite interesting, copying a 10gb file from my PC to NAS, I got around 840mbps transfer speed but copying back to my PC it was around 520mbps which is exactly the same sort of max speed I see when I run a speed test. Looking at CPU utilization it was around 6% and the memory a constant 48 % so I don't think that is the issue.

My other PC saw almost 1gbps in both directions transferring the same file but it is a considerably higher spec machine

No idea what conclusions I can draw from this

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

jak26 — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:34:14 GMT

Although i7 doesn't 100% nail down what the processor is, they're all pretty powerful and here are just copying data to disc, and that's assuming it's not just using DMA, and for a internet speed test data isn't even being written to disc. A NAS can have just a SoC and not a mainstream CPU or a PC level Ethernet chip and than can handle 1Gb/s.

My NAS is modest, but has a WD Red HDD, and even via a couple of routers/switches a file download to PC is in the upper 900Mb/s. I'm just changing from 300 to EE 900 and if I don't see 900 speed at the PC I'll be pretty sure right away it's a router/ONT/OR issue.

With fibre, the only time I've seen a speed test drop is when Ive forgotten that Ive had a download running at the same time - but look in Task Manager and you'll see the total data passing over Ethernet and a breakdown of which task is getting what amount of data - plus the disc utilisation - which can be 100% when file copying within the PC.

If one PC can transfer at 1Gb/s but the older one is only half that then it does sound like a PC issue rather than an EE issue - so I'd try asking on a Windows forum or Reddit etc - I can't think what can slow down a transfer if nothing else is running.

If downloading a game then I have seen the CPU load rise as the Antivirus seems to get a PC load - but not enough to impact transfer speed - it would need to be nearer 100% to be a bottleneck.

I'm only going to 900 because of new customer deals - 300 was enough even for 150GB game downloads - so although it's annoying that's still a good speed if there's no fix.

There's only two fixes that seem to work when PCs misbehave - if it's hardware then unplugging from the mains for a while to completely reset all devices, otherwise it's an in-place re-install keeping all apps and settings - called something like fix problems using Windows Update in recovery settings.

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

JimM11 — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:40:31 GMT

@AlanFretten You really should direct connect your two PC's together with a Ethernet cable and check transfer's both way's and rule out an EE Hub Ethernet issue, but it does sound like you have a setting wrong in that PC, and with 2 Ethernet interface's on it why is that, one Motherboard and another a PCI card?

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

AlanFretten — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 06:39:35 GMT

I'm not using the EE hub, as I said in my original post I have a TP-Link AX3000 there is no problem with any of the LAN ports or cables as I've swapped them around with the same result and they work at expected speed on my 2nd PC. Some Motherboards have 2 built in LAN ports and as I stated I've tried both plus a USB3 to Gigabit converter same result.

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

JimM11 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:44:47 GMT

@AlanFretten You state solid state disk's and a nvme, have a look there then! Your posted speedtest.net both the UP/DOWN are low, did you turn the PC into a win11 installation defeating the securities?

Try also some other speed test's with different apps, couple below.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest
https://speed.cloudflare.com/
https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat

https://packetlosstest.com/

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

AlanFretten — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:26:01 GMT

TBH I don't need 900 either! But like you it was a much better deal than the 300 that I was on, it is definitely a PC issue, the only thing I can think of is that the PC wasn't W11 compatible but you can override the checks which is what I did, it's not a big deal but it annoys me, I'm retired now but spent most of my working life troubleshooting IT systems and old habits won't go away! What is really irritating is in the screenshot and it did it just the once after deleting the network device and re-installing it. Thinking I'd fixed it I rebooted and was back to square 1.

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

AlanFretten — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:48:22 GMT

Disks aren't used when running an Oookla network speed test so that's a red herring. Yes I did override the hardware checks to install W11 and I said in another reply that possibly could be the issue although I did once get the full expected speed on a speed check.

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

JimM11 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:56:58 GMT

@AlanFretten May be help full for you.

Optimizing Server's Performance/Bandwidth – Ookla

Re: Only getting half speed BB on one of my 2 PC's

jak26 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:53:53 GMT

An internet speed test from a PC is a quick way to check everything is fine but not good for fault finding. A test to router (so no LAN/WIFI/PC involved) would point to a ISP Router/ONT/OR issue such as a speed upgrade not happening - but as you've already moved on to testing data transfer device to device on the LAN it's best to be looking at LAN speed test apps and not internet speed test results.

The main requirements for W11 are a compatible processor - a 6700K or older isn't OK for example, a GPT format disk and CSM off for UEFI boot, and TPM - just a BIOS setting such as PTT for Intel. I wouldn't recommend work-arounds as one day they will cause a compatibility problem - but not something like a low transfer rate.

As before, after checking for any unnecessary background apps, and assuming the LAN driver is up to date and at default settings, and the cable and both the PC and LAN ports arent broken, I'd normally just do an in-place re-install (the fix problems with Windows Update option in recovery settings) - it's fairly quick and brings things back as they were - but I'm not sure what happens if the PC is not W11 compliant.