Limited Speed Over Ethernet
Limited Speed Over Ethernet
Hi, I just purchased this router yesterday, so I can upgrade my home network. So far the Wi-Fi seems to work fine. However, there's a limitation over LAN with a specific device.
I'm currently working from home and have to be hardwired. I'm using a supplied 25ft CAT5e cable to connect the router to an HP universal dock G2.
My internet service includes speeds of 150 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. My old router (Belkin n150) that the TP-Link AX1500 replaced used to provide about 70-80 Mbps (multi-thread test through testmy.net) to that setup. Now, I'm only seeing 40 Mbps on multi-thread tests and around 15 Mbps on single thread tests.
I tried troubleshooting last night after my shift was over and could not figure out why the speed is limited. I connected my old Toshiba laptop to the same CAT5e Ethernet cable and was getting on average about 90 Mbps download speed (the laptop has a built-in LAN port with a max speed of 100 Mbps. So, the speed I was getting on the laptop was pretty good, considering the LAN port is limiting the connection to 100 Mbps.
The TP-Link router seems to have an issue with the HP Universal Dock G2 for some reason. I believe it was a Gogabit switch, so I don't know what the problem is.
Any suggestions?
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Here's the update. I don't know why switching the cable worked, it triggered something somehow... then it stopped giving good speeds to the dock. I was able to make it work once again by swapping back to the modem supplied cable, and it worked good for the rest of my shift.
The next day I started by work computer and right away was stuck with 20-30Mbps. I tried swapping the cable again and nothing changed after multiple attempts. I also rebooted both the modem and router many times and nothing changed. So, I resorted to Wi-Fi for the rest of my shift and troubleshooted some more after that.
I remembered how connecting my old 10/100Mbit laptop actually resulted in speeds close to 100Mbits on the download side. The same effect was achieved by connecting my old router to the AX1500 and then the dock to the old router, or limiting the WAN speed to 100MBit Full-Duplex.
I tried enabling QOS again without setting a priority and again it didn't work... that's until I decided to change the bandwidth settings in there to 100MBit for both download and upload. It worked, so I set it around 150 and it supplied more than 100MBits to the dock. My service plan is again 150Mbits download and 10Mbits upload. I tried other numbers as well. If I put 250 or over I'm stuck again with slow Ethernet speeds, but 200Mbits for upload and download bandwidths work fine for me.
I tested it over the last couple of days. I rebooted the router, modem, work computer and if I leave the QOS bandwidth setting the same it works every time. I don't know if that's how it's supposed to work - basically telling your router what the connection is, so it knows how to allocate the bandwidth among all of the devices on the network, or is this maybe software issue. I like to think it's by design that way, but maybe in such a situation the manual should mention it.
Anyway, here's my solution. If someone is experiencing the same issues - slow LAN speeds, but adequate Wi-Fi speeds, try this.
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If you swap the TP-Link back to your Belkin does the dock go back to giving the original speeds?
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@Tony Yes, it does. I just tested that and was able to get 86Mbps on a single thread test, then it dropped to about 65 Mbps. On a multi-thread test it pulled about 55 Mbps.
Earlier today I also tested the dock using a CAT6 Ethernet cable and made to changes.
I've looked at firewall settings, turning off one at a time, I tried QOS for the dock, also tried manually setting the link speed to 1000 Mbps. Nothing works.
The Wi-Fi orherwise pulls about 120-130 Mbps, so it's normal speeds there.
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I ran some more tests last night.
I connected the old Belkin router to the same LAN port of AX1500 where the dock was connected to and was able to get about 80 Mbps on speed tests.
The other test I did was limit the internet connection (WAN port) to 100 Mbps Full-Duplex and that also resulted speeds tests of 65 Mbps. Put the settings manually to 1000 Mbps and after that on Auto Negotiate and the speed tests once again dropped to about 35 Mbps download.
I also connected the dock to my personal laptop when I ran the tests last night to rule out the other laptop. That made no difference.
I had the firmware updated, have done a couple of factory resets, played with settings, downgraded the firmware back to the original one, played with settings again and did another factory reset. Nothing resolved my issue.
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Log in to the TP-Link router, go to the Network Map page and Ethernet status, what does it show for the connected dock?
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@Tony WAN shows as 1000Mbps
LAN also shows 1000Mbps when the dock is connected. The dock is HP USB C/A Universal Dock G2.
Last night I also updated the dock's firmware to the latest available from HP.
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@mc_marto I just fixed the problem. The whole issue was the WAN connection cable. I was using the modem supplied CAT6 cable. I just decided to use the CAT5e supplied cable for the modem to router (WAN) and it solved the issue.
I saw a lot of other people experiencing the same issues, I'd recommend if they haven't tried the TP-Link router supplied cable to do so. Chances are their issue is probably caused by that cable.
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Maybe I spoke too soon. The issue is back even with the new cable from the modem to the router.
I'll keep the thread updated if I find a fix again.
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Here's the update. I don't know why switching the cable worked, it triggered something somehow... then it stopped giving good speeds to the dock. I was able to make it work once again by swapping back to the modem supplied cable, and it worked good for the rest of my shift.
The next day I started by work computer and right away was stuck with 20-30Mbps. I tried swapping the cable again and nothing changed after multiple attempts. I also rebooted both the modem and router many times and nothing changed. So, I resorted to Wi-Fi for the rest of my shift and troubleshooted some more after that.
I remembered how connecting my old 10/100Mbit laptop actually resulted in speeds close to 100Mbits on the download side. The same effect was achieved by connecting my old router to the AX1500 and then the dock to the old router, or limiting the WAN speed to 100MBit Full-Duplex.
I tried enabling QOS again without setting a priority and again it didn't work... that's until I decided to change the bandwidth settings in there to 100MBit for both download and upload. It worked, so I set it around 150 and it supplied more than 100MBits to the dock. My service plan is again 150Mbits download and 10Mbits upload. I tried other numbers as well. If I put 250 or over I'm stuck again with slow Ethernet speeds, but 200Mbits for upload and download bandwidths work fine for me.
I tested it over the last couple of days. I rebooted the router, modem, work computer and if I leave the QOS bandwidth setting the same it works every time. I don't know if that's how it's supposed to work - basically telling your router what the connection is, so it knows how to allocate the bandwidth among all of the devices on the network, or is this maybe software issue. I like to think it's by design that way, but maybe in such a situation the manual should mention it.
Anyway, here's my solution. If someone is experiencing the same issues - slow LAN speeds, but adequate Wi-Fi speeds, try this.
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@mc_marto is it completely fixed?
I tried your solution, I am having the same exact problems, My ISP provides a 500Mbps/10Mbps connection, sometimes i get the full speed, sometimes i'm just stuck at 5Mbps/10Mbps (weird how the problem only affects download speed and not upload speed) I have tried everything, including feeding my router the connection type. at this point, I'm just wondering if TP-Link are even on these forums? do people help out here? because this thread is basically written entirely by you....
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@ShmenI There is very limited support on this forum. I actually had a couple of email exchanges with a couple of TP-Links support technicians and they even never replied to the last email I sent them, which included results from various tests (images). My issue eventually got resolved on its own. I haven't had to use the QoS at all for a long time. The issue was somehow related to the network card within the dock I was using - either it couldn't manage its own speed or the TP-Link router wasn't pushing much speed to it. I noticed eventually that if the dock was working for about 15-20 min, the speed to increase automatically. But, if an unexpected shut down/reboot happened of the system, then the dock would start out again at low speeds. Sometimes if that happened it would speed back up after sometime, but other times it would not.
Eventually, everything got sorted out on its own. Either it happened by a pushed firmware update to the dock by HP or the company I work for, or one of the TP-Link router firmware updates solved it. I suspect it was a pushed firmware to the device actually, because I believe I tested it out by downgrading the the router's firmware and everything was still working good. The other reason I think it was the dock itself, was that once the full speed was reached, even if I disabled QoS or rebooted the router (even a few times), the speed was still good. However, if I rebooted the dock (disconnect its power supply and reconnect), the speed would drop right away.
My entire equipment has been upgraded since a couple of months ago, so I don't even have to deal with the old dock and computer. The upgraded dock and computer I have been using lately never had a speed issue.
Have you tested other devices to see if there are issues with them too?
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