Browser based speed tests terrible, while windows app shows expected 2300+?

[sswilson]

Really scratching my head over this one......

Finished rebuilding this corporate box as a windows PC and ran into a snag when I did a speedtest in firefox.... came back 650/590 in spite of the 2.5GB network card. Then proceeded to hunt down the latest and greatest drivers with no change, followed by cabling and switch reassignments, and finally thought that perhaps the NIC needed to be swapped into the second full length PCIe slot.

Still no joy, but here's where it gets weird.... On a hunch, I installed and ran the windows store app which well-what-do-you-know.... showed me the 2300+ up/down numbers I was expecting. Back to firefox, and nope.... still down around the 650/590 range, and edge was slightly higher uploads (850ish) but close to normal downloads.

I don't have this issue on my gaming PC (getting full expected up/down speeds in browser tests) so it's not something that's happening at the opnsense level.

Any ideas?

 

[ZZLEE]

Maybe Speedtest.net and try some different sites and see if it changes much.

 

[sswilson]

I tried a few other sites and they all came back slower than expected....

 

[crazyea]

Since its a fresh install and there isn’t really anything important yet, maybe try plugging it direct to the modem.

 

[gingerbee]

Is there some type of Windows data cap maybe just guess, because I have never seen or heard of this happening

 

[sswilson]

Since its a fresh install and there isn’t really anything important yet, maybe try plugging it direct to the modem.

Same result plugged directly into the modem. Browser based is gimped while the store app gets what I'd expect.

Is there some type of Windows data cap maybe just guess, because I have never seen or heard of this happening

Not that I'm aware of, and it's not windows globally, it's in browsers while a dedicated app seems fine. It's almost like windows is throwing some kind of bandwidth crippling ID/P onto my browser(s).

I'm stumped. Getting to the point where I'm almost ready to try a nuke/pave. It's not like it takes all that long to re-install windows from scratch.

 

[gingerbee]

did you check under the data limits section to make sure its not putting some type of cap on browsers, just wondering since it's such a wired problem

 

[sswilson]

did you check under the data limits section to make sure its not putting some type of cap on it, just wondering since its such a wired problam

I had a look at those settings and there didn't appear to be any kind of limits set, but even if there were, my understanding is that those limits look at data amounts, not speed.

If this was a limit set somewhere it would be more along the lines of traffic shaping, but I don't have anything like that installed on this PC, and it only affects this particular PC, not the other 2.5G wired one that's connected. The issue also persists if I plug directly into the ISP modem so it's not something going on with the opnsense firewall and/or the DNS settings it's using.

Maybe it's the firmware baked malware on these Chinese NICs finally kicking in and that's the overhead of sending my browsing info over there.... (Where's the tin foil hat emoji??? )

(And just to be clear.... I don't for a second really think this is firmware spying related.... ).

 

[sswilson]

Next step is to re-enable the onboard 1G nic and see if it behaves similarly.

 

[sswilson]

Same results with the onboard. At this point I'm inclined to just scrap the whole install and start over.