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My ISP advertises 100+ Mbps download speeds. I have only been getting about 25 Mbps, so I contacted a support agent and was told that if I'm connecting through a router, there might be something misconfigured that would be hampering my speed. I was skeptical, but I followed the agent's instructions to power cycle my cable modem and connect directly to it with Ethernet, instead of through the router. Lo and behold, I instantly achieved 105 Mbps. So what on Earth is going on with my router? The help agent wasn't super easy to understand, but she mentioned something about "bad channel" and contacting Linksys. I'm wondering if there are just some configuration issues I don't know about that are limiting my speeds.
My router is a Cisco/Linksys EA4500. Most of my devices connect to it wirelessly. My main PC connects via Ethernet to one of its 4 physical ports. The router is fed from a cable modem that was provided by my ISP.
For what it's worth, I know I enabled some sort of "smart traffic prioritization" feature on my router that would supposedly smartly identify media content from specified devices (ie Netflix on iPad and Blu-Ray player) and give those packets the highest priority. I wouldn't think this would translate to "automatically limit all other devices to 1/4th of the available speed" but who knows?
@Chipperyman it says in the question that bubbleking did exactly that and did achieve the advertised speed. – David Z – 2014-10-13T00:54:55.223
There is nothing you can do if your not getting full speeds with the correct hardware. Without knowing exactly what was said... – Ramhound – 2014-10-13T00:55:28.560
@Chipperyman - That's what is weird. I get 105 Mbps when plugged directly into modem. When going through the router, I only get 25 Mbps. – bubbleking – 2014-10-13T01:00:26.013
Have you tried changing the ethernet cable? If it's a particularly long cable or it passes close to other electrical wires, this could cause the problem you are experiencing. – Andy Gee – 2014-10-13T01:03:38.293
Another possible solution is to check the QoS (Quality of Service) settings. By default it's enabled, try disabling it and see if there's any difference. – Andy Gee – 2014-10-13T01:05:28.680
Wireless connection... N-mode router, but what wireless capabilities does the laptop connecting have? If you are only connecting via 802.11g then you will not get more than around 20m connection. – Tyson – 2014-10-13T01:45:15.287
@Tyson - I was connecting from a desktop over Ethernet. The problem turned out to be the media prioritization feature of the router. – bubbleking – 2014-10-13T02:09:45.310