I've been pulling my hair out over this issue! I have a 1Gb internet connection at home, and speed tests show I'm getting the expected 8-900Mbps on my Linux laptop. However, when I run the same tests on my Windows desktop (and two other Windows PCs), I'm only getting around 140Mbps. The link speed on Windows shows it's connected at 1Gb, and I've tried various fixes, including updating the Realtek driver and turning off any green ethernet settings. Oddly enough, when I connect to a VPN on my desktop, I achieve those higher speeds again, indicating that everything with the cabling and switches is fine. It feels like some peculiar issue with the Windows machines.
3 Answers
It sounds like there might be some throttling or extra settings on your router affecting the Windows machines. Have you checked for anything like VPN clients, proxies, or firewall settings that might differ from your Linux setup? Also, if you can, try testing your speed via WiFi just to compare.
Just double-check that you're not mixing up MB and Mb! It can be easy to get confused. Also, are those 140Mbps speeds limited to internet downloads or do LAN transfers hit those speeds too?
I'm not mixing them up, but I updated my post to clarify. The 140Mbps is primarily from internet downloads, but when I ran a test with iperf3 between my PC and laptop, I hit nearly full gig speeds. And I'm using the default ATT gateway with no QoS settings.
Have you considered trying an ethernet dongle? Sometimes the built-in network cards can have odd limitations. Just an idea!
Yeah, I did try that as well, but I'm still seeing the same speeds.
I think my WiFi might be disabled—I tried to turn it on in BIOS but might have messed up. I can check that out, but I’m mainly focused on the wired connection for now.