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[SOLVED] Tests Related to Recent Increase in Bandwidth Loss Through Router

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daddydave:
Finally got a chance to do some wi-fi testing because I seem to be losing a lot of bandwidth these days unless I skip the router altogether. This seems to be the case regardless of whether I go through wi-fi or an ethernet connection through the router.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13WQNI4msd3ml_pO6XiKjFpTqGBS1BtKHFriTVn6zKrc/edit?hl=en_US

mwb1100:
What's the router model?  Do you have an opportunity to test with another router, like by borrowing one from home or something?  Has the router had it's firmware updated recently (if so, maybe that's the cause; if not, maybe an update might help)?

40hz:
OK. You've piqued my curiosity... ;D

1) What are you using for a router?

2) What are the port speeds on each device? Is the router only 100Mbs (on either its WAN or LAN side) whereas the cable modem has 1Gb speed on its RJ45 jack?

What's puzzling is that you said you were seeing very high throughput previously with the router in circuit. So the problem is obviously related to the router being in the loop. Sounds like some bandwidth throttling or QoS feature has been woken up on the router. Have you recently upgraded the firmware in the router? If so, there's a chance the update has  switched something ON which used to be OFF by default.

Possibly a misconfigured MTU or other setting on the router...hmm...

Question: does  the cable modem have it's own switch built in or does it just provide a single IP address on the LAN side? If it provides DHCP services, you'd be better off just plugging a switch into it and forgoing  the router altogether.

When plugged straight into the cable modem could you run an IPCONFIG /ALL command and see if your NIC has a non-routable IP address? Also if the subnet is anything other than a /24 (i.e. 255.255.255.0)?

Long shot: some device plugged into your network (or one of the ports on the router itself) has gone south and is introducing 'chatter' or other noise which is forcing enough retransmits that it's dragging the entire network down. Since the performance drop is there whenever the router (and nothing else) is plugged in, it's a very real possibility.
 :)

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@daddydave - OK...it's 1:00AM and the server I was working on is back online (RAID rebuild!) so I'll be packing up and heading home. Let's regroup on this later this weekend. ;D :Thmbsup:

Stoic Joker:
What's puzzling is that you said you were seeing very high throughput previously with the router in circuit. So the problem is obviously related to the router being in the loop. Sounds like some bandwidth throttling or QoS feature has been woken up on the router. Have you recently upgraded the firmware in the router? If so, there's a chance the update has  switched something ON which used to be OFF by default.-40hz (October 22, 2011, 12:01 AM)
--- End quote ---

Sounds about right to me ... The SPI firewalls on consumer grade hardware also have a bad habit of screwing the pooch.

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Generally for this type of problem I use a special "Line Stressing" utility (packet flooder - that I'm afraid to release)  to target different points in the device chain to see who collapses first.

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It might not hurt to just reset & reconfigure the router in case a power blip (or other brand of hiccup) has corrupted it's current configuration.

daddydave:
Short answer:
It's a Linksys Netgear WNR845T WNR854T (thanks Stoic) , and as far as I know, it doesn't have any QoS settings.
There hasn't been a firmware upgrade from Linksys (or anyone, as best as I can tell) since 2008.
I'll check and see if there is an MTU setting.
Trying a reset to factory default settings is probably the last stop before buying a new router, and I'll try to get on with "guest mode" while I am at it.
I seem to have ruled out interference as a major factor in a drop in download speed from 20 Mbps to 6 Mbps unless the interference is happening inside the router itself.

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