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I had a weird one on my network I never managed to solve before I moved: I had symmetrical 1gbps up and down. When wired, I could get nearly the full amount on

I had a weird one on my network I never managed to solve before I moved: I had symmetrical 1gbps up and down. When wired, I could get nearly the full amount on the WAN. When wireless, I could only get 300mbps to the WAN. However, when wireless, I could get ~800mbps to another device on the LAN. I could also get 800mbps to the internet if I proxied from my wireless devices to my wired device before going to the WAN. My router company sent me two additional routers, one with a similar chipset and one with a chipset from a different vendor and this persisted. I checked it with a competing router and it persisted. It did not matter what the wireless device was, Mac, windows, phones, or tablets, and it persisted. Moved somewhere else with a different ISP and it immediately stopped. I still don’t know how an ISP would identify and throttle a wireless device, but that was pretty much the only explanation I could come up with.

Nextgrid 3y ago
I wonder if this was some weird coupling/interference between wireless and the actual modem/NIC in the path to the internet? Bouncing off a separate machine would've desynced the two streams just enough that the wireless interference doesn't clash with the outbound NIC (or the other way around - the outbound NIC of the modem was causing interference which was slowing down your wireless).
- eightysixfour 3y ago
  The router was plugged into a Cat6 cable which ran to a switch in a closet in the building’s networking room, which was connected by fiber to the network. No modem within 15 floors. Interesting guess though, wouldn’t have thought of that.
3np 3y ago
- Could it be that there was a difference in IPv6/IPv4 presence/preference between the two? E.g. your wired connection acquired an IPv6 address while the wireless was IPv4 and had to go through NAT. - Did you make sure to compare results for non-concurrent speedtest? Ie maybe those ~800 were actually 4x~200 - many speedtests open parallel connections by default.
- eightysixfour 3y ago
  - All IPv4 and NATd. - The speed test difference was consistent no matter the measurement tool - speedtest.net, fast, actual file transfers, etc. We got pretty far down the rabbit hole with diagnostics. TP-Link actually spent a significant amount of effort supporting me - had a debug firmware doing packet captures, testing different hardware acceleration settings, sent me multiple routers with different chipsets, etc. I brought the hardware with me when I moved and I do not have the issue.
  - 3np 3y ago
    Aside from TP-Link consumer segments being unreliable and buggy - I wonder if TTL comes into play here. I know some mobile ISPs have been throttling or block traffic based on packet TTL (as a proxy for tethering) but it's not something I've heard of otherwise...
    - eightysixfour 3y ago
      I haven’t had issues with my hardware from them, I confirmed the behavior with non TP-Link hardware as well, for what it is worth. I was actually impressed I ended up taking to an actual product engineer.

Nextgrid 3y ago

I wonder if this was some weird coupling/interference between wireless and the actual modem/NIC in the path to the internet? Bouncing off a separate machine would've desynced the two streams just enough that the wireless interference doesn't clash with the outbound NIC (or the other way around - the outbound NIC of the modem was causing interference which was slowing down your wireless).

eightysixfour 3y ago
The router was plugged into a Cat6 cable which ran to a switch in a closet in the building’s networking room, which was connected by fiber to the network. No modem within 15 floors. Interesting guess though, wouldn’t have thought of that.

3np 3y ago

- Could it be that there was a difference in IPv6/IPv4 presence/preference between the two? E.g. your wired connection acquired an IPv6 address while the wireless was IPv4 and had to go through NAT. - Did you make sure to compare results for non-concurrent speedtest? Ie maybe those ~800 were actually 4x~200 - many speedtests open parallel connections by default.

eightysixfour 3y ago
- All IPv4 and NATd. - The speed test difference was consistent no matter the measurement tool - speedtest.net, fast, actual file transfers, etc. We got pretty far down the rabbit hole with diagnostics. TP-Link actually spent a significant amount of effort supporting me - had a debug firmware doing packet captures, testing different hardware acceleration settings, sent me multiple routers with different chipsets, etc. I brought the hardware with me when I moved and I do not have the issue.
- 3np 3y ago
  Aside from TP-Link consumer segments being unreliable and buggy - I wonder if TTL comes into play here. I know some mobile ISPs have been throttling or block traffic based on packet TTL (as a proxy for tethering) but it's not something I've heard of otherwise...
  - eightysixfour 3y ago
    I haven’t had issues with my hardware from them, I confirmed the behavior with non TP-Link hardware as well, for what it is worth. I was actually impressed I ended up taking to an actual product engineer.