NFT: Home Internet Speed Test

sounds like something maybe with your work pc configuration (maybe clear cache and forget all wifi and reconnect)?

I have the same setup and I just ran it from fast.com

Work laptop 350 mbps
Home laptop 360 mbps

both macbook pros.

.

usually results in wifi 50% to 60% of direct ethernet connection speed.

But sound like the work computer need to clear the cache.

In comment 15055806 giants#1 said:

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Seconded. Many VPNs throttle shit down or their could be some group policy on your laptop (set in you're company's domain active directory) that is throttling or slowing shit down. It's one or the other.

I have my students run this at least once a week since I'm teaching online:


speedtest.net - ( New Window )

This is part of what makes this site great!

I will try clearing the cache. Yes, home access must go through VPN. I will try speedtest as well.

In comment 15055855 MadMax said:

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This is part of what makes this site great! I will try clearing the cache. Yes, home access must go through VPN. I will try speedtest as well.

Using any VPN will slow your internet speed since all your data has to route through the VPN server before going on to its final destination. The performance hit can be fairly small if there’s adequate VPN server capacity. But WFH has resulted in many VPNs being seriously overburdened.

Or just the work laptop?

Work VPNs definitely throttle your speed, but even if they aren't, if you run the speed test over the VPN, the data has to go through your work servers and your WiFi. Most speed tests will also show you the latency which is a measure of how close you are to the server you're downloading the (speed test) data from. Generally speaking, greater latency = slower download speed.

"just" the VPN.

I have my work laptop and home laptop right next to each other.

work laptop has a VPN, home doesn't and the results are nearly identical - as I posted above. Consistently.

might be something unique to that vpn he's using - some VPNs have server locations to connect through that you can pick.

If yours is like that (like mine is) maybe switch the server.

The VPN is just for the work pc. Fast.com seems to only measure the connection speed to the pc. So, I'm trying out Speedtest application that was suggested here. It seems to offer more measurement options.

Thanks -

I use a VPN on my work computer. Was 109 mbps download for Work computer and 358 for home PC.

It even showed a different provider for service for the work computer.

Try the tests disconnected from VPN so your results are matched with your personal PC. VPN overheard "shouldn't" decrease your performance by 90%, unless there's a bottleneck somewhere in your company's network.

So far, it sounds like an issue with your work PC. Clearing cache and flushing DNS tends to help, unless it's an issue with the build image your company's currently deploying to users.

no VPN, with VPN, wired, wireless, etc.

I just tested my work laptop vs my smartphone and the phone speed was 20% faster and latency was 14 ms (phone) vs 92 ms (laptop). A big factor is where the VPN server is located; I live in NJ but closest work VPN server is Pittsburgh.

Can you disconnect your work VPN and then run the speed test on it? That would give apples-to-apples comp vs your personal laptop.

In comment 15055883 JonC said:

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Try the tests disconnected from VPN so your results are matched with your personal PC. VPN overheard "shouldn't" decrease your performance by 90%, unless there's a bottleneck somewhere in your company's network. So far, it sounds like an issue with your work PC. Clearing cache and flushing DNS tends to help, unless it's an issue with the build image your company's currently deploying to users.

Maybe it's lunch time for most of his office and everyone is busy downloading p0rn?!?

the first employee I had to fire was watching pr0n on his work laptop in the office and got infected.

In comment 15055887 giants#1 said:

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I just tested my work laptop vs my smartphone and the phone speed was 20% faster and latency was 14 ms (phone) vs 92 ms (laptop). A big factor is where the VPN server is located; I live in NJ but closest work VPN server is Pittsburgh. Can you disconnect your work VPN and then run the speed test on it? That would give apples-to-apples comp vs your personal laptop.

holy crap 14 ms vs 92 ms - 6 times longer?

In comment 15055892 JonC said:

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the first employee I had to fire was watching pr0n on his work laptop in the office and got infected.

LMAO! When I worked at the NY Hall of Science as a college kid, one of the supervisors was fired for allegedly getting caught with kiddie porn on his computer. Totally effed up stuff.

In comment 15055899 section125 said:

Quote:

In comment 15055887 giants#1 said: Quote: I just tested my work laptop vs my smartphone and the phone speed was 20% faster and latency was 14 ms (phone) vs 92 ms (laptop). A big factor is where the VPN server is located; I live in NJ but closest work VPN server is Pittsburgh. Can you disconnect your work VPN and then run the speed test on it? That would give apples-to-apples comp vs your personal laptop. holy crap 14 ms vs 92 ms - 6 times longer?

That's the difference between a local server and getting routed through one 6+ hrs away!

I see those differences between the bands at home depending on which I connect to.

2.4g will clash with cordless phones, bluetooth, and most IoT devices without modern tech onboard.

If you have a dual band router, then your PCs could be connected to different bands which could explain the difference.

vs laptop is not an apples to apples test. they connect to wifi differently (even without the complexity of a VPN).

In comment 15055939 pjcas18 said:

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vs laptop is not an apples to apples test. they connect to wifi differently (even without the complexity of a VPN).

Yes, but laptop WiFi chipset/antenna should be vastly superior to that in my phone which hammers home that VPN performance can be a significant drag on your overall WiFi speed.

In comment 15055941 giants#1 said:

Quote:

In comment 15055939 pjcas18 said: Quote: vs laptop is not an apples to apples test. they connect to wifi differently (even without the complexity of a VPN). Yes, but laptop WiFi chipset/antenna should be vastly superior to that in my phone which hammers home that VPN performance can be a significant drag on your overall WiFi speed.

Agree

On the surface, it is woefully slow at approx. 96Mbps. Per FiOS, we should get 200, but that is wired. They always try to get me to upgrade. But, even right now with 3 kids learning remotely, me working from home, 3 cell phones connected to Wifi, a hard wired XBox, a Nintendo Switch and a Fire Stick connected to Wifi, we have not had any issues. Streaming Netflix, for example, we don't get any buffering. Everything plays cleanly and smooth.

On the surface, it is woefully slow at approx. 96Mbps. Per FiOS, we should get 200, but that is wired. They always try to get me to upgrade. But, even right now with 3 kids learning remotely, me working from home, 3 cell phones connected to Wifi, a hard wired XBox, a Nintendo Switch and a Fire Stick connected to Wifi, we have not had any issues. Streaming Netflix, for example, we don't get any buffering. Everything plays cleanly and smooth.

In comment 15055892 JonC said:

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the first employee I had to fire was watching pr0n on his work laptop in the office and got infected.

I don’t envy you for having to deal with that. Who watches that shit on a work pc and in the office no less??

stories - it's always the people you never expect. and it is always cringey.

but the one thing I was guilty of is in the late 90's some colleagues and I crashed our work network playing Duke Nuke 'em.

for streaming Russian films. It was a small organization with insufficient IT services to begin with. When he was busy, the network crawled.

asking for IP addresses. A colleague had his machine confiscated as he was downloading pirated/bootleg audio and video materials. He was nearly fired.

with next-gen firewalls, I can tell you with direct knowledge. Watch your company internet usage, disconnect from VPN when you don't need to use it.

In comment 15055987 djm said:

Quote:

In comment 15055892 JonC said: Quote: the first employee I had to fire was watching pr0n on his work laptop in the office and got infected. I don’t envy you for having to deal with that. Who watches that shit on a work pc and in the office no less??

Is that wrong?

at a startup in 2000/2001 (our biggest competitor was a tiny search engine with a funny name called Google). For the record our tech was much better.

but everyone of the 125 or so employees had a network share with all their napster/limewire music downloads.

this grew to many hundreds of gigs, maybe even terabytes and then Kazaa and others came around and people started downloading movies and you know what came next (or maybe before but discovered next)...porn....of course it did.

and that ruined it for everyone. All content was deleted. I was buddies with the CTO and when I left he gave me a bunch of CDs (that's how long ago this was) with all my napster downloads on it.

I still have all that music in mp3 format. That was a cool time to be in "corporate America" at a tech company with technology changing what seemed like daily, things getting faster, better, smaller, rapidly.

In comment 15056020 pjcas18 said:

Quote:

at a startup in 2000/2001 (our biggest competitor was a tiny search engine with a funny name called Google). For the record our tech was much better. but everyone of the 125 or so employees had a network share with all their napster/limewire music downloads. this grew to many hundreds of gigs, maybe even terabytes and then Kazaa and others came around and people started downloading movies and you know what came next (or maybe before but discovered next)...porn....of course it did. and that ruined it for everyone. All content was deleted. I was buddies with the CTO and when I left he gave me a bunch of CDs (that's how long ago this was) with all my napster downloads on it. I still have all that music in mp3 format. That was a cool time to be in "corporate America" at a tech company with technology changing what seemed like daily, things getting faster, better, smaller, rapidly.

Did he have the same taste in videosmusic?

In comment 15056026 giants#1 said:

Quote:

In comment 15056020 pjcas18 said: Quote: at a startup in 2000/2001 (our biggest competitor was a tiny search engine with a funny name called Google). For the record our tech was much better. but everyone of the 125 or so employees had a network share with all their napster/limewire music downloads. this grew to many hundreds of gigs, maybe even terabytes and then Kazaa and others came around and people started downloading movies and you know what came next (or maybe before but discovered next)...porn....of course it did. and that ruined it for everyone. All content was deleted. I was buddies with the CTO and when I left he gave me a bunch of CDs (that's how long ago this was) with all my napster downloads on it. I still have all that music in mp3 format. That was a cool time to be in "corporate America" at a tech company with technology changing what seemed like daily, things getting faster, better, smaller, rapidly. Did he have the same taste in videosmusic?

lol, who knows I never thought to look for porn on the peer to peer sites, so not sure what the selection was like.

But music in those peer to peer days was like being in a candy store with no owner around and signs up saying "free stuff" everywhere.

I'm not even sure it was illegal per se, but it sure felt wrong, though that didn't stop anyone (including me).

I was downloading music from artists I didn't even like just because I could.

After working 20y for an ISP I can say its almost always one of those 2

1)Encryption. Depends on the encryption, some are better than others. McAfee, from my experience, is the worst, it slows EVERYTHING down. Odds are, your work laptop is encrypted.

2)Anti-Virus. Yep, some are much worst than others. Again, McAfee Enterprise is VERY aggressive, and will scan stuff going to your temp directory and your online downloads.

3)DNS. DNS's can affect network speeds. Google and OpenDNS are pretty good, but it's not likely your work laptop will allow you to choose DNS's, as you're going through a VPN.

4)Poor Network Drivers. Windows (I'll presume you have Windows 10) drivers aren't always the best or the latest. You may want to ask your IT dept. to install the most recent Manufacturer's Drivers. I've seen Windows drivers not updated for a year or more.

5)Hard Drive. Depending on what your IT Dept. ordered, you may have an older hard drive on your laptop. You really want an SSD or SSD Hybrid, the speed difference is amazing. I'm on a 2008 Thinkpad, but with more memory and an SSD, I have no issues with performance.

6)Key Loggers and other Malware. You might have malware on your work laptop. I'd have your IT guys look at it, and do a thorough scan for malware. I did that when I was working, and found that the company anti-virus/malware let a ton of stuff through. Not all malware is from third parties, btw...some companies put stuff in your PC to watch what you're doing (key loggers, and other nasties), and some PC companies did the same (I'm looking at YOU, Lenovo!!).

7)Hardware Problem. You could have a faulty NIC, or some other issue on your motherboard. Your fans might be clogged with dust, or some liquid got inside and mucked up your motherboard. It happens!

I'd bring that Laptop to work and complain to the IT Dept. Yes, a VPN will lower your speeds, but 17 is WAY too low, and indicates something wrong. Since no one spends the time to diagnose things these days (since to management, it's time/money wasted), they will likely issue you a new laptop. Sit there with them and test out the speed before you bring it home!