I am trying to figure out what is the realistic "speed of service" that my Internet company provides to my house. Here are the test that I am running:
- Internet ↔ modem ↔ wireless router ↔ laptop: Internet speed (using an internet speedometer test): about 19 Mbit/s download and 18 Mbit/s upload.
- Internet ↔ modem ↔ WIRED router (using cable; turned off wireless on laptop) ↔ laptop: about 40 Mbit/s down/ 38 Mbit/s up
- Internet ↔ modem ↔ laptop (no router at all; cable to modem): 4 (four) Mbit/s up and 2 (two) Mbit/s up?! WHAT?!
How is this possible?
Best Answer
The first two are easy to explain - you live in an area with a fair amount of Wi-Fi noise or are far away from the router or have a crappy router, so a wired connection is faster - indeed that represents the typical maximum speed you will get.
Your Internet -> modem -> laptop is a lot harder to answer. In the naive case, yes, connecting to the laptop should be the fastest option, however it assumes a number of things which may not be true.
My speculation is that there is some kind of authentication going on on the router - possibly through PPPoE or using its MAC address. This authentication is failing and the router is being put in a very low bandwidth pool by the ISP. It's also possible that VLANS are involved that the router knows about but your PC doesn't. These kinds of thing are deliberately set up by telecommunications companies for a number of reasons on about which I can only speculate.
It is, of-course possible that there is a negotiation issue between the router and the modem.