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Internet Download Speeds Slow Following Modem Upgrade
#1
I am looking for some answers as to the cause of my measured download speeds slowing after Spectrum installed a new upgraded modem. I occasionally run speedtest.com to check my internet speed. Normally I have gotten 50-60 Mbps down and 8-11 Mbps upload. This week my internet service provider, Spectrum, installed a new Arris TM1602 cable modem. They said this upgrade was needed to achieve the 100 Mbps available later this spring. This modem also has VOIP for our phone service.

I ran a speed test at speedtest.net as well as several other speed test sites. I am now getting 25-35 Mbps download and 11 Mbps upload. So the upload is still good but the download has slowed about 40%. This is with the modem connected to my PC with an ethernet cable directly. A technician came back to check it and he was able to achieve 75+ Mbps download with a Mac laptop and also with an app on his smartphone. He said my issue was old hardware. This may be true but why has the speed decreased to almost half what it was before the modem upgrade? I tested the speed with my wife's Dell laptop and that was only able to achieve about 25 Mbps download as well when connected directly to the modem.

I am retired and work on computer repair for several friends and family, both software and hardware. My PC is lean and clean with no viruses or malware. I run Ccleaner on a weekly basis as well as Malwarebytes, ADWcleaner, and other scanners. My old computer is relatively fast for most of the things I do with it, which is browsing the internet, watching Bitec's YouTube videos, and creating Word documents. No gaming at all. I will probably have to concede and build a new computer this year. The point is, my old computer still runs well and does what I need it to do fairly efficiently. Maybe there is no answer to the cause of my decreased internet download speeds, other than a new system. But then again, my wife's laptop shows the slower speeds too. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

My PC specs:
Asus P4SD-LA motherboard
Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz and 4 GB of memory
Windows 7 32-bit running Firefox version 64
Arris TM1602 cable modem
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#2
is it a modem and a router?
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#3
(01-04-2019, 03:35 PM)Compton Wrote:  is it a modem and a router?

No, the modem and router are separate units. The newly installed modem is an Arris TM1602 and the wifi router
is a TP-Link AC1750. My desktop computer is connected to the router via an Ethernet cable. I have also directly
connected the desktop computer directly to the Arris modem via Ethernet cable. Same results with either way.
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#4
OK Is it DSl or cable?

If it is DSL & the phone line is being share with internet it can cause slow speed
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#5
(01-08-2019, 07:32 PM)Compton Wrote:  OK Is it DSl or cable?

If it is DSL &  the phone line is being share with internet it can cause slow speed

This internet service provider is Charter Spectrum. They have a fiber optic cable system which in my area of west Michigan is supposed to be 100 Mbps. The technician sold me that as long as I could get 70% of that, I was good. Well, I'm only getting about 35% of the available speed. He said the cause was due to my hardware being old. That maybe one element of the slow speed but there is more to it. Before the cable modem upgrade I was using a Cisco cable modem and a separate Arris phone modem. The upgrade replaced both modems with a single Arris TM1602 modem which supplies both the internet and the phone service. My download speed with the older Cisco cable modem was 50-60 Mbps. Now with the new improved upgraded modem my download speed is 25-35 Mbps. So about a 40% reduction in speed.

I don't have any recourse because the technician came back after I complained about the slower speed and he was able to achieve 75+ Mbps with his smart phone and over 70 Mbps with his Apple Macbook. So he therefore confirmed that I was indeed getting what I was paying for. Case closed. My old desktop is a Pentium 4 with 4 GB of ram running Windows 7 Home Premium. It runs quite well and is plenty fast for my needs. My wife has a Dell laptop I-3 with 6 GB of ram running Windows 10. When I connected her laptop directly to the Arris modem with an Ethernet cable, I was only getting 30 Mbps on her's.

The only thing changed in this scenario is the Arris cable modem. Still looking for answers. Was hoping to hear something from Britec.
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#6
It would not surprise me that your internet speeds are not as fast as you hope due to the fact that you are running such old hardware. Granted a P4 will do for very basic computing however the motherboard that P4 is running on most certainly would not have Gigabit Ethernet Technology needed for current internet speed technology. Even when you had better speeds with your original setup is irrelevant seeing how you just introduced even more current internet hardware.
Tim's Computer Repair (TCR) 
1503 Kings Way, Savannah, GA 31406, US
912-220-0765
https://www.TimsComputerFix.net 

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#7
Just out of interest what is the specs of your wife laptop?

What you can do is to upgrade your router to see if you will get better speed over Wi-Fi

If you get better speeds over Wi-Fi then you know it your computer.
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#8
(01-11-2019, 11:57 AM)Compton Wrote:  Just out of interest what is the specs of your wife laptop?

What you can do is to upgrade your router to see if you will get better speed over Wi-Fi

If you get better speeds over Wi-Fi  then you know it your computer.

My wife's laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15 with an Intel I-3 processor and 6 GB of ram running Windows 10. We connected her laptop to the Arris modem directly with an Ethernet cable also and the download speed was 25-30 Mbps, no better than my old desktop computer. The Dell laptop is five years old.

I upgraded my router a year ago to a TP-Link Archer 7 AC1750. Before that I was using a Linksys which was constantly dropping the wifi connections. Since installing the TP-Link router we have not experienced a single dropped connection. It's a very good router. I paid $80 for it on Amazon. In any case, I cabled both the desktop and the laptop directly to the Arris modem with both yielding similar download speeds.

I know my desktop computer has pretty old and obsolete hardware, and I was not expecting to get 100 Mbps speeds. I was expecting to get the same or a bit higher speeds, not slower. Looks like I will have to build a new computer before I will be able to get any where near the speed I am paying for, which is 100 Mbps download. Thank you.

Oh, and one more thing. When I select the option to "Subscribe and receive email notification of new repplies", I never get notified for some reason.
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#9
I had the same question... thank you for posting and this 192.168.0.20 really helped me a lot.
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#10
please start a new thread samjonas
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