# problem with network speed



## niekgigashvili (Feb 10, 2016)

Hi

I have a strange network speed problem on my laptop when I use it at home. It seems that net connection is working well ping has no packet drops and websites are opened sometimes there are timeout errors. Real problem arises when I download a file or try to watch movie online basically when large data is received it also fails some online speed tests. Connection is dropped wireshark shows that I receive lots of tcp RST packets. Same thing happens to my PC both are running FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE. I tested other laptops with different OSes installed and they have no network speed problems. I tested laptop with Windows 7 and Linux. Do you have any ideas what might be causing this I thought maybe there are patch cable problems or something is wrong with ISP's switch but after testing other laptops I got confused. Any suggestion would be helpful


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## wblock@ (Feb 10, 2016)

Might be good to define whether this is wireless or wired, what type and model of computer, and which network card.


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## niekgigashvili (Feb 11, 2016)

wblock@ said:


> Might be good to define whether this is wireless or wired, what type and model of computer, and which network card.



Its wired I havn't tested wireless. laptop model is HP EliteBook 8570w and NIC is


```
em0@pci0:0:25:0:  class=0x020000 card=0x176b103c chip=0x15028086 rev=0x04 hdr=0x00
  vendor  = 'Intel Corporation'
  device  = '82579LM Gigabit Network Connection'
  class  = network
  subclass  = ethernet
```

I'm still planning to test patch cables with tester because at work network with this laptop works fine. Can implementation differences in TCP/IP stack give such different results between OSes if network connection is bad?


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## wblock@ (Feb 11, 2016)

Before anything else, rule out duplex mismatch.  What router or switch does that network cable plug in to?  How old is it?


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## PacketMan (Feb 12, 2016)

nickag said:


> Hi
> 
> I tested other laptops with different OSes installed and they have no network speed problems. I tested laptop with Windows 7 and Linux. Do you have any ideas what might be causing this I thought maybe there are patch cable problems or something is wrong with ISP's switch but after testing other laptops I got confused. Any suggestion would be helpful





nickag said:


> Can implementation differences in TCP/IP stack give such different results between OSes if network connection is bad?



Being a networking guy I can say firmly that in all my exposure FreeBSD and Linux always outperform Windows machines assuming all else is in correct order. I had some issues one time with HP laptops and their NIC drivers in a Windows environment....very fast speed one way but the other direction was very slow.  If you know you have a good patch cord then try it with all machines. To efficiently determine the cause of the problem you have to eliminate all the other variables.  Only other thing I can think of wblock already said. Duplex issue will cause more and more noticeable issue with the higher transfers of data.  Maybe for some reason FreeBSD driver for that NIC and your ISP device is not happily married. BTW, the 10/100 negotiation protocol on FastEthernet NICs was poorly and differently implement by the zillion vendors. The gigabit negotiation protocol on gig NICs has thankfully being practically 'perfect'.


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## niekgigashvili (Feb 12, 2016)

wblock@ said:


> Before anything else, rule out duplex mismatch. What router or switch does that network cable plug in to? How old is it?



Router is asus soho wifi router been used about 4 years but I was testing without using router just directly plugged patch cable into laptops. About duplex on Linux box it was 100baseTX-FD and network worked when I manually put that duplex on FreeBSD laptop network didn't work ip address wasn't taken at all then I switched to Autoselect and I got network connection  `ifconfig em0 | grep media` showed that 100baseTX-FD was chosen but  of course the connection was very poor. I guess l have to dig into duplex testing more. Thanks for advices I'll try to test every possible problems that may be causing this.


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