Possibly The Strangest Network Bug I've Come Across

Networking
1

I've had some weird issues with my machine at home regarding network speeds. My bandwidth is a up to 30/mbps and I usually hover around 25-30/mbps. But over the last week or so my PC was moving at an abysmal 10/mbps. Even dropping packets, causing me to disconnect from Discord. Latency was all over the place as well, jumping between 60 and 1,000ms. I use a Netgear USB wireless adapter on my PC (I know). So I start troubleshooting. I thought at first that it was internet connection dying but after testing a download on my laptop, everything looks fine. My laptop peaks at 27/mbps. So I figure it's an issue with network adapter. I try reinstalling drivers, using different USB ports, ect. Nothing fixes it. But then I had the idea to try using the wireless adapter on my laptop. To my surprise it works flawlessly. Downloads jump right to where they should be. In a rather bewildered state, I move the USB adapter back to my desktop, and boom. Downloads start running just like before. Everything has been fine for the last ~12 hours.

I have no idea what happened or why that seemed to fix the issue. Does anybody have any idea what issue this was and why whatever I did fixed it?

2

what is your netgear model number?

my tp link one with the rtl8188eu chipset has the same issues. mostly drivers on my end but yeah

3

Don't remember, I'll post later when I'm home.

1 Like
4

I don't want to alarm you but it might even be that the USB port where it's connected is acting weird for some reason (hardware or software). Try to swap the adapter with something else on another port and see what happens. If it's having issues still I would try something like a powered USB hub.