Varying Internet Speed Test Results on PC's Connected To Same Network.

I have 3 machines that are running Windows 10 Pro 1803, two of which are Laptops (1 x Acer TMP453-MG & 1 x MSI GE70-2PE). The MSI is for work exclusively and the Acer is primarily for multimedia stuff.

I use the laptops at home and at work. At home I have a Huawei B315 LTE modem (best speeds are 95Mbps Down + 8Mbps Up via Ethernet connection), but I connect the laptops via WiFi to get internet at home. At the office we have a Fibre (100Mbps Up + 100 Mbps Down) connection and the MSI is connected via Ethernet cable for access to server info, and the Acer remains on WiFi, but still has access to the mapped server drives.

Today I fixed another issue related to the Data Usage Meter not working on the MSI laptop, then I ran speed tests at work just to see that all is in order. I discovered that the MSI (Laptop 1) was achieving slower speed test results as compared to the Acer (Laptop 2) laptop.

Here are some of the speed tests I achieved from the work network and the home network.

Work Network:
MSI Laptop:
94.71 Mbps Download & 0.81 Mbps Upload connected via LAN.
26.35 Mbps Download & 29.76 Mbps Upload connected via WiFi.

Acer Laptop:
94.13 Mbps Download & 94.36 Mbps Upload connected via LAN.
72.22 Mbps Download & 44.71 Mbps Upload connected via WiFi.

Home Network:
MSI Laptop:
77.09 Mbps Download & 0.88 Mbps Upload connected via LAN.
45.13 Mbps Download & 3.70 Mbps Upload connected via WiFi.

Acer Laptop:
85.58 Mbps Download & 5.28 Mbps Upload connected via LAN.
63.82 Mbps Download & 7.81 Mbps Upload connected via WiFi.

So from the above speedtests, the Acer machine better reflects the true speeds of whichever network the machines are connected to.

And I obviously made sure that nothing else is using the internet which would distort the speed test results for any of the speed tests I ran.

What could I look for that is happening on the MSI laptop that seems to be working fine on the Acer laptop? I didn't make any extra tweaks to either of the Windows 10 installs on either machines.

Welcome to the forums. The data doesn't tell us everything what is the wifi card b, g, n, AC and what is the router b, g, n,AC are all tests done against the same server often the test can choose a server further away load on the server distance from router all effect results

Samuria said:

Welcome to the forums. The data doesn't tell us everything what is the wifi card b, g, n, AC and what is the router b, g, n,AC are all tests done against the same server often the test can choose a server further away load on the server distance from router all effect results

Hi & thanks for the welcome.

Here's the additional information for both laptops & the router:

MSI Laptop Network Cards:

Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160
2.4GHz, 5GHz card capable of transfer speeds of up to 433 Mbps on a 802.11ac network

Killer E2200 Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Acer Laptop Network Cards:
Qualcomm Atheros AR5BWB222 Wireless Network Adapter
2.4GHz card capable of transfer speeds of up to 300 Mbps on a 802.11 N network

Qualcomm Atheros AR8151 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Home WiFi Router:
HUAWEI LTE CPE B315
802.11b/g/n wIFi Protocols

Work WiFi Router:
I'm unsure about this, but I'll check this when in the office again.

I ensured to select the same servers for Speed tests both at home and at work, which are servers in my city, so that there isn't a discrepancy with where it tests to.

The previously listed speed tests were run using the same WiFi network, as well as the same LAN cable. It's a CAT5e cable at home and I think the same cable at work.

Distances are not more than 5 metres from the WiFi modem at home and in the office.

Speed tests in the office were run with nobody else around.

Side Note:
I did find a YouTube video that claimed to show a "fix" for slow Ethernet speeds by disabling Large Send Offload (LSO), and I did this and the internet speeds test via Ethernet at work immediately jumped up to 90Mbps Down and 90Mbps Up. But at the moment I have the LSO settings back to the default settings, since the Acer laptop has not needed to have this tweak done. Also, I wouldn't know what the MSI's WiFi adapter settings would be, to achieve similar results. And most importanly, I am unsure what the downside to toggling LSO settings to "Disable" is.

Right, after much searching and several posts on other forums, I do have a possible explanation of why the MSI's internet speed tests were slower, and Windows 10 Pro 1803 needed additional tweaking in the settings.

The MSI needed to have LSO and Windows Auto-Tuning Level disabled, which immediately improved the Ethernet internet speeds in the office (90 Mbps Down + 90 Mbps Up) and at home (85 Mbps Down + 7 Mbps Up) to accurately reflect what the speeds are on both these networks.

However the MSI's WiFi internet speed tests, using Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 adapter, was still very sluggish compare to the Acer. The Intel WiFi card's specs can be found here:
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 Product Specifications

And the searches indicate that the Intel card is slightly crippled as a WiFi adapter, while being used on the specific networks that I am using.

One poster on another forum even said the following:

"Your solution seem to be pretty obvious: disable WiFi on Huawei and get a dual band ac WiFi access point with a LAN connection to Huawei. I am very sorry, Intel is a crippled product, this is a cause."

And the above comment matches what he found on this forum post:
wireless networking - Why do I have such a low WiFi speed? - Super User

So I would think that this is all cleared up now, and at home, I'll consider the recommendation above, and at the office I'll keep the MSI laptop on WiFi.