1 Gbs USB 3.0 Ethernet Adapter Speeds Wildly Different

[JStenn]

This is NOT a request for "Help"....it's reporting a solution to an odd problem I've never seen before in about 20 years of  corporate I.T. and personal experience in hardware and software repair and support....and, in hindsight, I'm surprised I HAVEN'T seen this before....since one of our most common suggested "solutions" is to (spoiler alert !).... reinstall drivers. 🙂

I was given this damaged HP Envy X360 15M-BP1xx after the user decided to go over to the "Other Side" and get a MAC....and I just completed repair of the somewhat notorious broken screen back cover with the weak, tiny, custom/proprietary screws that break out of their embedded plastic in the cover....total repair cost about $30 for the "top" cover that has the "HP" logo....

I was surprised to notice this model did not have an Ethernet interface, just 3 USB 3.0 jacks and a pretty decent WiFi (~300-500Mbs) for I/O....so, since I pay for 1Gbs fiber internet at home, decided to get a USB 3.0 1Gbs Ethernet / USB hub....and picked up one of the many generics off Amazon that use the "RealTek USB GbE Family" chipset and driver.....

I plugged this new USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter in and watched Win11 immediately recognize and install the driver and recognize the ethernet / USB hub....so turned off built-in WiFi and plugged  a 3ft Cat 8 cable  into my fiber router and waited for an IP to be assigned....which was within 10 seconds or so....

I then opened the locally installed "SpeedTest" app from the Microsoft store and tested by internet speed with this new USB 1Gbs ethernet adapter.....and was shocked.....and thought "Oh great, just my luck, I got a defective generic adapter I'm now going to have to send back !

The SpeedTest results were bizarre....DOWNLOAD speed was about 200 to 300 Mbs consistenly,  while UPLOAD speeds were exactly what I'd expect, and get from the rest of my devices on this home fiber network....about 950 to 980Mbs .....

So I switched to another USB jack on the laptop just in case.....retested, got the same wildly unequal results....then removed the USB-A adapter on the Ethernet adapter and plugged it into the single USB-C socket on this X360....got the same results.  😞

So I shut the X360 down, removed this generic USB 3 Ethernet adapter and moved it to my Lenovo Legion laptop and retested....and got just what it should have been.... ~950-980Mbs....so I confirmed it was NOT the USB Ethernet adapter, the problem was this HP X360.....

BIOS is the latest / last....v. F52.....onboard diagnostics said USB on System Board was fine.....all Microsoft "Updates" were current for Win11 Home.... 

So I went to the Intel Support site and downloaded and installed their "Auto Detect," which identified 3 drivers needing update...all WiFi and Bluetooth related....and installed them....which did nothing....

At this point I went back to the HP Support site for this model because I thought I remembered seeing a mention of "Serial IO driver Update," ....and found and downloaded and installed HP SP82760...which is not actually a new driver.....it's from 2017....but installed it anyway.....rebooted, and retested....

.....and finally got equal download and upload speeds.....950 to 980Mbs from this Benfei 1Gbs USB Ethernet and hub.

So, moral of the story....though, in 20 or more years of hearing and knowing and advising "drivers might be corrupted, reinstall your drivers before you think your hardware is defective," I've never actually experienced "corrupted" drivers personally.  Yes, I'm presuming the driver entries in the registry were "corrupted,"  mis-set in some way, and, YES, I did allow the Intel Support site AutoDetect to update 3 seemingly unrelated drivers that MIGHT have affected/fixed the problem....but I'm going with the old HP service pack for Serial IO...SP82760...I think whatever was corrupted / mis-set in the  driver settings in the registry were corrected by installing that. 

[banhien]

@JStenn 

Please check your contract with the ISP. Normally UPLOAD speed is much slower than DOWNLOAD speed my contract is 50/20 and I've got for wifi (I have not tested wired connection but should be very close).

        

Regards.