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Speed of 2 connections is different

Here is a picture of how my computers are networked. My cable comes in in my basement. There is a splitter - one end go to TVs, the other to a cable modem. The cable modem is plugged into my VOIP router. The VOIP router is plugged into my WiFi router. I have two PCs plugged into the WiFi router. Each is about 6 feet from it, and use cat5 cables that are about 6' long. When I go to speed test sites, one computer gets about 6500 kbps, and the other gets about 2000 kbps. I've tried using a different cable for the slower computer, but that made no difference. Any ideas why it is slower?

Here's a sketch of the setup.

cable in (coax) (BASEMENT)
|
|
splitter----- TVs (BASEMENT)
|
|
cable modem (BASEMENT)
|
| cat5 cable
|
VOIP router (BASEMENT)
|
|cat5e
|
WiFi Router (OFFICE)
| |
PC1 PC2

I'd change the setup if I were you:

coax in
|
|
|
splitter ---- TVs
|
|
|
modem
|
|
|
Wi-Fi router--------- VoIP
| |
PC1 PC2

Why would I do this? The VoIP units will always prioritize VoIP traffic over all other traffic, and sometimes (hopefully not in your case) causes a ton of headaches with speed, especially with the phone in use. (I had initially done your setup when I initially got VoIP)

But in regard to your actual problem that you've listed, I would try making sure that the card's set to Full Duplex on the slower machine, just to reduce that possibility. Secondly, have you checked the machine for any weird processes running, spyware, etc.?

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Yes, switch the cables and see if the speeds switch too. If so then there is nothing wrong with the networking part. Then you can drill down on the machine.

Cheers,
Rajesh

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I would definitely go with what Masnrock has suggested in terms of VOIP setup because you are creating an unecessary bottleneck in yout network.
As far as the speed issue, duplex is a good think to check, spyware and viruses and also the type of NIC you have. Hardware can go bad and can give you such behavior.
I remember i had to set the duplex to 10Mbps/ half duplex on one of those old computers to work with very old TDS router.

Hope this helps.

ASKER

I set it up this way based on advice from others on this site when I first got the VOIP. I would rather the phone traffic get priority when I'm on the phone, as I don't want the phone to have delay or sound choppy - and a slower internet when I'm on the phone isn't a concern.

I swithed the ports on the router for PC1 and PC2, and nothing changed. I check for spyware and virus... only minor things like cookies were found. Removed them, and no change.

I'm using windows 2000. In the advanced tab, I had these properties and settings:
DelayTime 0
MediaType Auto_Config
(Other options were: 100BaseTX, 100BaseTX Full_Duplex, 10BaseT, 10BaseT Full_Duplex)
NetworkAddress Not Present

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I tried 100BaseTX Full_Duplex, and 10BaseT. no change with either of them.

I also disabled the turn device off to save power. No change.

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The router is Linksys WRT54G and the NIC is built in to the motherboard. Device manager says it is "SiS".

In perfmon, I looked that the "Network Interface" device, these properties: Packets Outbound Errors and Packets Received Errors. The errors were steady at 0.

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For perfmon, I did both with normal browsing, and with a speedtest (from broadbandreports.com) - which dowloads/uploads large amounts of data, and measures speed. Errors were at 0 for both.

In device manager, the NIC is called "SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter". I'll look around and see if I can find a newer driver.

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I downloaded the latest driver, and no change.

I'm measuring speed using the speed test at broadbandreports.com (aka dslreports.com)
http://www.dslreports.com/stest

I've tried several servers on both computers. PC1 is consistently around 6000-6500, PC2 is around 1800-2100.

Is there another way to measure speed? Between the two computers maybe?

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I removed the device from device manager, and rebooted. It was there when I rebooted. I ran the same speed test as before, and no change. I'll try coping a big file from the two computers and see what I get with that.

Should I just use windows explorer to copy the file? Or use FTP?

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I setup an FTP server on PC2 (the slower connection), and using an FTP client on PC1 (the faster connection), get/put a file.

On PC1 downloading (PC2 -> PC1): 11288 KB/s
On PC1 uploading (PC1 -> PC2): 3814 KB/s

The file I used was about 8 MB.

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Would I do that with FTP also? FTP to 127.0.0.1, or to it 192.168.x.x address (the one it gets from the router)?

ASKER

Okay, I tried it with FTPing to the same computer. I did a get and put, and used both IP addresses. I did each twice. Here are the results:

Using 127.0.0.1
get: 3717 KB/s 3796 KB/s
put: 4499 KB/s 4461 KB/s

Using 192.168.1.100
get: 3796 KB/s 3744 KB/s
put: 4461 KB/s 4461 KB/s

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It is a pentium 4, 2.4 GHz. 512 MB ram. Gigabyte motherboard with SiS 661 FX chipset. Onboard network card.

Windows 2000, service pack 4.

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PC1 is a Pentium 4, 2GHz, 1GB RAM. Dell, not sure on chipset.

Windows XP Pro, SP1.

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Sorry for the delay... was away for a few days.

I'll download Ubuntu and give that a try. I'll post the results, but probably won't get to it until weekend.

I went to the speedguide.net site, and looked for the win2k receive window tweak. I saw some recommendations on registry settings, but didn't see a tool to help in setting them. I can edit the registry manually, and check that my settings are as recommended.... but was there a tool that you know of?

Thanks for the continued help!!!

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I downloaded ubuntu, and ran a few speed tests. The one I ran before required java, and I couldn't figure out how to install java in ubuntu, so I used two different ones. Here are my results:
cnet.com: 3100
TestMy.net: 6800

Running the same under windows, I get:
cnet.com: 2150
TestMy.net: 2440

Next, I'm going to check the settings as suggested by adam20.

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Yeah I would focus on MTU settings of the slow pc try dslreports.com for a quick test that can be performed from dos.

ASKER

I know it's been a really long time since you posted your last comments - I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you.

Anyways... I've tried the registry tweaks as recommended, and that seems to have fixed the problem. Don't know why the settings weren't correct to begin with, but it works now.

Thanks to everyone who helped.