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Slow PC internet when TV is streaming shows

kidohno
Joining in

Hi all

I recently installed an internet switch in our garden log cabin, where I moved my home office. I have a desktop PC and a smart TV in the cabin, both hooked up to the switch with ethernet cables. The switch is then hooked up to the main Virgin router in our house with a CAT6 ethernet cable through the garden.

The only problem I have is that my PC's internet speed and ping is greatly diminished when I try and use it - for example playing online games - when the smart TV is streaming television, usually Disney+. It makes playing games impossible and when I Speedtest I'm getting about 5mbps when I have a 100MB connection. 

Is this expected or are there some settings I can adjust on the internet switch, or even elsewhere? Do I simply just need to upgrade my broadband package and get a faster speed? It feels like back in the days of 56K dialup when the net would get shutdown whenever someone called the landline! Surely I can watch Disney+ on TV AND play an online game at the same time and enjoy optimal speed?

Any help or advice greatly appreciated. Thank you. 

5 REPLIES 5

jbrennand
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person
What make model of switch is it - and is it a "managed" or "unmanaged" one?

What Hub model is it?

It might be worth considering putting the Hub into modem mode and using your own better quality router.

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John
--------------------

I do not work for VM. My services: HD TV on VIP (+ Sky Sports & Movies & BT sport), x3 V6 boxes (1 wired, 2 on WiFi) Hub5 in modem mode with Apple Airport Extreme Router +2 Airport Express's & TP-Link Archer C64 WAP. On Volt 350Mbps, Talk Anytime Phone, x2 Mobile SIM only iPhones.

jpeg1
Alessandro Volta

Also remember that when you run a speedtest you are only measuring the speed that you are getting on that one device, the one running the test. 

It doesn't show the speeds on the other devices which are running at the same time on the shared connection, or the total download speed. 

- jpeg1
My name is NOT Alessandro. That's just a tag Virginmedia sticks on some contributors. Please ignore it.

Depending on what resolution the Smart TV supports, Disney+ in UK can be around 16-18Mbps, and peak higher than this.  That's quite a lot of TCP traffic (around 20% of your bandwidth) which will impact ping times and internet speedtest results due to the demand on the Docsis Request-Grant process used for upstream slots.

Try running two speedtests (different servers) with no video streaming running.   I doubt you will get the full 100Mbps.   Then re-test your pings (use command line ping -t rather than a speedtest site) with nothing else running.

For example, look what happens to my ping times with a speedtest running:

This uses a VM DNS server, so independent of the internet !!

D:\Users\home>ping -t 194.168.4.100

Pinging bbc.co.uk [194.168.4.100] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=60 (download speedtest started here)
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=152ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=135ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=150ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=121ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=136ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=136ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=132ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=148ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=133ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=60 (Upload speedtest started here)
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=99ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=60
Reply from 194.168.4.100: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=60

 

 

mikelkite
On our wavelength

It's a network issue, it's happening to loads of people since the August outage, you are not alone and like the rest of us are getting fobbed off

Adri_G
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi there Kidohno, thanks for your post on our help forum.

We're sorry to hear of the speed issues faced recently while on ethernet connection, since you've mentioned these are the speeds received on your device via the switch would it be possible to run a speed test on a wired connected device directly on our hub and network without and switches or other devices and cables interfering instead?

We'd like to check further for issues with the speeds and performance of your hub to see if we need further technical assistance in this case, to check this please run a speed test here on ethernet connection on a) router mode, b) modem mode and c) safe mode on your pc / laptop.

Please, kindly perform these tests and let us know if any performance issues are detected there so we make sure.
In case any problems are found there we'd be eager to assist further with this issue.

Adri
Forum Team

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