Slow internet speed

The pictures you have provided have confirmed what I said.  ReadyDrop is using a majority of your Surface's avalialble connection speed, not your internet speed.  This is an indication that you have a poor (or poorly configured) wireless connection to your router or just a router incapable of today's normal speeds.

If you don't have a router (or wifi access point) capable of wireless-AC access, it looks like you need one.  Your Surface does have that capability.  If you do have an AC router, then your Surface is not properly negotiating an AC connection to it.  You are getting no better than wireless-G (54Mbps, circa 1997).  Note that obstructions, distance, and interference can be causes for poor connection speed,even if it is wireless-AC, but I doubt that's it based on your posts.

If your router is provided by your internet provider, that can be the cause.  They often only worry about matching the wifi (and ethernet) speed with the internet speed, not caring that your intranet (in your own home, like to the ReadyNAS) speeds will be adversely affected.  Or, they charge more to give you more, and you aren't buying.

Also, if you are using WEP authentication, it will throttle your speed to wireless-B/G.

Note that once you get this aspect fixed, a slow Ethernet connection to the NAS can also slow down the file transfer, but should not adversely affect your ability to do other things on the internet concurrently with your Surface.

Sorry for my typo regarding Mbps vs MBps.  I have 100 up and down via Google Fiber and what I typed should have been obvious rather than you, again, essentially calling me an idiot.  Seriously?!

Yes, it is a local issue in that my Surface cannot do anything on the internet if ReadyCloud is running as it takes up the entire bandwith of my Surface.  Do I really have to continue explaining the issue or can you use some common sense?

As I have explained before, if you care to read my posts, my Surface is conncected via wi-fi to my Google Fiber router.  In addition, there are only 2 other devices ever connected to the Google Fiber router: my iPhone via wi-fi and my NAS hard wired.

I've also explained that Google Fiber has been out to "solve" the issue and I have the most up to date Cat 5 cable and they specifically determined that ReadyCloud was causing the issue (i.e., 100/100 speeds when ReadyCloud not running; "significantly" slower when ReadyCloud is running).

How many times do I have to repeat myself before getting a possible solution?  The message is pretty clear: ReadyCloud, when indexing/uploading, makes my machine impossible to use on the internet.

I have a Google Fiber router as indicated previously.  I use WPA2 encryption and not WEP.  There is no access point or other router between me and the NAS.  Only the Google Fiber box/router.  Also, my machine is literally less than 10 feet from the router with no obstructions.

The only thing I want is to be able to use the internet while ReadyCloud is running in the background to backup my files.  I currently cannot do that unless I let ReadyCloud run over night and then exit it in the morning.  Every time a file changes, ReadyCloud uploads and my ability to work online is shot.

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tkernaghan wrote:

Yes, it is a local issue in that my Surface cannot do anything on the internet if ReadyCloud is running as it takes up the entire bandwith of my Surface.  Do I really have to continue explaining the issue or can you use some common sense? 

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First thing to check is that the ReadyCloud App (in the traybar) does show it's connected to your NAS locally. Unless there are other sync processes going on in the background (e.g. NAS <-> Internet) the Internet link wont be used.

This brings me back to what was mentioned before: The resource monitor does show about 77 Mbit/s (plus a few 0.1 Mbit/s connections) taking up 100% of the wireless bandwidth currently available on the wireless interface of your surface.

It would be worth checking a little bit more - the task manager has a Performance tab (or the like), and there you have some traces of data sent and received. The only "logical" conclusion would be that the Surface does only have a very limited bandwidth available on it's wireless interface resp. on the effective established link rate (minus at least about 20%, that is the max bandwidth available). And that's what was mentioned here before.

Your problem is unlikely the subject "Slow Internet speed" - much more there is a performance problem on the WiFi link from your almost unspecified Windows 10 Surface to the Google WiFi system (and nothing beyond of that). For a reason Windows 10 does determine the max available bandwidth to something below 80 Mbit/s (==100%). What do I know ... no up2date drivers (-> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4023482/surface-download-drivers-and-firmware-for-surface), weak drivers (often the system manufacturers are very lazy, e.g. Inhell does provide much better drivers from thir global support site addressing issues - but I have no idea if there is a Intel WIFi involved, ...), messed up wireless interface config, not ideal preamble (e.g long instead of short). I'd suggest to start with dropping the WiFi connection, and reconfigure it. The Microsoft communities are full with "Surface poor wireless performance" issues. 

I would suggest to talk to the Microsoft Surface resp. the Google WiFi support again for potential issues.

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tkernaghan wrote:

How many times do I have to repeat myself before getting a possible solution? 

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Not sure you are aware that you talk to Netgear community members typically, not to Netgear.

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tkernaghan wrote:

Sorry for my typo regarding Mbps vs MBps.  I have 100 up and down via Google Fiber and what I typed should have been obvious rather than you, again, essentially calling me an idiot.  Seriously?!

Take a breath. I did not call you an idiot or say anything disrespectful in my posts. But I have no idea of your setup or your issue other than what you post.  FWIW, I also have no idea what you know about networking and what you don't know.  I get that you are very frustrated.  But if we don't have the right information, then we aren't likely to help you.  The more we guess what you meant to say, the more likely we are to draw false conclusions.

I knew you had a Google router, but many people include switches and other equipment on their home network.  Mesh routers can also create bandwidth limits on the link layer, and I don't know enough about the Google service to know if they include their mesh Google Wifi system or not.

Your 100 mbit up/down link from Google isn't relevant if the congestion problem is local.  If your screen shots were taken with wired ethernet then there is evidence in them that suggests that your surface link speed isn't gigabit as it should be.  Plus normally the ReadyCloud app shouldn't be sending the data through the fiber link when you are at home - it is designed to send the data directly to the NAS - again suggesting that the problem is in fact local.  schumaku gave you a way to check if the data transfer is local or routed through the cloud.

And if the traffic is local, then ReadyCloud should be able to use more bandwidth in task manager when you are using gigabit ethernet - not less.  And you should still be able to connect to the internet from the surface.

You still haven't confirmed the link speeds on the Surface or on the NAS, and I don't know if your task manager screen shots were taken with a wireless connection or a wired gigabit.  I am also unclear as to whether "up to date Cat 5" means Cat 5e or something else.

One other thing that would help is if you could measure the throughput between the surface and the NAS (both when the surface is wired, and when it is not).  There is a tool called NasTester ( http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance ) that is good for this, as it is freely available and allows us to compare the results with our own systems.

As schumaku says, you aren't talking to anyone from Netgear here.  This is a community forum (moderated by Netgear).  We are Netgear users, not paid support.  If you want paid support, then you can get that from my.netgear.com.

Some insight on the Windwos 10 wireless connection - specifically the negotiated PHY link speed (like receive and transmit rates, signal level, ...) - can be found from the shell (cmd) running "netsh wlan show interfaces". Unfortunately, this information was stripped from some GUI network properties on newer WIndows 10 builds.

C:\>netsh wlan show interfaces

There is 1 interface on the system:

Name : Wi-Fi
Description : Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265
GUID : <snip)
Physical address : f4:96:34:YY:YY:YY
State : connected
SSID : whatever
BSSID : XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Network type : Infrastructure
Radio type : 802.11ac
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : CCMP
Connection mode : Profile
Channel : 36
Receive rate (Mbps) : 650
Transmit rate (Mbps) : 650
Signal : 82%
Profile : [whatever] 

Yes, ReadyCloud shows that it is connected locally.

Sorry that I'm not an engineer and am not "technically" correct with the title slow internet speed.  The fact of the matter is that I CANNOT use the internet if ReadyCloud is running.  Hence, slow internet speed for subject.

I'm looking for solutions, not semantics or lectures.  My wi-fi device in my Surface is a Marvell Avastar network controller and all drivers are up to date (driver version 15.68.17013.110).  Not that it likely matters, but my Surface has 16GB of RAM and an Intel i7 2.5 GHz chip.  I did not do any "special" configuration of my wi-fi or wired connection adapters.

In summary, here's what I'd like: for ReadyCloud not to use all my Surface internet bandwidth (wi-fi or wired - yes the same thing happens if it's a wired connection) so that I can actually get some work done while ReadyCloud runs in the background.  Solutions for that will be much appreciated.

My set up is very simple: Google Fiber router and I pay for 100 up and down.  My NAS is a wired connection with the router.  My Surface is a wi-fi connection with a distance to the router of less than 10 feet.  I've tested my Surface using a wired connection and have the same problem: if ReadyCloud is running, my Surface has no internet speed other than essentially dial up "left over" capacity.  It definitely is a local issue and all I want is for ReadyCloud not to suck up all the bandwidth my Surface has.

Also, when Google was here trying to figure things out, there machines whether wired or wi-fi connected to the router were also slowed down (compared to speed I should have) but not as much as my Surface.  As soon as the NAS was powered off or ReadyCloud was closed, speeds shot back up to 100/100.

Sorry for being frustrated and I appreciate your help.  What's crazy is that I don't have this issue at my other location that does have other wi-fi routers attached to the "main" Google Fiber box and many more wired and wireless connections.  In other words, I had no internet speed issues on any device for years using this NAS even with this Surface.  Now that it's in my new location, with only a couple of other devices connected (TV when on, iPhone), it's a huge problem.

from my system:

There is 1 interface on the system:

Name : Wi-Fi
Description : Marvell AVASTAR Wireless-AC Network Controller
GUID : a4672fee-51c7-45a1-b60d-8188231a8226
Physical address : c4:9d:ed:03:ae:3b
State : connected
SSID : RTK50GHz
BSSID : 7c:d9:5c:02:89:c3
Network type : Infrastructure
Radio type : 802.11ac
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : CCMP
Connection mode : Auto Connect
Channel : 149
Receive rate (Mbps) : 585
Transmit rate (Mbps) : 585
Signal : 99%
Profile : RTK50GHz

Hosted network status : Not available

With ReadyCloud running and "uploading" and connected locally. Surface in exact same spot, so not sure why signal is 94% versus 99% previously.

There is 1 interface on the system:

Name : Wi-Fi
Description : Marvell AVASTAR Wireless-AC Network Controller
GUID : a4672fee-51c7-45a1-b60d-8188231a8226
Physical address : c4:9d:ed:03:ae:3b
State : connected
SSID : RTK50GHz
BSSID : 7c:d9:5c:02:89:c3
Network type : Infrastructure
Radio type : 802.11ac
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : CCMP
Connection mode : Auto Connect
Channel : 149
Receive rate (Mbps) : 81
Transmit rate (Mbps) : 81
Signal : 94%
Profile : RTK50GHz

Hosted network status : Not available

Network setup is very simple: no switches, etc.  I have a Google Fiber box that my NAS connects wired and my Surface that connects via wi-fi.  Only two other devices are ever connected to my network: Roku TV when on and iPhone.

Whether my NAS is connected via cat 5e or cat 5, I don't know.  I'm using the "cable" that Google Fiber brought when trying to troubleshoot my issue.  My internet connection is 100 Mbps up and down not gig speed.

With respect to a wired connection and speed, a Surface technially doesn't have a wired connection to the machine itself.  The only wired connection available is thorough the "dock" attached to the power supply.  I've tested the issue via wi-fi and wired (through the dock) and it's the same result.  Google Fiber was here, including bringing in a senior supervisor, for hours and the only conclusion was ReadyCloud was the culprit.

As I've mentioned before, if I'm working remotely (ReadyCloud is connected via VPN) there is no issue.  It's only when I'm connected to ReadyCloud locally.

Do you use virtual machines or any type of "containers" (like VeraCrypt) where a change to a single file may make ReadyCloud think the entire virtual drive or other container needs to be updated?  Are you sure you have not inadvertently included your swap file in the file list?  How about temporary files and cookies?

As I said in my last post, I think this may come down to ReadyCloud just needing to do too much.  Short segments of what you are seeing are likely normal, but nothing continuous.

So your wireless connection does certainly allow some 400 Mb/s up and down, while the wired Ethernet does allow 100% reliabe 1000 Mb/s up and down. With the ReadyNAS on the same [W]LAN and the same location (correct?) does flow direct between your Surface and the ReadyNAS - not over the Internet, so it does not take any up-/down- bandwidth from the Internet connection.

However, the wireless (and "Internet" connection) problem does start here:

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tkernaghan wrote:

With ReadyCloud running and "uploading" and connected locally. Surface in exact same spot, so not sure why signal is 94% versus 99% previously.

 

There is 1 interface on the system:

Name : Wi-Fi
Description : Marvell AVASTAR Wireless-AC Network Controller
...
Receive rate (Mbps) : 81
Transmit rate (Mbps) : 81
Signal : 94%

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I would not care much about the signal level (or quality). Much more concerning here is the fact that the wireless link PHY speed does drop to 81 Mb/s only - this is certainly a problem. But this is something Microsoft and Google should look into. It does not make any sense that a heavy used wireless link - by a single device (mainly the Surface along probably the single mobile phone) - does fall back.

How the "same" problem appears while using the Gigabit Ethernet connection is (without intense troubleshooting) beyond me. Here again, some throughout should not have such a heavy impact that other connections over the same link and local IP stack. This does move the suspect issue away from the Surface towards the Google Fiber router.

A normal network connection with a usual IP stack does - as there is no QoS or other prioritization - allow to surf the Internet concurrently (or use other network connections on the LAN) while an application like ReadyCloud is making heavy use of the bandwidth.

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tkernaghan wrote:

As I've mentioned before, if I'm working remotely (ReadyCloud is connected via VPN) there is no issue.  It's only when I'm connected to ReadyCloud locally.

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This does again push the subject on the Google Fiber router when it has to handle massive trafic WLAN<->LAN and LAN<->LAN.

tkernaghan: Can you also give us the Surface link speed when it is wired?  Also, can you confirm that the problem still occurs when you are wired?

Also, when the problem happens, are you trying to use your web browser?  Or is the problem happening with Outlook?