Has my AC-68P gone bad? EXTREMELY slow upload speeds only on LAN on gigabit internet

[banditz09]

Hello all,

I just upgraded my Xfinity service today from the 200mbps plan to the gigabit plan. I am now seeing EXTREMELY slow upload speeds (like 0.5 mbps) but ONLY on LAN for some reason. I have power cycled everything multiple times (modem, router, PC) and the download speeds have picked up to where they should be (700-900 mbps+), but the upload speeds are now CRAWLING. Less than 1 mbps. What's weird is, my macbook pro as well as my phone is connected via wifi and doing a speedtest there yields the ~35-40mbps upload speeds it should be at, but my Win10 system which is wired via ethernet to my Asus RT-AC68P router is getting unbelievably slow upload speeds. I have ensured my realtek ethernet drivers are updated to the newest version. I recently found out that my router has a built in speedtest.net function. When I run the speedtest from the router admin page, it gets the 35-40 mbps upload speed it's supposed to, but the download is slower (~250 mbps). When I run the speedtest.net via my browser (tried both chrome and MS edge) it gets below 1 mbps upload, so something is definitely wrong. I even tried fast.com another speedtest site to see if it also gets slow upload speeds and it either says "error" because it's so slow, or it's below 1 mbps. I was consistently getting regular 10-15 mbps upload before on the 200 mbps plan. I originally thought that upgrading to the gigabit plan has messed something up, but when I connected my modem (Arris SB8200 which is DOCSIS 3.1) directly to the PC in question, the speeds were right where they should be... 900 mbps and 40 mbps upload. It's weird because my upload on my previous plan seemed fine... I was getting 200 mbps down and 10-15 mbps up which is right what my then plan was supposed to be getting. It seems the gigabit internet upgrade from xfinity has broken something on the LAN for the router somehow.

I have tried different ethernet cables. Different ports on the router, no effect. I have made sure I was using the latest firmware (I was.) I have tried flashing merlin firmware. I have tried doing factory resets (both by holding the button in on the back, AND holding the WPS button on startup) - none of these had an affect... upload speed is still crawling, but only on LAN. Wifi is where it should be upload wise.....SO Weird.

Here is a screenshot of the issue: http://prntscr.com/w8w658

I remembered I had an old RT-AC66U lying around. In an attempt to troubleshoot further, I plugged the old gal in and fired up speedtest. Here is the result: http://prntscr.com/w8wnuf

^^^So, download is nowhere it should be, BUT the upload is fixed...the old 66U is doing the upload speeds that it should over LAN.

Has anyone ever heard of anything like this? This is so so so strange to me. How LAN upload could be so slow/broken on the 68P but WAN seems fine. Is it even possible the router's LAN ports could suddenly be going bad? The timing of this happening in conjunction with my service tier upgrade to 1gbps on xfinity is very weird / suspect...but I do know that the modem is getting the speeds it's supposed to, so something is definitely up with the router.

Do I just need to go out and buy a RT-AX86U? Or maybe a different brand of router is better these days?

Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thank you so much!

 

[L&LD]

Welcome, @banditz09, no, don't go spend money before you know what the real issue is, at least.

Did you power down your Xfinity modem/ONT for at least 20 minutes (an hour may be better)? And powering off the rest of your network infrastructure while you're at it too?

Did you try cloning the MAC address of the RT-AC66U to the RT-AC68P?

Did you try calling Xfinity and have them verify and/or reset your connection from their end?

If the above suggestions don't work, I would be doing a full reset on the router soon. At least you have two routers to keep your internet up and running while you do.

The suggestions below may help to get your router back to a good/known state.

New M&M 2020

 

[banditz09]

Hey @L&LD

Thanks for the quick reply

1) I did power all of the components down and power cycle them multiple times, but not for 20 minutes. I would say, 5 minutes.

2) No I haven't tried that. Interesting.

3) Yes I did call them. They sent a reset / re-provision signal a few times. It didn't have an affect on the LAN upload speeds.

4) I did attempt a full reset twice. Once by holding the reset button on the back, and once by holding the WPS button on bootup. It took me through the "new network setup" both times. No affect on upload LAN speed.

Thank you for the URL, I will give it a look.

Oh also, I should note, QOS is definitely off, and NAT acceleration is on.

 

[SoCalReviews]

After you get to the bottom of this slow upload speed issue with your AC68P you still might want to look at upgrading to the RT-AX86U... you wouldn't regret it.

 

[Geddric]

Hello all,

I just upgraded my Xfinity service today from the 200mbps plan to the gigabit plan. I am now seeing EXTREMELY slow upload speeds (like 0.5 mbps) but ONLY on LAN for some reason. I have power cycled everything multiple times (modem, router, PC) and the download speeds have picked up to where they should be (700-900 mbps+), but the upload speeds are now CRAWLING. Less than 1 mbps. What's weird is, my macbook pro as well as my phone is connected via wifi and doing a speedtest there yields the ~35-40mbps upload speeds it should be at, but my Win10 system which is wired via ethernet to my Asus RT-AC68P router is getting unbelievably slow upload speeds. I have ensured my realtek ethernet drivers are updated to the newest version. I recently found out that my router has a built in speedtest.net function. When I run the speedtest from the router admin page, it gets the 35-40 mbps upload speed it's supposed to, but the download is slower (~250 mbps). When I run the speedtest.net via my browser (tried both chrome and MS edge) it gets below 1 mbps upload, so something is definitely wrong. I even tried fast.com another speedtest site to see if it also gets slow upload speeds and it either says "error" because it's so slow, or it's below 1 mbps. I was consistently getting regular 10-15 mbps upload before on the 200 mbps plan. I originally thought that upgrading to the gigabit plan has messed something up, but when I connected my modem (Arris SB8200 which is DOCSIS 3.1) directly to the PC in question, the speeds were right where they should be... 900 mbps and 40 mbps upload. It's weird because my upload on my previous plan seemed fine... I was getting 200 mbps down and 10-15 mbps up which is right what my then plan was supposed to be getting. It seems the gigabit internet upgrade from xfinity has broken something on the LAN for the router somehow.

I have tried different ethernet cables. Different ports on the router, no effect. I have made sure I was using the latest firmware (I was.) I have tried flashing merlin firmware. I have tried doing factory resets (both by holding the button in on the back, AND holding the WPS button on startup) - none of these had an affect... upload speed is still crawling, but only on LAN. Wifi is where it should be upload wise.....SO Weird.

Here is a screenshot of the issue: http://prntscr.com/w8w658

I remembered I had an old RT-AC66U lying around. In an attempt to troubleshoot further, I plugged the old gal in and fired up speedtest. Here is the result: http://prntscr.com/w8wnuf

^^^So, download is nowhere it should be, BUT the upload is fixed...the old 66U is doing the upload speeds that it should over LAN.

Has anyone ever heard of anything like this? This is so so so strange to me. How LAN upload could be so slow/broken on the 68P but WAN seems fine. Is it even possible the router's LAN ports could suddenly be going bad? The timing of this happening in conjunction with my service tier upgrade to 1gbps on xfinity is very weird / suspect...but I do know that the modem is getting the speeds it's supposed to, so something is definitely up with the router.

Do I just need to go out and buy a RT-AX86U? Or maybe a different brand of router is better these days?

Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thank you so much!

So I am having pretty much the same issue which I noticed yesterday, so not sure how long it's been going on. My Configuration is this:
- Spectrum Internet (Had an old Time Warner plan of 200Mbs down/30Mbps up with a turbo that gave 300Mbps down for first 16 seconds or something.
- RT-AC-1900 router which routinely achieved 270Mbps down and 33mbps up, wired or WiFi

Yesterday i noticed I was only getting 70-110Mbps down and 1Mbps upload (Wtf?). This is both wired and on WiFi.
- Called Spectrum tech support (I have Cable internet with a Surfboard Docsis 3.0 modem behind my RT-AC-1900)
- They sent reset signals, etc. and nothing changed. Said my signals were 'ok' but not great. Sent a tech.
- They got me off of the TW legacy plan to a new Spectrum plan for 400d/20u (15$ cheaper for a year)
- That didn't solve anything (some mumbo about how the legacy plan could be an issue - whatever)
- Tech was here for 4 hours
- Starting signals were from 8-15 db depending on channel
- replaced connections inside and outside
- made me a .6 wire from wall jack to modem (I had a .59 wire)
- ending signal db was right around 0 to 3 depending on channel (they target 5 db or less and 10 db is their limit)
- At somepoint, we started getting a better upload speed (19-20Mbps) but download still sucked
- Instead of going directly to modem we replaced with a new modem from his van (Docsis 3.1)
- Repeat tests and same performance
- After the new modem 'wasn't working' we went to the new modem directly and voila, 503Mbps down, 23Mbs up
- He put their router in, same result (costs extra each month and didn't want to change to whatever generic they were selling)
- Put my router back in and got 110Mbps to 160Mbps down, 19Mbps to 20Mbps up.

I have no idea what changed and I'm not sure when it changed, but my performance is acceptable to work with right now, however it's still terrible for what I pay for.

I was one or two firmware behind, but now I'm on the latest 3.0.0.4.386.40558 and that hasn't seem to had an effect. I feel like I would have noticed an upload of 1Mbs affecting my ability to work remote on Zoom, so I feel like this happened recently, maybe in the last 2 days. I've been on the previous firmware for months. Nothing else has changed in my network lately other than new wifi devices brought in from Christmas and birthdays last month. (4 kids, lots of PCs for home use and some Chromebooks for school)

I've done a tone of resetting and power offs and even new modem equipment. I haven't gone back to the old modem yet, but I suspect it will perform similarly. I am seeing a couple of forum posts and internet searches asking the same question, but I've only read this and one other so not sure it's a 'trend'.

Would a new router 'fix' this? Apparently Spectrum's router is running at speed. I'd rather not spend the money on a new router, but I may have to and I don't like now knowing what caused my current Asus router to go bad...

Any help is appreciated.

 

[SoCalReviews]

So I am having pretty much the same issue which I noticed yesterday, so not sure how long it's been going on. My Configuration is this:
- Spectrum Internet (Had an old Time Warner plan of 200Mbs down/30Mbps up with a turbo that gave 300Mbps down for first 16 seconds or something.
- RT-AC-1900 router which routinely achieved 270Mbps down and 33mbps up, wired or WiFi

Yesterday i noticed I was only getting 70-110Mbps down and 1Mbps upload (Wtf?). This is both wired and on WiFi.
- Called Spectrum tech support (I have Cable internet with a Surfboard Docsis 3.0 modem behind my RT-AC-1900)
- They sent reset signals, etc. and nothing changed. Said my signals were 'ok' but not great. Sent a tech.
- They got me off of the TW legacy plan to a new Spectrum plan for 400d/20u (15$ cheaper for a year)
- That didn't solve anything (some mumbo about how the legacy plan could be an issue - whatever)
- Tech was here for 4 hours
- Starting signals were from 8-15 db depending on channel
- replaced connections inside and outside
- made me a .6 wire from wall jack to modem (I had a .59 wire)
- ending signal db was right around 0 to 3 depending on channel (they target 5 db or less and 10 db is their limit)
- At somepoint, we started getting a better upload speed (19-20Mbps) but download still sucked
- Instead of going directly to modem we replaced with a new modem from his van (Docsis 3.1)
- Repeat tests and same performance
- After the new modem 'wasn't working' we went to the new modem directly and voila, 503Mbps down, 23Mbs up
- He put their router in, same result (costs extra each month and didn't want to change to whatever generic they were selling)
- Put my router back in and got 110Mbps to 160Mbps down, 19Mbps to 20Mbps up.

I have no idea what changed and I'm not sure when it changed, but my performance is acceptable to work with right now, however it's still terrible for what I pay for.

I was one or two firmware behind, but now I'm on the latest 3.0.0.4.386.40558 and that hasn't seem to had an effect. I feel like I would have noticed an upload of 1Mbs affecting my ability to work remote on Zoom, so I feel like this happened recently, maybe in the last 2 days. I've been on the previous firmware for months. Nothing else has changed in my network lately other than new wifi devices brought in from Christmas and birthdays last month. (4 kids, lots of PCs for home use and some Chromebooks for school)

I've done a tone of resetting and power offs and even new modem equipment. I haven't gone back to the old modem yet, but I suspect it will perform similarly. I am seeing a couple of forum posts and internet searches asking the same question, but I've only read this and one other so not sure it's a 'trend'.

Would a new router 'fix' this? Apparently Spectrum's router is running at speed. I'd rather not spend the money on a new router, but I may have to and I don't like now knowing what caused my current Asus router to go bad...

Any help is appreciated.

I am not sure if you have done this but... You could try doing a (link) Hard Factory Reset of your Asus router. Be aware that you will have to completely reconfigure your router settings after you do this so copy or write down any special settings you have made beforehand... including your starting IP address, ranges, SSID names and passwords, etc.. Always be careful not to power off the router when doing firmware upgrades and hard resets.

With Charter/Spectrum internet service you may also want to configure the Asus router settings under... WAN > Internet Connection > (scroll to page toward the bottom) DHCP query frequency = Normal Mode (the default is normally Aggressive Mode).