Upload speeds vary so much, while download speeds are very stable - why?

[TheLyppardMan]

And they look much better. What’s the conclusion? Stop fiddling with your router.

I haven't been "fiddling" with my router, other than to change the firmware back to the official version. Whether that is why things seem much better now, I'm not sure, but s long asit remains as is then all will be good.

 

[Tech9]

I see your threads history. You are fiddling with your router all the time and when you see something unusual in your view you start a new thread. What you see now is how residential Internet lines work. They are shared between many subscribers. For different ISPs the ratio bandwidth to users is different.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

I see your threads history. You are fiddling with your router all the time and when you see something unusual in your view you start a new thread. What you see now is how residential Internet lines work. They are shared between many subscribers. For different ISPs the ratio bandwidth to users is different.

I think there is something else going on here and that your suggestion is too simplistic. Unless of course, everyone that I am supposed to be sharing with has suddenly stopped using their internet connections, allowing me to achieve full speeds. I'm going to report back to my ISP when I have conducted further tests over the next few days.

 

[Tech9]

You never shared your Asuswrt-Merlin configuration. Some of the firmware options and custom scripts may have direct impact on WAN-LAN throughput. This built-in speed test is CPU limited as well. The more things are running on the CPU the more inaccurate results you are going to get. How to test the real throughput question was asked and answered many times.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

You never shared your Asuswrt-Merlin configuration. Some of the firmware options and custom scripts may have direct impact on WAN-LAN throughput. This built-in speed test is CPU limited as well. The more things are running on the CPU the more inaccurate results you are going to get. How to test the real throughput question was asked and answered many times.

I only had minimal scripts running and the CPU was always showing very little usage, as now. Most of the settings were left on default or recommended options (such as using only 20 MHz on the 2.4 GHz band). The Trend stuff is probably the most demanding in my current situation I would have thought, but even that doesn't seem to be putting much demand on the router's resources at the moment. I've just run another speed test from the router's GUI and everything is fine at the moment, as you can see by the screenshots below and bearing in mind that this is probably peak usage time in residential areas here in the UK:

There are currently 17 devices on the network, including 3 laptops, a TV, mobile phones, a Synology Diskstation, an Applebox and a security camera to name some of them.

 

[bennor]

I only had minimal scripts running ...

What does "minimal scripts running" mean? What specific scripts are or were running on the router? In reading through this discussion, did you post what firmware version you were running? Are you running Asus-Merlin firmware or the stock Asus firmware? Running scripts suggests Asus-Merlin firmware yet your sig line states "official firmware with auto update".

 

[TheLyppardMan]

What does "minimal scripts running" mean? What specific scripts are or were running on the router? In reading through this discussion, did you post what firmware version you were running? Are you running Asus-Merlin firmware or the stock Asus firmware? Running scripts suggests Asus-Merlin firmware yet your sig line states "official firmware with auto update".

In post 21 above, I stated that I had changed back to the official firmware.

When I was using Merlin firmware (the latest release version), the only script I was using was the LED control script.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

Whether it's a coincidence or not I don't know, but since I flashed the router with the latest official firmware, the upload speeds have been closer to what I would have expected. Here's the results from the last few days:

and the download speeds continue to be very good: