gigabit wan download speed much lower than upload

[tman222]

@lasermole - do you have any other device (besides the laptop) you can test with? What are the specs of the device (laptop) you are testing with? Any third party firewall / AV etc. software running in the background which may be slowing things down?

[lasermole]

I've tested with two laptops, a Lenovo T520 i5 with 16GB of RAM, and 120GB SSD and onboard intel gigabit nic.
And a Dell Precision 5530 with an i7 8850H 6 Core with hyper threading. Used a USB 3 Gigabit nic, as it doesn't have onboard.
Both of which I went through thorough checking to kill anything running that would use CPU power, or bandwidth.
The T520 had no firewall, or AV running during the test.
The Dell has Carbon Black AV/Firewall on, its my work laptop.
And each test the laptop was the only thing connected to the ONT, or the Verizon router.
And to note I disabled the Wi-Fi on the laptops, and on the Verizon router from day 1. And I don't ever use the Verizon router. I only brought it in to test everything after i setup pfSense.

Both laptops tested poorly in speed tests. as shown above.
I have contacted Verzion, and will add another post with those results.

[lasermole]

So I got Verizon on the phone yesterday morning.
I explained I was experiencing poor speeds on my Gigabit service.

The tech immediately asked if I was using my own router, and explained they can't guarantee speeds to any device but theirs. I continue appeasing them and attach the Verizon router to the ONT, then my Dell laptop wired to the router directly, and we proceed to verizon.net/speedtest to do their speed test and get:

Device (check)
DOWNLOAD
642
Mbps

UPLOAD
767
Mbps

Router
DOWNLOAD
947
Mbps

UPLOAD
911
Mbps

This still seemed kinda crappy, but I realized since they only care about the "router" speeds, and that absolves them of all wrongdoing with network on their side I accepted it and said "you can't help me any further thank you"

Now I plugged my pfSense box back up as I normally have it direct to the ONT.
And I did another speed test with the Dell laptop again...and mysteriously I got the best speed test I've got yet from Verizon's site with normal network hookup for me:

Device (good)
Download
866

Upload
766

So now I'm leaving things as they are. To note I do have pfsense WAN interface cloning the Verizon router MAC, but I already had that before. So I wonder if something just "clicked" into place now, or if Verizon changed anything silently? I made no new configuration changes to pfsense during this process.

[stephenw10]

Would not be the first time a connection mysteriously started working after the ISP claimed to have found no fault.

Steve

[lasermole]

Funny now my speeds are crap on download again.
And I'm sure nothing is eating all the bandwidth during my test.
(tested through pfsense router )

Is there anything that could "degrade" speeds over time in pfsense? anything that builds up or needs cleaning? buffers?

Verizon speed test shows:
DOWNLOAD
18
Mbps

UPLOAD
816
Mbps

[Derelict]

@lasermole said in gigabit wan download speed much lower than upload:

Is there anything that could "degrade" speeds over time in pfsense? anything that builds up or needs cleaning? buffers?

Nope.

[stephenw10]

And still bad when putting the Verizon router back in line? Or testing directly with a single client?

Steve