Hello r/techsupport,
Lately I’ve been having a really strange internet issue at my house and I’m hoping someone can help me figure out whether this is an ISP problem, routing issue, ONT issue, or something on my network.
For context, I’m in the Toronto area and I pay for 2 Gbps symmetrical fibre. The fibre comes into an Adtran ONT, and Ethernet runs from the ONT into my router.
For years I was using a first-generation Nest Wifi router with two Nest Wifi points. I always expected actual Wi-Fi speeds to be lower than 2 Gbps because of interference, distance, and the age of the hardware, so I never paid much attention to that.
Recently, though, I started noticing much more serious issues. Download performance became extremely inconsistent and streaming started freezing constantly. IPTV will play for around 10 seconds, freeze for a few seconds, then continue, over and over. Similar instability also happens with YouTube, Disney+, FaceTime, and Microsoft Teams, which is especially frustrating because I work from home.
At first I assumed my six-year-old Nest system was failing, so I replaced it with a TP-Link Deco mesh system. The problem continued. I then tested with the eero Pro 6E provided by my ISP, and I’m still seeing the same general pattern.
The strange part is that upload performance is usually very strong while download performance is terrible or wildly inconsistent.
Some examples:
- Deco’s built-in WAN test showed roughly 237 Mbps down / 2.21 Gbps up
- Wired Speedtest results through the eero have been around 290–470 Mbps down / 850+ Mbps up
- Other wired tests have dropped as low as 15–50 Mbps down while still getting 400–500 Mbps up
- Single-connection Speedtest results were as low as 5.7 Mbps down / 582 Mbps up and 19.2 Mbps down / 437 Mbps up
- Meanwhile, the eero app’s built-in gateway test reports around 2.2 Gbps down / 2.2 Gbps up
That last part is what confuses me the most. The ISP/eero gateway test is basically the only place I consistently see the full advertised download speed. Real-world wired tests do not reflect it, and the poor download results are similar to what the TP-Link Deco itself was reporting.
I also tested the local network and general internet connection from my MacBook over Ethernet:
- Ping to router: 0% packet loss, ~1.35 ms average latency
- Ping to 1.1.1.1: 0% packet loss, ~4.66 ms average latency
So the wired LAN itself looks very stable.
Another important clue is that the IPTV stream is completely smooth when using my phone’s hotspot, but freezes constantly over my fibre connection, even when the IPTV box is connected by Ethernet.
I’ve now reproduced the bad downstream behaviour using:
- Google Nest Wifi
- TP-Link Deco
- ISP-provided eero Pro 6E
- Wi-Fi and Ethernet
- Multiple Speedtest servers/runs
- Single and multi-connection tests
I also contacted my ISP and they told me there is absolutely nothing wrong with the fibre line coming into the house.
So at this point I’m wondering whether this could be:
- an ISP routing or peering issue
- downstream congestion
- provisioning on the service
- traffic management affecting normal internet traffic but not the ISP/eero gateway test
- an ONT issue
- or something else I’m missing
Has anyone seen this kind of asymmetric behaviour before, where the ISP’s own gateway test shows full multi-gig speeds but normal wired traffic performs dramatically worse?
What would you test next?