Computer takes a long time to start downloading anything.

DamagedLink

Commendable
Aug 28, 2016
4
0
1,510
My internet speed is okay, it can be somewhere around 10-15 mb download and (strangely) close to 25 mb for upload. The connection isn't always great, which is why I switch to sharing my phone's 4G for when I play games, for example, and it works like a charm for that (about 10 mb download, jumps around 1-10 upload because I live in the middle of nowhere).

The problem I have with both of these though, is that they often have issues with starting to load stuff. I go to speedtest, and once it starts it stands still for ~10 seconds and then starts testing properly. I try to download updates for apps and games and they just show 0 mbps for a long time before anything starts happening. And especially with the phone's 4G pretty much all webpages take a while to start loading. Once it starts downloading though, everything is fine; the speed is good enough and I can use it to stream videos well.

I haven't found any solutions for this because no one else on the internet seems to have this problem, but I hope someone here can figure it out.
 

LinwoodFerguson

Reputable
Aug 19, 2016
59
0
4,660
Sadly there are many things that can occur during that initial negotiation, from proxy detection to DNS resolution, to just delays at the source site. One complicating factor is what say you are doing with the phone's 4G. You say you are "sharing"; most devices really cannot share bandwidth well, what happens is traffic just goes to one or the other. Regardless how the underlying devices are handling the two paths, it might be best to do separate testing of each alone. I would also try different browsers, not so much because they may work better but because you may see different sorts of messages in that 10 seconds that might provide a clue. I would also start a continual ping going (e.g. in windows, command prompt, ping -t web.address.here) before the download, and watch it during, see if the ping times go through a dramatic change as it starts in that 10 seconds, etc.

The real answer lies in a network trace (e.g. wireshark) but that is not a simple matter to capture properly or interpret.

I also think there's some clue in your 10-15 down and 25 up... that's pretty unheard of in home internet service, and seems to indicate something unusual.

To eliminate the computer, do you have another or a friend with a laptop? Or just use the phone in wireless mode (if you have WiFi) -- does it have the same delay?

If you do another download from the exact same site/file, does it take 10 seconds to start as well?

I think a lot more investigation and testing is needed before you can get much help on this.
 

DamagedLink

Commendable
Aug 28, 2016
4
0
1,510
Actually I think I might have solved it now, and it was a lot simpler than I thought. I decided to try to update some drivers, and it seems that it did the job. More specifically, I updated something called the "Realtek PCle GBE Family Controller". Now I don't know if that actually could have fixed anything, but so far it seems that it helped out quite a bit.

The mystery of my WiFi being 10-15 mb down, and 25 mb up still remains, but that doesn't really cause me any trouble.