[Question] NIC Card or Motherboard question

[Dave]

My internet has been slowing to a crawl and I finally got fed up with the cable company and did a LOT of checking since they said it wasn't their service. It always has been in the past, but I wanted to make sure for when they showed up on Friday.

• Speedtest was showing about 30 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up. This is a wired connection.
• First test was the wiring. I tried a new CAT6 cable. No change.
• Second test was NIC card. Grabbed my laptop and wired the connection. Bam. 700 Mbps down and 800 Mbps up. Fuck.
• Third test was taking the laptop down to the basement and using the 50' cable that was wired into the computer. I know that the signal won't degrade until 100 meters or so, but what the heck. 700 Mbps down, 800 Mbps up. Double fuck.

Here's my problem. I don't HAVE a NIC card. The graphics are onboard the motherboard, which is an ASRock Z87 Extreme So my question is can I add a NIC card and circumvent the onboard ethernet? Or do I need a new motherboard?

 

[grub]

Adding a NIC should be ok. My old pc had 2, one for the internet and one for the local network in the house. it was weird but that was my parents way of ensuring teenagers (me and my brother) didn't have internet in our rooms on our pcs.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Dave, you should be able to pick up a NIC on Amazon for about $10.

 

[PatrThom]

Best advice is usually to pick up an Intel card, they tend to tax your CPU less than Realtek, etc. And yes, you can have multiple NICs installed. You can even tell the computer to ignore the old one entirely if you think it’ll help.

That board’s onboard NIC is Intel based and also gigabit capable, so the fact that yours is slow is very unusual. Do you by chance have more than 2 SATA drives in the computer? Because unless your onboard NIC is actually failing, you’re probably not going to get better performance from an add-in.

—Patrick

 

[Dave]

I do have 2 SATA drives. Would that somehow make a difference to my ethernet? As to it being unusual that it's slow, it's only started that in the last month or so. I'm thinking something is failing. I thought I HAD a NIC with the build but I guess I didn't get it because of the onboard.

I know they are cheap but before I bought one I wanted to be sure it was worthwhile.

What's strange is that it seems to be working okay right now. I didn't really DO anything other than unplug everything and then reseat the world to make sure connections were tight.

 

[PatrThom]

I was mainly asking because of how chipsets work:

The CPU is linked directly to everything above the dashed line, but everything below it has to share one DMI link which maxes out at 17Gb (gigaBITS) per second (which is just over 2 gigaBYTES per second). So there was the possibility that your Ethernet was being "starved" due to having, say, a 3-drive SSD RAID (which could have peaks at 18Gb/s) or having things plugged into your USB ports and/or PCIe v2.0 slot(s) which were all adding up to overwhelm that DMI link.

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

Patrick, while I agree that this could happen under load, if he's trying to test this stuff out, he probably just booted, and isn't running something to stress that connection out. And the test PROBABLY just goes to memory, not dumping to the drives either.

I echo the other sentiments here though: an add-in NIC won't be a bad thing. It's most definitely the cheapest option to tell. Though if that does NOT help, then you're in the realm of "this is harder to diagnose" as then it's systemic, and you'll have to start down Patrick's path.

Before you go down THAT path though (and possibly before the NIC change), download a linux live CD (they run on USB sticks these days) with your laptop, and try the stick in your main PC. If that works, then that means something else on your machine (in windows) is choking down your internet. Like do you have a VPN? If everything's going via that, the speed will be less. But if it's only on your PC, then your laptop is unaffected.

Or a virus/malware. Something sorting through absolutely everything you're sending could also account for the difference. Again, a "live distro" could do this. Literally start it up, and then run firefox/chrome, and go to a speed test site. That'll really prove if this is software or hardware.

 

[Dave]

I rebooted several times. The system APPEARS to be free of viruses/malware - if there are any my BitDefender and SpyBot S&D missed them.

And it's currently working fairly well. I'm pulling down 350 - 400 Mbps, which is less than I'm supposed to get but enough that I'm not throwing my PC across the room. All I did was reseat everything and clean it out. There was a fairly decent amount of dust on the motherboard. I'm hoping that the dirt was interfering with data transmission.

 

[PatrThom]

Patrick, while I agree that this could happen under load, if he's trying to test this stuff out, he probably just booted, and isn't running something to stress that connection out. And the test PROBABLY just goes to memory, not dumping to the drives either.

Right. My worry there is just that if this is a DMI bottleneck, then an add-in card will resolve nothing, since the onboard LAN essentially already is an add-in card (at PCIe x1, according to the block diagram above, which should ordinarily be plenty for a single 1Gb/s Ethernet port).

There was a fairly decent amount of dust on the motherboard. I'm hoping that the dirt was interfering with data transmission.

Dust itself won't interfere with transmission of data other than to cause components to overheat. But without some way to view IR, you'll have a hard time tracking that one down.
Best advice I have if this happens again is to keep your laptop handy to be able to swap it in and out the moment your connection goes slow to see if it's repeatable.
("/" below = "I swapped to...")
If you see slow desktop / fast laptop / fast desktop = router or NIC negotiation issue (laptop renegotiated the link, then desktop also renegotiated the link).
Slow desktop / fast laptop / slow desktop = issue is with desktop NIC or drivers (or competition) - either way, it's the desktop's fault.
Slow desktop / slow laptop / slow desktop = router issue or EMI interference on/near cable.
Slow desktop / slow laptop / fast desktop = this...this shouldn't happen. I'll be very surprised.

It would be great to somehow know the link speed, too. That would show whether your connection is somehow renegotiating down to 100 but not sure how to monitor that other than to peek at the back of your computer when the speed plummets because the LED on the port will (usually) change color when that happens.

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

I'd still say go ahead and stick a dedicated NIC with its own brain in there. It's been my experience that onboard NICs tend to die after a few years anyway. It's cheap as hell and addresses SO many potential headaches.

 

[Dave]

I'ma do that after payday.

 

[PatrThom]

I'd still say go ahead and stick a dedicated NIC with its own brain in there. It's been my experience that onboard NICs tend to die after a few years anyway. It's cheap as hell and addresses SO many potential headaches.

Whether it works or not, It'll certainly advance the troubleshooting (hopefully it fixes it, though).
A NIC is one of those things where it's good to just keep a spare one around for troubleshooting, like a wired kbd/mouse, or a basic GPU.

--Patrick

 

[Eriol]

I rebooted several times. The system APPEARS to be free of viruses/malware - if there are any my BitDefender and SpyBot S&D missed them.

And it's currently working fairly well. I'm pulling down 350 - 400 Mbps, which is less than I'm supposed to get but enough that I'm not throwing my PC across the room. All I did was reseat everything and clean it out. There was a fairly decent amount of dust on the motherboard. I'm hoping that the dirt was interfering with data transmission.

I'd still try Ubuntu (or something else easy) on a USB stick. Then you're 100% sure, but up to you man. I'm glad you're getting it better now, even if not perfect.

 

[ncts_dodge_man]

Another potential for a cause is a bad NIC driver - I ran into this recently as my laptop had updated it's drivers and my network traffic transfers maxed at 5 Mbps (while connected to a gig wired internal network) - reverted the driver back and it went back to normal speeds. MS has been known to toss drivers into updates.

 

[Dave]

Another potential for a cause is a bad NIC driver - I ran into this recently as my laptop had updated it's drivers and my network traffic transfers maxed at 5 Mbps (while connected to a gig wired internal network) - reverted the driver back and it went back to normal speeds. MS has been known to toss drivers into updates.

Interesting. I did update the driver, but until after I was having the issues.