My Laptop's internet is much slower than my phone on the same wifi?

Question

I had my suspissions so I ran a test on speedtest.net on my laptop and got 756ms Ping and 0.57mbps download.Ran the test from the speedtest.net app on my iPhone sitting in the same place just 30 seconds later and got 47ms Ping and 5.95mbps download. Nothing changed. They are both on the same wifi network and no one else was on the network durning either test. The difference is between my phone and laptop. I have a decent laptop (HP dv6-3000, about 4 years old, intel i5 2.40GHz, 6.0GB RAM) it has been running a little slower lately, but when I'm not on the internet it seems like it still runs fine. I run CCleaner often so I don't think its browser cookies I clear all of those and the result is the same on all my browsers. Norton Internet Security Scans never come up with anything. Could my laptop's internal wifi card be burning out or something?

Answer 1

You should try a comparison on the laptop using an Ethernet connection into your router with the laptop's WiFi disabled. If this gives a much better performance than the WiFi connection, then that suggests that the WiFi speed issue is not due to clutter in the laptop's operating system.



The next thing to try is changing the channel that the router is using for its wireless service. It is possible that a rival network, even one with a very low signal strength, can affect certain network adapters but not other adapters.



If changing the channel does not help, you might have to search for a different driver for your wireless adapter.



Another alternative is to try a USB wireless adapter. This will require a USB2 socket on the laptop. Make sure you get an adaptor that comes with drivers for your particular operating system.



I hope the helps.

Answer 2

On your laptop you could check your network utilization percentage.

Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and start Task Manager. Then go to Networking tab. Under networking tab, there are your connections and you can see network utilization %. When it's 0% or close to 0%, you can realistically test your connection speed on sites you like such as speedtest.net. But if it's being used up by more than 10%, it's not realistic at all.



Additionally I suggest you scan your computer with software such as malwarebytes or hitman pro.

Answer 3

Actually mobile devices and computers running Linux are almost ALWAYS faster than Windows ones when connecting to the internet. The reason is because Windows uses a number of different algorithms to sync and automatically adjust to slower connection speeds (this causes poor performance in certain applications, especially if you have interference all the time from other routers). You can disable these "features," but to do so you will need to go into the registry...you can damage your hardware or Windows install if you don't do it right...

Answer 4

Update Wireless Network driver on laptop.