USB Ports Issue/Ports turning on and off and low internet speeds

Hi, my name is Curtis, first off thank you upfront for any help.

I have been trying to help a friend that has a Dell Inspiron 7548 Laptop. She has been having problems with her USB ports. This laptop does not have an ethernet connection. She uses a USB to Ethernet Controller that she has purchased from Dell to connect to the internet. She also has a wireless connection. Her low speeds from the ethernet controller is where we first started picking up symptoms that something was probably wrong. She is in a small office, they have 300/25 bandwidth there. I did speed tests on several other machines and they are all getting these approximate speeds. I tested the cable that is run to her station with my laptop and I get appropriate speeds. I also checked the speeds on my laptop using the ethernet controller she uses plugged into the cable that is provided at her work station and I get appropriate speeds. When the controller is plugged into her laptop via USB, she gets around 80/25 from the 2.0 port, she gets around 100/5 out of one of the 3.0 ports, and the other 3.0 port she has gets about the same down speed at 100, but the up bandwidth is around 25. Those speeds were taken and were slightly fluctuating over about a 2 hour span, but other problems existed once I began testing things. I saw that the ports would intermittently not work for a few seconds at a time, and sometimes I had to extract what was plugged in and plug it back in to get it to work. I also noted that she has a hub plugged in on one side with a printer and a wireless mouse plugged into it, sometimes when I plug something into another USB port, it would sometimes cut one of the ports off. I have tested the speeds coming from the controller while the hub is plugged in and when it is not, it is about the same.

These have been the issues. What I have done to try to resolve these things are:

I have updated the chipset on this machine.
I have flashed the BIOS.
I have had Dell techs run several of their diagnostic tools.
I have altered the duplex settings to go from Auto-Negotiation to Full Duplex, this seemed to work for a short while, but then reverted back to low speeds.
I had Dell replace the daughterboard.

Nothing has fixed it, any ideas guys?
 
One thing that I forgot to mention is that I get the same speeds through Wireless as well 80/25. This is most likely important. I want to say there is more than one issue here.

I also tried to login under a different profile on her computer and had the same results with her speeds.
 
The USB->Ethernet adapters are well known for poor bandwidth - - just think about the install.
First the USB driver had to be installed and then
linked under the covers to he NIC 'interface' to become transparent to all the applications - - they talk Ethernet but the device is talking USB.

You can't expect WiFi 54mb bandwidth from this setup.
 
I appreciate your response Jo, and I definitely agree with all of that, but I have tested that adapter with other users in her office and on my own laptop and I get close to 300mb down. Even she, on some days, gets close to 300, and at one point was getting 300 consistently. It fluctuates constantly. She's not connected to Wifi, shes connected through Cat5, it is just plugged into the USB>Ethernet adapter. She does have a wireless connection, and WAS getting 100-300mb down on Wifi for a while, as well though.
 
Try PATHPING WWW.GOOGLE.COM
our pc connection to our ISP should be very reliable and best possible bandwidth. From there, it's questionable what we get to any specific website, as there's several nodes between any user and any specific site. That means our responsiveness is dependent upon the day, time of day and traffic at every node inbetween - - need to monitor more than one site.
 
Thanks Jobeard. I will try and monitor the path between hops. I believe that there is some sort of software on her machine somewhere that is regulating her bandwidth though. All was good about a month ago, and it seems like these issues came out of nowhere, but something is going on.

Thank you for your help.
 
Look for QoS in the router or browser. Next, delete ALL cookies.
 
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