A customer of ours has a unique issue, which I have a resolution for, but I don't understand why the fix worked.
This customer gets 60 Mbps Down/60 Mbps Up (sometimes getting 80/60). Here are four scenarios that impact throughput drastically:
1) Plug laptop straight into demarc (ISP-provided copper-to-fiber box) and I get 60 down/60 up.
2) Plug ASA 5505 into demarc and laptop into ASA LAN. I get 10 down/30 up.
3) Put Netgear $30 gigabit switch from home between ASA and demarc and get 15 down/30 up.
4) Put Netgear gigabit business class switch between ASA and demarc and get 60 down/10 up.
In theory, should I not expect the same result from all four scenarios? Maybe the business switch handles traffic much better than the home switch, so there's a possible answer, but what about the ASA? When the ASA is direct into the fiber/copper box it can't pull the speeds it needs to, but when it's behind a switch that ties directly into the demarc it pulls the full speeds.
I got to thinking, maybe I need duplex/sped configs to be accurate. However, I could not get the performance up with the ASA directly connected. Both Netgear business switch and ASA are set to AUTO.
In my mind, I see that the ISP is performing differently depending on the hardware connected directly to their network. They can easily say it's a hardware problem on our end, yet can this not be some form of config on the ISP end?
Can someone help me understand why these scenarios don't produce the same result, or at least close, beyond negotiate settings and business vs home devices? Or is that really what it all boils down to? The Netgear business switch dropped upload speeds drastically as well, but the download is great, sometimes hitting 80 Mbps.