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PS4 vs PC Speed test (not the PSN test) using ethernet cable. Why such a difference?

F

family_guy

Member
I have both the PS4 Slim and PC connected directly to a router by cat 6 ethernet cables. All network configurations are the same with the exception being two different static LAN IP addresses. There are a couple of different browser based speed tests that do not require flash. The simplest one is fast.com owned by Netflix. I pay for 200 Mbps down / 20 up, and on my PC, fast.com is showing a little bit above that at 210. On the PS4 it shows 100 tops after several tests. It doesn't fare any better on other web sites. 100 is more than enough, but I'm trying to find out why there's such a big difference. Is there something software/ hardware related that Sony's doing to purposely throttle the speeds, or maybe they just have a crappy browser, or maybe both. Can anyone else do a similar test using fast.com to see what difference you get?
 
Does the PS4 network card allow for speeds more than 100mbps?

The network card on the motherboard in one of the computers at my home only allows for 100mbps max, whereas the motherboard in my own computer goes up to 1Gbps.
 
I have 200mbps and in my PS4 it only gets 140mbps, sometimes much less depending on the test. Either the testing software is bad, or there is some issue with the OS. Who knows
 
I see the same speeds through speedtests on my gaming PC and my ps4 (both wired)

actual download speeds are a totally different story though..

I get my full 130+mb/s on steam.

I'm lucky to get 20mb/s on PSN. clearly putting that PS+ money to good use.
 
Actually just noticed this today.

I have a Telstra Cable Internet (Australia) - usually hit around 111mb/s download and 2/3.00 upload on my Win10 with Steam via wifi and ethernet.

PS4 is hooked up directly via ethernet to my router.

Ran a test downloading Dark Souls 3 via Steam: 12min to download the game + DLC in full
Same thing on PS4: 45min to download game + DLC

Its still not bad but clearly something in the ethernet software or plug causing slower speeds on PS4.
 
Could be several reasons, you may be connected to a slow CDN on Sony's end. Stop/restarting downloads can sometimes help here with you being connected to a faster/closer CDN to your location.

Though I believe one of the fundamental reasons PSN<>PS4 is slower than it "should be" is that the PS4 has a small receive window for data packets, which cause servers to do a lot of waiting for responses rather than sending more data down to you.
You can typically get full-speed downloads from the very same PSN CDN's via your PC using a proxy program which indicate the issue lies on the PS4's side rather than the servers hosting the content.
 
Is it possible that the system itself is bottlenecked with regards to the hard drive write speeds, or CPU throughput of data?

Not limited by the system, but due to some kind of architecture or firmware related issue?

Like how the new 3DS downloads a lot faster than the regular 3DS.
 
psn/xbl speeds have always been piss poor for me, even hard wired. FH3 dl started at the same time, by the time my pc was done my x1 was sitting at 18%. i can max my 120mbps dl speed on steam while most recently my x1 maxed out at 30ish mbps while downloading gow4. /shrug
 
Xbox and ps4 speeds are crap. Wired or wireless. My pc and steam trounces both of them. I hate downloading anything on the consoles.
 
As an update to this, I got an Xbox One and ran the same test. I get the same speed as the PC using the same ethernet cable so it's not my setup, so it seems to be Sony's issue.
 
The speed test increased a lot when I switched to Open DNS on my PS4.

I'm on the same speeds as you with 200/20 and even though I don't get the full 200 while connected to the powerline adapters, I still get about 12MBps downloads.

I've just traded mine for a pro so let me see if that's any different.
 
It has to be first a Sony network thing, followed by write limitations on the system. I have 1Gb fiber and often get 100MBs on Steam. Never seen higher than ~30MBs, usually around 2-4MBs on PSN. Pause/resume works, just not consistently.
 
Some people misread this topic, so let me just divide an conquer this one.

1) People experiencing slow downloads are dealing with slower Sony servers. Sony's CDN isn't good. I constantly recheck my downloads and pause/resume to get it up to +5MB/s, and it decides to fall back down sometimes.

However

2) The PS4 not being able to deliver 200Mb/s via a browser test has nothing to do with that issue. Many switches/routers have 100/1000 indicators. Orange light for 100, green for 1000. Check that it's actually connected as 1000. I'd be very surprised if it isn't. The far more obvious problem is Sony's browser implementation. Flash-less speedtests use HTML5, and I do not expect Sony to have made anything that performs well on the browser side of things. That's likely the culprit.
 
I set my MTU lower on my ps4 to 1472 to optimise speeds.

I can get 180 mbs speedtest on the test internet connection on network setup (but not always, but its normally over 100)......- I have a 200 mbs line.

Not tried with a higher MTU.

Could be MTU and set up related. I have Pro and all ethernet.
 
Connect your PS4 via a Poxy Server you make on your PC, and your speeds will rocket.

It's simply terrible networking design from Sony.

Also, lower your MTU to like, 1450 or 1473 etc.

--

I'm godsmacked at how terrible downloads are one the PS4(Pro). It's like the Vita all over again.

Mokubba said:
The speed test increased a lot when I switched to Open DNS on my PS4.

I'm on the same speeds as you with 200/20 and even though I don't get the full 200 while connected to the powerline adapters, I still get about 12MBps downloads.

I've just traded mine for a pro so let me see if that's any different.
Click to expand...

You won't see much of a difference. It isn't your Powerline, it's the PS4/PSN.
 
my ps4 is terrible. i can get anywhere between a few hundred kb/s to about 70Mb/s. it's totally unpredictable and performs worse on 5.0GHz so i just kept it on 2.4GHz. on my PC i get 105Mb/s and the advertised speed is 100Mb/s.
 
My PS4 Pro connected via an Ethernet cable is worse off and less reliable than my Xbox via wifi and far worse than my wired PC. I've never, ever had good experiences with Sony products when it comes to network connections.
 
Izuna said:
Connect your PS4 via a Poxy Server you make on your PC, and your speeds will rocket.
Click to expand...

This has worked for me too. Since I've enabled a Proxy Service on my router (got some fancy kit here, not every router can do this) my PS4 is always maxing out my connection.

No guarantee or anything, but it could be worth a try.
 
mjAUT said:
This has worked for me too. Since I've enabled a Proxy Service on my router (got some fancy kit here, not every router can do this) my PS4 is always maxing out my connection.

No guarantee or anything, but it could be worth a try.
Click to expand...

That makes it sound like some kind of network shaping is being done by ISPs.
 
I don't currently have downloaded speed problems. However, I did have a weird experiences with the PSN and PS3.

I had two identical Linksys wrt610s. They were working fine for the longest time. Suddenly had bad PSN speeds. After not being able to solve it, usual steps reset back to factory etc. I swapped the hardware, speeds went back to normal. Bad hardware you'd think. But no, that router had no other problems/symptoms. Trying to figure out why I the problematic router back in place and it worked fine again.

I'm still running those routes but have since installed ddwrt cfw on them. Since I've seen the problem kick in on a buddies Linksys router as well. But this is all wrt610/e3000 era equipment.

Anyway, it makes no logical sense to me why it happens.
 
This gen was different for awhile. Usually I get slower speeds on my ps4 but now it's slower on the xb1. Once I figured out the problem the xb1 needed certain ports forwarded it works faster than ps4.
 
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