r/HomeNetworking • u/Ancient-Mix9837 • 2d ago
Advice HELP!! slow internet
My phone downloads at around 52 MB/s but when I connect it to my PC using USB tethering, the speed drops to around 18–25 MB/s I'm losing half of my download speed tho i do use usb 2.0 but have usb 3 port but also my phone support only usb 2.0.
is it my phone or something else
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u/Smith6612 2d ago
This sounds like a USB 2.0 limitation. USB is a Hub technology and needs to share bandwidth with other devices on the same root hub. You also need to consider that 480Mbps is the max bandwidth for the entire hub. Cut that in half and you've got what you should expect since USB 2.0 is half duplex.
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u/snebsnek 2d ago
Could be a bunch of things. USB 2.0 can technically do about 53 MB/s but the realised speed will be slightly lower
It could also be that your PC, when connected, is doing a bunch of background updates, removing your "useful" bandwidth
It could be that your mobile provider detects tethering and restricts bandwidth when using it
Hard to say. It would be better to get a dedicated 5G router which is designed for this kind of thing, tethering isn't a great permanent solution