Why is my Cox Gigabit Service CRAWLING???

Thanks much. The speeds I cited as being ~250mbps was with the PC connected directly to the modem.

Thanks for the great advice. I have some homework to do and will report back.

Quick note: I have an older Lenova G580 laptop (intel I3/4gb memory/hardrive) that a swapped in an SSD and replaced the battery to bring it back to life. I changed it from Windows to Chrome so it had less overhead. Makes a handy web browser. However, even hardwired, the internet maxes out at about 80mbps.

My guess is that G580 has a 10/100Mbps NIC. The specs show it can go both ways depending on what SKU you got.

A little slow to connect the dots. Since the 580 was available with 10/100 or 10/100/1000, I realize it makes sense to assume RickO has a 10/100/1000. Thus, the 250 number is almost certainly NOT NIC limited, which aligns with to Darkatt's remarks. I'm so used to a wide variety of speeds on devices (for instance even the Google speakers have 2 different speeds, cameras have 2, displays, etc.) that I didn't make the logical connection to the probably throughput on the Lenovo NIC. Thanks for the insight!

Connect the desktop direct to the modem with a cat5E cable, and reboot into safe mode with networking and run the speed test. Believe it or not, first, I have seen speeds degrade using cat 7 cable, and second, I see computer speeds degrade because of background software, Booting into safe mode with networking will eliminate that possibility. When I was at Cox, we used to do that all the time with customers, and one time when they were getting 140 or so, booting into safe mode with networking, jumped to 925, booted into normal modem back to the 140's. 

Wow. Thanks, I'll give it a try. 

Reread your post and realized I missed some points the first time through.

Darkatt's post sounds spot on to me, as it doesn't sound like Cox, your modem, or Google router is the constraint. 

If you still have the Google WiFi app, it will tell you exactly what speed it is seeing to each hub. You probably know the Google apps can be very helpful as they will tell you network speed, mesh speed, and speed to each connected device. The variation in device speeds is quite notable. In my home, more than 100 to 1 from fastest to slowest device. Sample shots of the process provided for reference as well as to give you a point of reference.

If you have an simple unmanaged switch, I would suggest plugging it into your primary Google, then bringing all of your hubs into the same room and connecting them to the switch to do a basic hub and spoke. Then, I bet you'll see each one is at least 400 - 500 mbps. If you don't have a switch, daisy chain them and check. I don't think it will be a lot slower, but it will be some. 

If all that works, then you'll know that the modem and routers are all good. The constraints will be your mesh speed which will depend on hardwired vs wifi and the relative signal strength. If you are using just wifi, try to maintain something close to line-of-sight between pairs of routers. The network will optimize. I used to use wi-fi to go from the office, to a hub above the china cabinet so I could run ethernet into the back of my Verizon/Samsung mini-cell. My recollection was that would run 200-300. I've since pulled Cat6 and redeployed that unit. 

A good wifi analyzer is your friend, helping ensure you  get consistent coverage. I'll note that I prefer Speedtest to Fast, but prefer the Google app over either. My wife and I can both get can get 400 - 500 mbps on Fast on our newer Samsung phones when within 6 - 10 feet of a first gen Google router, so that should give you a point of reference. 

let me know how it turns out!

Thanks again guys. Here's another update. After taking the actions below, I've come to the conclusion that I have probably dealing with more than one problem, but the one causing the most pain is, as you suspected, the physical layout of my network. I think I've been expecting WAY too much out of the mesh system. Although I only have a 1900 sq ft townhouse and try to cover it with five mesh pucks, the primary router is all the way at one end of the house. Nowhere near line of sight and certainly not within 10 feet of each other. 

So this week I am changing my layout. I'm moving the Cox coax from the office to a location in the primary living quarters. There are 12' ceilings and a very open floorplan. The modem and primary router will reside on a ledge about 9' from the floor and have line of sight to two of the three TVs we use as well as three of the four wifi pucks. I've ordered a 100' run of Cat 6 ethernet cable to run back to the office for my desktop. 

Now for the action I took:

* I connected my desktop directly to the modem via a new 24" Cat 5e cable and booted in safe mode. I ran the speed test and speeds jumped from 250 to nearly 500! Encouraged by that, I did a system refresh and reinstalled Windows 10. Probably a good thing to do, but it didn't yield any further improvement.

* I went through the house using the Google Home app to see which point devices were actually connecting as suggested. This was an issue. Many/most of my devices were connecting to points which were clearly not the nearest to them. Some of this may have been caused by me troubleshooting. I was taking points on and off line a lot and devices may have connected to a distant point when the closer points were off line... and then they just didn't change their connection when the entire network came back up. But that was only a part of the problem because I'm still seeing them make odd connections. I'll just keep an eye on it and see if the problem fixes itself when the new layout is in place and stable. At this point though, I have gone to each device and forced it to connect to the closest point.

* I brought all four points into the office with the main router and brought them on line. I felt this would ensure they were operating in a spoke and hub arrangement. Then, using first my phone and then my Chromebook, I forced connection to each puck in turn and ran speed tests (speedtest.net). My phone saw download speeds consistently in the 300 to 450 range... although my Chromebook reported somewhat slower speeds they were still near 200. My five mesh points are a mix of newer and older. I did not run this testing using ethernet backhaul connections. Firmware on each of the pucks is current. The primary router continued to report seeing ~850 mps from the modem.

So at this point I'm optimistic that I'll be able to reconfigure things into a much more functional solution. We'll see what kind of speeds I see once things are stable, but a couple of mysteries remain at this point.

     * Why is my desktop only seeing 500 mps (at best) when connected directly to the modem using a short Cat 5e cable?

     * Even when in the same room, my points only seemed to provide speeds of <450 mps. I will run a couple of tests using backhaul connections on the three pucks which accept it to see what happens but I haven't done that yet. 

Thanks again and I will report back once everything is together.

Rick