I was pleased when Comcast/Xfinity announced an upgrade of my cable internet service to 50+ Mbps. I was very displeased when I ran the OOKLA speed test (www.speedtest.net) and found my maximum speed was around 7 or 8 Mbps.
After spending a lot of time troubleshooting various aspects of the problem, this is what I found:
I went to the Win 7 Device Manager and navigated to the Network Adapter section.
Under the Intel 8279W Gigabyte Network Connection, I ran the Diagnostics Test on the connection:
I noted that my Ethernet Adapter is configured to “force the speed to a low speed.” In the Link Speed section, I also saw that the Speed and Duplex selection was set to Auto Negotiation.
I examined the possible alternative choices to Link Speed Auto Negotiation and chose 100 Mbps Full Duplex. After applying that change, I re-ran the OOKLA speed test and got over 57 Mbps performance.
I am sharing this information as a possible aid to others who may be having the same cable internet service degradation.