Hi there,
Recently I switched to Zorin OS Core, but noticed my ethernet speed is way slower than it should be. Even measuring from my phone gives me 350mbps readings.
Found older article about r8169 driver being the issue, downgraded to r8168, but nothing changed.
Any ideas?
Welcome to the Forum!
How fast should Your Speed be?
Thank you! 
I have 1000mbps plan, usually it was around 600-700mbps on download and bit higher on upload.
If you go to your ethernet settings in, what does it show you listed as the speeds that should be doing? For instance does it show 1000mbps or 100mbps for the link speed?
It shows 1000Mb/s for link speed.
And what are you trying this speed test from? A browser, presumably, but which browser, and how have you installed it, via Flatpak or standard deb package? I know I have run into an issue where some certain Flatpaks won't give me full speed, whereas if I go standard deb that usually solves the issue for me.
There have been certain cases where changing the MTU size in the ethernet settings to something specific for your router can fix issues like this, but for some routers it's different (for example, my router actually uses 1479, or something along those lines) but others will use 1500, 1497, 1492 etc.
From a browser, yes. I'm using firefox that came preinstalled with Zorin. Tried with Opera as well, got that from software app and is installed as Flatpak.
Opened router configuration site, wanted to find MTU size.
Silly of me, but I didn't think of checking it before. Here it shows my speed slower than it should be.
Ok, so that's on your router side then that's having the issue? There may be ways to fix that, depending on the router of course. But if it's an ISP router, it wouldn't hurt in just giving them a call either and seeing what they have to say. I presume this cable and connection worked beforehand? Or is this a new wire and connection being used?
To be honest, I didn't measure it on my system before. Recently I had sold my old PC and got myself older system in that place. I know it was working properly. I noticed that I have slower speed when I was downloading torrents and youtube started to lag. Then I measured and find out that I have indeed slower speed.
Again, silly of me, I didn't try it previously since I was sure it was issue on computer side, but now I disconnected my internet switch and connected PC straight to router and speed is back to normal.
For now I am going to mark this as solved and going to try to fiddle with my router and switch. Turns out it's not really Zorin issue (at least on surface level). I am not really IT guy, so I'm not sure how deep I can go. If anyone has any suggestions to find if there is link between my issue and Zorin OS, I'm all ears.
Ok so you have your connection set as this:
Zorin PC -> Switch -> Router ?
Just wanting to make sure. Is it possible your switch is a little on the older side and is in need of an upgrade? Or possibly the ethernet cord between the switch and the router is a little dated and also needs an upgrade?
Yes. Currently my side project is on longer break and I can afford not to use switch. (My ISP provided me with router, that has only one actual working ethernet port. Rest of them are hardcoded to use other functions as their TV or smth.)
I was using Tp-Link TL-SG108. By no means it's new technology or premium device, but it worked fine till now.
Now I inspected my cables... Something weird is going on. Router > Switch cable is marked as cat.5. Switch > PC is cat.5e.
By the books, it's obvious why it worked on 100mbps. BUT, my previous setup was working with 1000mbps for sure. When I switched PCs, I never touched router/switch setup. Same Switch > PC cable that was previously used, was plugged in new PC. I might have been using it for ~3 months without noticing I have slower speed. But it's weird, I would have noticed slower speed earlier than this. Only major change now was switching to Zorin.
I'm now clueless how this all is possible.
Either:
I honestly don't understand this anymore. Not gonna get an answer today, but in upcoming days i'm going to play around my setup and can update this thread, if anyone is interested.
That is a little weird, but it is possible that perhaps wireless was doing some lifting in the process as well. I would definitely, if possible, swap those cables for at least cat 6. While cat5e would be fast enough to do gigabit (depending on length) it still wouldn't hurt to swap it out for new cat6 cables since you know that those should be good and new.
I am glad I found this post, as its given me a chance to speak on my experienced, that I just most recently went through, in regards to a TP-Link 16-port 10/100/1000 ethernet switch that I have.
This is my ethernet switch that I bought in 2021...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMLP28Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
However, over the course of the past month, I noticed that my internet speed was reduced to 90-95MB/s, instead of the 260MB-280mb I had before. Additionally, I also noticed that downloading games was slower on Steam as well. I originally suspected my internet modem, as well the router, so I power cycled those.
My setup goes, modem connects to router, router connects to ethernet switch, and computer connects to switch. Generally, using a wired connection is foolproof in my experience, because you don't have to deal with the BS that comes with setting up a wireless connection.
After exhausting my options 1 by 1, I finally decided to check the software side, and look at my network connection. As you can see in the picture above, that is what my connection was, when I initially set up my new switch, AKA, everything is normal and correct.
Flash forward to December 2024, that dialog box said that I was suddenly connected to 100mb/s. Now my speed discrepancy makes sense! Nobody uses 100mb/s connections anymore, as the last time that was relevant, was circa 2000's. Why did this happen? Don't know!
The solution was to power cycle the ethernet switch, cause once I did that, I was back to a 1000mb/s connection speed, then my connection came alive, and my net was no longer lagging like it was year 2003 again. Having said that, I wish my speed was as good as yours.
My internet provider upgraded our speeds finally to 500mb in year 2024, but this is the best speed I've been able to achieve with that service.
What matters however, is I am not locked at 100mb/s anymore, where my download speed are only 95mb/s at best. Again, I don't know why my switch malfunctioned like that. We both have TP-Link switches, so it might be a pattern, it might not be IDK.
All I know is its weird. Its nice to read a post that confirms what I've gone through. I didn't make a post on my issue, because I know how to troubleshoot my own gear, and didn't feel the need to make a tutorial thread. Anyways, glad your up and running again!
Yeah, I have the main devices in my computer room hooked up to Cat 7 infact, the modem to the router, the router to the ethernet switch, and the connect between my main computer, to the ethernet switch, all Cat 7, thick boy cables I tell ya. All the rest of the wired devices in my home that don't matter much, they are all Cat 5.
Always love a good reboot fixing problems haha
OMG. I was so focused on it being PC fault, that I completely forgot to do simplest troubleshooting steps. Restarted my switch, connected everything back through it and speed stayed the same.
I'm going to mark your reply as solution.
Will do when i'll get back to my home server project. 
Weirdness... My cat.5 marked cable is capable of doing 1000mbps from router to switch. For a second I really thought I was going delusional path, since my first mentioned option about built-in Wi-Fi helping out my speeds was not the best guess as well. I'm sure it's possible, but I never have experienced it working out of box without doing some kind of configuration.
Well... My city has great coverage of optical network. It's also pretty good price-performance ratio.
Thank you all for your time and feedback!
I'm sure it depends on your location, but what I recently found out is that changing steam download region boosted my downloading speed quite well.
I live in Europe, steam automatically set my download region to my closest location. I tried to play around various download regions and found out that one specific German location (iirc they had 2 or even multiple region points in Germany) boosted my speed from 18mb/s to 50mb/s. More than double the speed I had with physically closest location.
Aint that the truth! LOL
Yep, we all forget to power cycle our equipment sometimes. Sometimes a forced power outage does that for us, but I am not a fan of forced power outages method, cause you never know when its going to happen, and its so inconvenient. 
Technically, you should be running at least Cat 6 cables in modern day, to anything that is important enough, to use a 1GB/s connection. Cables are a dime a dozen, and if you are going to replace your Cat5 cable, I would just recommend you get a Cat7 cable. Its very important you buy from a reputable brand though, don't buy some generic garbage, that doesn't do what it claims.
Please keep in mind, you will never get the 100% max 1GB/s connection from the ISP, since time memorial, we always get less then the MAX, it has to do with network overhead. You are super lucky though, because you have optical fiber connection, something I've only been able to dream of here.
The next town over, 10-miles from me, they have Verizon Fios, which if you guessed was optical fiber, you would be correct. But at my location, Xfinity rules the roost, and paid off politicians, to prevent fiber optic cable in my area. Because Xfinity runs a monopoly on the coax cable, there is no competition. And thats why I am stuck with what I got.
Technically though, coax is cable of doing up to 1GB/s, but in order for me to get anywhere near that, I would have to pay Xfinity over 200 dollars per month to achieve, what Verizon Fios users in the next town over, get on optical fiber, for only what 50-60 dollars a month? Crazy!
Count your blessings, you are lucky! Like I said, I can only dream of 1GB/s, and have been dreaming of it for the past decade now. Can you believe, I used to be stuck at 50MB internet with Xfinity for about a decade, until they finally upgraded us to 500MB this year? Yeah, for real!
Thank you for the info! When I do a speed test, I do notice that my speeds achieve closer to rated, when I choose a speed test server much farther from me, which honestly goes against the norm when you think about it. But maybe it has something to do with what you said, more servers, means more speed.
I just got done going into Steam, and selecting a different download connection. But I won't be able to test that, until Steam starts downloading again. As it stands, upon launch of the app, Steam already downloaded what it needed to, before I could make the setting change lol.
Took a quick look, they indeed are inexpensive. I dream of building little home network with various functions, but have postponed it because of time and money. I actually wish to get just cable that goes by meters and then do custom lengths for my needs. Would be great way to improve cable management.
Yes, I am aware of that.
You could say I am pretty lucky, yeah. I had 600mbps plan for 25 euros per month. While ago they just decided "Screw it, let's give them full speed" and with the same plan they upped my speed to 1000mbps without additional cost. I live quite far from city center, so this is my only option for optical fiber. In more populated areas there are multiple choices of ISPs and sometimes people can get same speed as me for as low as 10 euros per month.
The only downside to testing different download regions is that with each region change, Steam needs to be restarted. So if you have a lot of nearby regions, it could take a while to test which is the best for you.
I got quite annoyed by it and chose Germany, because well... It's Germany. It should be better than my current location and turns out it was. Maybe even with more fiddling I could find even better region, but I managed to achieve somewhat satisfying speed, so I'm good. I bet it also depends on what time you are doing these tests, some servers might be more overloaded and maybe they won't have the same results if you try same server again some other day.
Quite sad that Valve hasn't made some kind of automated testing to find best regions for you currently available.
That's quite a improvement, yes! In my childhood I was stuck with internet modem that could manage only like 10mbps at best and sometimes in evening it dropped to like 0.5mbps. I couldn't do anything at all lol. With time it improved a bit and now when I live at my own place and got 1000mbps, it's like... Dream! 
Is it fine for us to keep talking in this thread? I don't know how strict forum culture is here. :y
It's pretty lenient. Generally, if something goes too far off topic for too long, someone will split the thread and move the off-topic stuff to the "Chat about Zorin" forum where the conversation can continue. As a matter of etiquette of course, it's better to stay on topic while someone's still trying to get help. The instruction about not chatting in "solved" threads is to avoid bumping them though, so perhaps someone with split privileges may want to do that, as this has gone on for a while.
As a side note to the problem experienced in this thread, many switches' link lights are green for 1000 Mb/s and yellow for 100. If you see a yellow light on your switch and the devices are fully booted, it may be time for another power cycle!
