I have ATT 2gbps fiber service.
My topology is:
-Fiber into apartment
-ATT BGW320
-5gbe port on BGW320 to PC over CAT 5E
-ASUS XG-C100G PCI-E card in PC
-Synology NAS, TP-Link AP and other stuff is on the 1gbe ports directly on BGW320 or through a 1gbe switch connected to BGW320
Problem is:
-Start up PC running Win 11
-Speed test without VPN - 2380mbps
-Speed test with ExpressVPN - 750mbps
-Turn on VPN and torrent large file
-5 minutes later internet connection on PC completely dies
-Discord, Games and Torrents all dead and no internet icon in bottom right of windows
-Turn off VPN and still no internet connection
Troubleshooting:
Only current solution is to restart PC.
-Uninstalled and reinstalled ASUS driver multiple times
-Same thing with ExpressVPN client
-Re-terminated all Ethernet lines multiple times
-Rebooted BGW320 and reseated all connections
-Bound Qbittorrent to VPN
-Changed PCI-E slots of 10g nic
-Bought Anker 2.5gbe to USB-C adapter and same thing happens
Looking for advice on:
Connection not crashing, this is the main focus of my post.
Also if anyone has a good multigig router, I’d like to use IP pass through on the BGW320. I installed an Orbi960 for a customer (in industry) and I’ve also looked at the multigig TP Link Archer.
And a multigig VPN. I have an intel 9900K, is that the Express VPN bottleneck or should I look at another VPN?
tl;dr-
Connection totally lost when torrenting big files over ExpressVPN. Trying to diagnose and repair.
Edit: Sorry for the necro, but I figured it out! ExpressVPN was the issue. I switched to Wiregaurd with Mullvad and I’m not only getting the full 2gbps throughput where I was limited to 7-800mbps with ExpressVPN but it has also completely eliminated the crashes. Thank you to all who chimed in, ASUS is off the hook for now but I’ll still probably be switching to another NIC in the coming months.
Assuming XG-C100G is a typo and you mean XG-C100C It looks like there may be a firmware update available for your network adapter.
It’s a 1.89MB download right below the drivers.
Do you see anything in your Windows event logs. Especially the System and Application logs?
Have you ever entertained the idea of moving your VPN and torrenting to a separate computer? Many folks run it on their Synology NAS - I would prefer to use a separate PC. Since Raspberry Pi’s are hard to come by and are pretty limited, I’d get a mini PC from ebay or amazon for 80-100$, install Ubuntu server (or Debian if you want a GUI) and run everything on docker. Add wireguard and you have your own VPN into your home network.
Fun project (I think) and it keeps everything separated.
On the router question - I’m using an ASUS-GT-AX6000 and no issues so far. Down point: No VLANs on the LAN side.
IDK but I think I’ve had my internet connection reset by some ISP device when I ran torrents with most of the app bandwidth limits set to low, off or infinty. I know it’s different but seems like your using up some PC or NIC system resource, maybe turning down some of the bandwidth options on the torrent app? Maybe turn them all real low to start, then increase until it pukes.
Have you tried a 1 gb NIC? Can you find things to torrent where you don’t need the VPN? Just trying to eliminate things so you can narrow down what is actually causing the problem.
You have high enough requirements, you might want to think about building your own router/firewall, possibly something using PfSense, OPnSense, etc on the hardware of your choosing.
EDIT: Had a Tiffany thinking about your problem…wonder if your Asus NIC is overheating? Ground yourself and feel the NIC’s heatsink when your doing a big DL/UL, if you can’t keep your hand on it, it’s to hot…
Network card driver issues, uninstall is safe mode, download previous version of drivers
Try a LiveDisk of Linux…see if you get same results
I looked into this, but I have the error where it shows in the command prompt as Firmware version: 0.00 and errors out as “No Device Found”
I even tried a workaround where you specify the device ID and still couldn’t force the firmware update.
This is where I completely fall flat. I’m way more knowledgeable about hardware. Where could I find those logs?
Sounds like you have the rev2 that doesn’t have the same firmware update mechanism. You can try some older versions of the driver to see if they work any better for you. looks like ASUS has two older versions of the drivers on their site under the win10 64bit section.
Well, you can run Eventvwr from a command prompt then expand Windows Logs on the left. Or right click This PC/My Computer and select Manage. This will let you choose Event Viewer, and a lot of other cool tools on the left such as Device Manager, Disk Management, and more.