Chrome slow, Firefox fine... why?

[briantrumpet]

My brother's been complaining about terrible speeds on Chrome on wifi for some time at my mum's house... when I was there, I tried the Ookla Speedtest on a laptop... fine... via the Ookla app on my phone... fine... via Chrome on my phone (on desktop version, as it won't load in the mobile version)... oops - really, really slow.

Now I'm on my own wifi, I've done the same, and replicated the results, except this time I also tried Firefox on the mobile (in the desktop version), and it works fine... speeds as normal.

So, to cut to the chase... is there something in Chrome that could be slowing certain sites to a crawl? I've not got data saver on, and after lots of searching, I'm none the wiser as to what could be causing the problem... I've tried running it in Incognito, too, so I don't think it's a cache problem.

Any ideas would be gratefully received!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Is it only noticeable on the Ookla site (i.e., are regular sites like cnn.com slow to download)? Have you tried checking the download speed with other sites, like fast.com (which is powered by Netflix)?

 

[briantrumpet]

Thanks.

Haven't tried a lot... Facebook is OK, but will try some others now. The curious thing my brother has found is that Chrome is fine on all sites on mobile data, and it's only wifi he's experienced the problems on, including Gmail through Chrome. It's all very weird!

 

[briantrumpet]

Now that is interesting.... fast.com 12Mb/s via Firefox, 5.8 via Chrome.

 

[briantrumpet]

Obviously the easiest thing would just be to switch to Firefox, but I really want to try to make Chrome work properly...

 

[B. Diddy]

I wonder if it could be a DNS issue? See what happens if you change the DNS to something else (like Google's or CloudFlare's): The Ultimate Guide to Changing Your DNS Server

Also -- are you using a VPN? If so, try turning that off.

 

[briantrumpet]

I wonder if it could be a DNS issue? See what happens if you change the DNS to something else (like Google's or CloudFlare's): The Ultimate Guide to Changing Your DNS Server

Thanks - I'll have a look at that later or tomorrow (I'm in the UK, and my brain is getting to the end of its day )

 

[briantrumpet]

Well, I've tried that on my phone, and yes, fast.com on Chrome went up to vaguely normal speeds. So I've sent instructions on how to do that to my brother, and I'll find out how he gets on.

Thanks!