Opening Soulseek Causes Network Connection to Slow Down

[gna...@gmail.com]

Hello, there. Another user here who has problems with their internet connection when using Soulseek. As soon as I open the program my internet connection gets degraded. I don't have to search files or download anything for this to happen. When I start a new download, I can get speeds as fast as the user can give, often times close to 1 Mbps, but after a couple of seconds, it fluctuates between < 1 kbps to around 100 kbps with an average in the 50 kbps range. Often I run into the download aborted issue. The last time I used Soulseek on this machine (around 02/18) I had no problems. Now it happens wherever I am. I've tried uninstalling the software, blowing away my Win 10 user profile, turning off my firewall and AV software (Defender) and have had no luck. Port check shows no problems with the listening ports. I've tried changing my share directories from a secondary drive back to my primary as well as leaving the default download folders. I'm at a total loss.

Here are my ping statistics to my gateway (local router) while Soulseek is open.

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1:

    Packets: Sent = 1277, Received = 1274, Lost = 3 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 3300ms, Average = 352ms

I hit near the maximum ping about every 8 pings.

These are my statistics as soon as I close Soulseek.

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1:

    Packets: Sent = 294, Received = 294, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 181ms, Average = 3ms

Anyone got any suggestions?

[faircity]

Have you changed ISP since last time you used SS?

[gna...@gmail.com]

No, I'm using the same ISP. I've tried from my neighbors house who uses the same ISP so I know it's not my router. I've also tried using an LTE hotspot and still get degraded performance as soon as Soulseek is opened, even without any files being downloaded or searching for files. Below is a picture of what happened to my connection when a file got aborted. I couldn't get the connection back until I disconnected from the router and reconnected (using wifi as I always have). This is the first time it's gotten that bad, but in all my previous file aborts, I'm fairly certain it was packet loss that caused the download to abort.

I'm going to try disabling all my non-Microsoft services and all programs assigned to run on startup and see what happens.

[gna...@gmail.com]

Disabling non-essential services and startup programs did not help.