cable speed check

[ukracer]

I am doing bit of tidying up of my Internet cables etc and decided to do a speed check.

I seem to have lost a lot of speed for some reason and before I asked Virgin I thought I better check its not me causing the issue.

I have a wired cable from the Virgin super Hub to a switch and then to a router which goes to my computer in the back room.

These are my results. All pretty consistent apart from the first one which is what I THINK I should be getting!

 

[130]

Speed test on a cable to the router, not over wifi or you may be measuring your wifi

Rebooting ADSL or leaving it off overnight can benefit, ok yours is cable

In the search for maximum speed many providers have introduced a lot of rate adaptive crap that only ever adapts down and doesn't go up until they reset in request or you threaten to leave

 

[gaz1]

You have 3 things for your net to go through

AllwAys speediest site try from your incoming hub
Then your next
And finally your router

Cannot blame virgin for your own crap being on it

 

[brightspark]

I had wireless between router and computer just 4 foot apart. was running slow so rang virgin up and they said there end was ok . they sent me a wired lead out . plugged it in and the speed went up significantly couldn't believe it

 

[ukracer]

I had wireless between router and computer just 4 foot apart. was running slow so rang virgin up and they said there end was ok . they sent me a wired lead out . plugged it in and the speed went up significantly couldn't believe it

I can..lol Wireless is way slower than ethernet.

You have 3 things for your net to go through

AllwAys speediest site try from your incoming hub
Then your next
And finally your router

Cannot blame virgin for your own crap being on it

Yeah thats why I was wondering if an old linksys or old netgear could be throttling the speed. My GUESS as I built up the computer in the front room right from the incoming hub is that first speed test might have ben done then.

 

[130]

^ Yes and no.
Cat 5 is 100 Mbps
Cat5e is 1000 Mbps
Wireless may be 54Mbps

If the wireless is faster than your fibre, cabled makes no difference as the fibre is the bottleneck
If the fibre is faster than wireless cabled makes a difference
(ignoring overheads)

 

[rikrobson]

Unplug everything. Then plug a pc onto the virgin hub and test again.
Then add the swich and test through that. It should be the same. Why do you have an extra router. Just use a switch. Switched split networks and routers join them putting it simply. You only have 1.network at home.

Also testing at different times of the day will affect the results due to Internet traffic

 

[ukracer]

You have 3 things for your net to go through

AllwAys speediest site try from your incoming hub
Then your next
And finally your router

Cannot blame virgin for your own crap being on it

Well thats stuffed my theory. Just run a 20metre cable from my superhub direct to the PC and its returned this. Not what I was expecting.

 

[ukracer]

^ Yes and no.
Cat 5 is 100 Mbps
Cat5e is 1000 Mbps
Wireless may be 54Mbps

If the wireless is faster than your fibre, cabled makes no difference as the fibre is the bottleneck
If the fibre is faster than wireless cabled makes a difference
(ignoring overheads)

Yes I see your point..lol I have always had poor wifi never worked in the backroom whatever hub I have installed.

I never realised Cat5E was that much faster than Cat 5.

But never the less I have had 160 speeds before as you can see back in August so it must be capable. (even if I had a random Cat5e cable knocking around.)

 

[ukracer]

Unplug everything. Then plug a pc onto the virgin hub and test again.
Then add the swich and test through that. It should be the same. Why do you have an extra router. Just use a switch. Switched split networks and routers join them putting it simply. You only have 1.network at home.

Also testing at different times of the day will affect the results due to Internet traffic

Different times of the day should not be 80mbps different though.

I have an extra router as i use wifi from it in my back room. its a linksys

Cable comes into my front room to My super hub. I have 6 items in that room so I added a netgear switch direct from the superhub.. WIthout checking I dont know if my network cable to the backroom comes from the switch or the superhub. Usually I would run it like this but my wife and father in law are getting me angry and I cant concentrate without wanting to kill him. I will check it again now though..

"Switched split networks and routers join them putting it simply." not sure I understand this.

 

[rikrobson]

The extra router could be the problem. Make sure it's not doing any routing and is just acting as a WiFi hot-spot

 

[ukracer]

Ok I used the cable that returned 89Mbps direct from the hub and connected it from the switch this time. Seems to have lost around 30mbps.



now to try from the Superhub through the router... lol

 

[ukracer]

very interesting....


My BET...is when I get a CAT5E cable and use that it will increase up to around 160.



I thought I had a 200Mbps connection so perhaps my memory was not as bad as I thought. lol

 

[ukracer]

The extra router could be the problem. Make sure it's not doing any routing and is just acting as a WiFi hot-spot

the extra router was not actually lowering the speed it was the switch. As it turns out. ;0

 

[ukracer]

very interesting....View attachment 153983


My BET...is when I get a CAT5E cable and use that it will increase up to around 160.



I thought I had a 200Mbps connection so perhaps my memory was not as bad as I thought. lol

I know I am replying to myself but for continuity in case others are thinking about changing cables it turns out the latest cables I purchased are indeed Cat5E. I knew I had a choice of 3 and asked what was the difference .....3.89 was thei reply..lol

So I just double checked and it was Cat5e or Cat6 or cat6A I could choose from.

guess Cat6 is not gonna increase my speed if Cat5E is theoritically 1000Mbps

Out of interest why would you need Cat6 or cat6A

Anyway back to the drawing board......might need to phone virgin tommorow.

 

[130]

Just use a switch. Switched split networks and routers join them putting it simply. You only have 1.network at home.

Switches just build a mac table and do less broadcast. Still same network if same IP range, few people will use VLANs at home.​

guess Cat6 is not gonna increase my speed if Cat5E is theoritically 1000Mbps

It's the rating of your kit that dictates max speed, not really cable, a totally bogus parallel would be if you had a 13A power supply 6A cable would be a restriction, 13A cable would give you maximum throughput and 32A cable would be spending money and no more throughput as the supply is the limiting factor.

Point here is you only get benefit using the appropriate cable.

10 gigabit stuff is pretty cheap now but with the cable provider giving a fraction of that unless you do big transfers machine to machine on your home network you don't have a good reason for it.

 

[knighty]

is the router you're using for wifi an old one? - it might not be gigabit? (even if it's not that old it might now be)

it should be written on it somewhere :-)

 

[thinfourth]

I'd be happiest with your slowest result

 

[maz0]

Cat5 (without the 'e') will do gigabit fine, I doubt that will be the issue in your network to be honest.

 

[MoreWellie]

look up the specs for the switch and the router, if either are the old 100Mbps then consider replacing or not using those

When doing speed tests you should always
1. turn off any wifi access to the internet to make sure phones and other devices aren't using the line
2. make sure only your test device is plugged in to the network
3. you should really bring up your PC in safe mode (assuming it is windows) to minimise the chance of bandwidth being used by other activity such as update downloads
4. remember that you share the bandwidth with other Virgin users so test results will vary according to what they are doing