Slow Speed With Wired Router

[Psykoboy2]

I just changed out ISP's today and I've been getting pretty good results. Here's the before:

http://speedtest.net/result/2025504007.png

And here's after:

http://speedtest.net/result/2025631717.png

Now, the thing to understand is the after results are going straight from the modem to my box.

Here's when I go from the modem to the router to my box:

http://speedtest.net/result/2025669596.png

Any ideas as to what might be causing this?

I've gone through a few things like the QoS, DMZ, etc, but I've had no luck. My router is a Linksys WRT54GL and my modem is a Motorola SB6121.

[J Arcane]

At a guess? Your router is fuckin' old, and can't keep up with those speeds.

[Shjinta]

Your slow speed is faster than the "Fastest" speed I can currently get ._.

[Psykoboy2]

At a guess? Your router is fuckin' old, and can't keep up with those speeds.

That would be my next test: try out a different router, but from others I've talked to about this the router shouldn't be giving me any problems. In fact, we use the same router at work and we're on fiber there getting these speeds:

http://speedtest.net/result/1735313241.png

[resikel]

Try resetting to default settings.

Or just take it out back...

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m62j6iMR2e1qzrnkro1_500.jpg

[LiquidRain]

Have you tried any 3rd party firmware? I'm running Tomato on my WRT54GL. Maybe a 3rdp arty firmware (or maybe the 1st party firmware!) could give you an advantage.

[Psykoboy2]

Try resetting to default settings.

Did that with no change in results.

However, after I loaded back my previous configuration, I can now no longer log into the router. It's not accepting the username and password.

[AntonThaGreat]

Throw away your router, as it's clearly shit.

However, before you do that, grab a second computer, connect both computers with a crossover cable (really easy to turn a regular ethernet cable into one, google it) and do a file transfer with Teracopy (http://codesector.com/teracopy/). After that run the connection through the router and test the same thing. I would recommend doing one large file as well as a bunch of little files (you can make a copy of the System 32 folder for that.)

It's possible your modem is not playing nice with your router, which is why you'd want to test network file transfer speeds.

Also, check if you have QoS turned on.

I suggest you compare/contrast the TCP/IP settings with each PC using

http://www.speedguide.net/analyzer.php

If RWIN is small then the extra latency of Internet downloads + wireless may explain the difference in speed.

Another resource:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/6266

[Psykoboy2]

Okay, reset the router, and changed all settings back to the way they were. This time without restoring the previous configuration. I can log into it now. That was really weird.

Now, back to the problem at hand.

[Karak]

Okay, reset the router, and changed all settings back to the way they were. This time without restoring the previous configuration. I can log into it now. That was really weird.

Now, back to the problem at hand.

QOS and throttling should be off now with the reset. I will say that I recently replace an old crappy Ethernet cable that linked my router to my cable modem and saw a speed increase.
Otherwise that is an odd issue as the router really shouldn't do anything like that. Also even if its old it should easily handle that speed unless you have a true issue so don't worry about age right now.

Quick internet search shows that the router you have has 1-3 bad firmware revisions that most users reported slow speeds with. With some people on a 15meg getting less than 1.9 with the bad firmware.
I would flash it with a certified(company) NOT hacked Tomato style firmware and see what happens first. Don't jump to non certified firmwares right away. They have their place but you need to check the modem first and not muddy up the waters yet.

Then if that does fix the speed you could go with Tomato to get some extra features though to be brutally honest there is no need. They don't offer additional features that a normal user would need really. Though they are snazzy when you want to do other things.

[AntonThaGreat]

Yes, forgot to mention that, definitely look into updating your firmware.

And tell us whose solution worked for internet brownie points.

[Psykoboy2]

Last night I threw Tomato on it and it changed nothing.

[PathMaster]

First of I am jealous of those speeds, both of them. UGH.

Onto the issue, the router is 10/100, where current ones are gigabit. Unless your modem or computer is still using the older speed tech, than that is at least part of the problem. Have a friend with a new router? I would try that first above all else honestly.

[Psykoboy2]

Yeah, I think that's my next step is to try a new router first and see if that changes anything.

[PathMaster]

Good timing on your part perhaps, Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/5920709/five-best-home-wi+fi-routers)did a Hive Five on Wifi Routers this weekend.

Despite the public voting your router in, the rest of the list is solid, but some of those options are geared towards small biz or are expensive, at least to me. I personally love my Buffalo router, it takes some time getting it setup correctly, but once set, I only need to do anything with it if I need to change settings. It is rock solid and I have had zero forced reboots other then config changes.

[Mot Wakorb]

First: The WRT54 isn't intended for higher speeds, you're topping out the CPU on it and it's having packet issues with keeping up. You need to replace that router. Second, realize, even when you have 100 mbit connectivity wired, you'll hit around 80-90% of that maximum due to overhead. Get yourself something that's dual-band N with gigabit ports and you'll likely see a great increase in speed. Second to that, make sure that it's not one of the cheapest models you can get, they tend to have the same problem as older devices.

[biosc1]

First: The WRT54 isn't intended for higher speeds, you're topping out the CPU on it and it's having packet issues with keeping up. You need to replace that router. Second, realize, even when you have 100 mbit connectivity wired, you'll hit around 80-90% of that maximum due to overhead. Get yourself something that's dual-band N with gigabit ports and you'll likely see a great increase in speed. Second to that, make sure that it's not one of the cheapest models you can get, they tend to have the same problem as older devices.

This man, he speaks the truths.

[Karak]

First: The WRT54 isn't intended for higher speeds, you're topping out the CPU on it and it's having packet issues with keeping up. You need to replace that router. Second, realize, even when you have 100 mbit connectivity wired, you'll hit around 80-90% of that maximum due to overhead. Get yourself something that's dual-band N with gigabit ports and you'll likely see a great increase in speed. Second to that, make sure that it's not one of the cheapest models you can get, they tend to have the same problem as older devices.

Still can handle those speeds though. Easily when wired like he is.
Not that he won't see an increase with newer tech. But there is a reason the WRT54 is used so much even in high bandwidth situations.

Then again I own a couple Balkins which are considered the Goldstar of routers.

[Karak]

Good timing on your part perhaps, Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/5920709/five-best-home-wi+fi-routers)did a Hive Five on Wifi Routers this weekend.

Despite the public voting your router in, the rest of the list is solid, but some of those options are geared towards small biz or are expensive, at least to me. I personally love my Buffalo router, it takes some time getting it setup correctly, but once set, I only need to do anything with it if I need to change settings. It is rock solid and I have had zero forced reboots other then config changes.

:) Was laughing about the timing on this as well. With this router as #1:)

[biosc1]

WRT54 is used so much even in high bandwidth situations.


Maybe I just have a lemon, but in a 10mbps/10mbps environment, the WRT54 I use is in constant need of a reboot. (ie. I really need to replace this POS).

[Karak]

Maybe I just have a lemon, but in a 10mbps/10mbps environment, the WRT54 I use is in constant need of a reboot. (ie. I really need to replace this POS).

Nah probably not a lemon. It makes sense that over time they can go bad. I wasn't arguing that they are old and have more difficulty with higher speed situations. But they also work fine in them.

[Ghostbear]

So what you're saying is they're inconsistent in high speed situations? That's a fucking selling point. Scott, listen to Mot, get a new router.

[J Arcane]

Maybe I just have a lemon, but in a 10mbps/10mbps environment, the WRT54 I use is in constant need of a reboot. (ie. I really need to replace this POS).

I've used several WRT54's thanks to the almost godlike reputation it has with nerds for some reason, and I fucking hated every one of them. They were slow and awful and unreliable as fuck.

I really like my new Netgear WNR3000 personally. Best router I've ever had.

[Slack3r78]

Cisco E3000/E3200 series are the best consumer grade routers for the money available, IMO.

[Slack3r78]

I've used several WRT54's thanks to the almost godlike reputation it has with nerds for some reason, and I fucking hated every one of them. They were slow and awful and unreliable as fuck.

I really like my new Netgear WNR3000 personally. Best router I've ever had.

Older WRT54Gs were great. V5 and on were gimped so Linksys could sell the WRT54GL, which is just a WRT54G v4 hardware wise, at a price premium. The 54G hasn't been the best router to buy for at least 5 years now.

Either way, we're talking about a decade old hardware design here.

[muddi900]

I have a WRT54G v5, and it sucked. I have made it usable with DD-WRT, but barely.

[Mot Wakorb]

Still can handle those speeds though. Easily when wired like he is.
Not that he won't see an increase with newer tech. But there is a reason the WRT54 is used so much even in high bandwidth situations.

Then again I own a couple Balkins which are considered the Goldstar of routers.

Likely can packet switch those speeds between ports on the switch side, but the NAT side through the "firewall" (as it is anything but) will be the issue. Keeping the NAT Table intact when you're topping speeds of 80Mbps on a device really not intended for it will peg quite a few consumer-grade devices. Hell, I know quite a few commercial-grade Cisco devices that will balk at that.

[Bone]

I finally upgraded from my workhorse, decade-old WRT54G 1.1 and am very happy with my Linksys E3000 dual-band N Gigabit router. I think they are already up to the Linksys EA3500 now- anyone have experience with this? My E3000 has been rock solid and really fast.

[Serapth]

Keep your WRT54 in storage for future use, I wish I still had mine! See newer routers play nicely, while the WrT doesn't, so it puts out a signal that is WAY stronger than all other access points in the area.

Now that I live in a condo, this is a huge deal. One of my neighbors has an access point that clobbers channel 67and 8, making getting a good signal in my own condo a bitch. I have an access point design for 300 foot large homes and I still fight to connect reliably.

[Bone]

You're right, the WRT54G was a hog, but my E3000 is no slouch. I really am benefiting from the Gigabit connection between my machines, though. All my media is on a NAS.

[PathMaster]

The Asus in the article or the new Cisco e3k's I have hear great things about. The new Netgear as well, especially in there ease of setup. They are very close to a hands free setup.

[Slack3r78]

Keep your WRT54 in storage for future use, I wish I still had mine! See newer routers play nicely, while the WrT doesn't, so it puts out a signal that is WAY stronger than all other access points in the area.

Now that I live in a condo, this is a huge deal. One of my neighbors has an access point that clobbers channel 67and 8, making getting a good signal in my own condo a bitch. I have an access point design for 300 foot large homes and I still fight to connect reliably.

Part of the reason I like the E3000/3200 series is because it has the strongest signal output of any consumer router I've seen in recent memory.

One other thing to keep in mind with newer routers if you're in a congested area is to make sure that 802.11n is set to use 20MHz channel width. 11n can do channel bonding to increase throughput, but becomes more sensitive to interference since it needs twice as much spectrum to run effectively. I've seen a number of consumer routers that are defaulting to 40MHz out of the box, and it can have a serious negative impact on signal quality.

[Psykoboy2]

Not too worried about my wireless speed. Only my laptop, iPhone, and iPad take advantage of it and even then I have the ability to wire my laptop (as I do when we record IGC episodes and use the webcam for broadcasting).

[J Arcane]

The house router is an older Netgear that is so weak that in order to get consistent signal on my Transformer I had to use my PC as a bridge to my WNR3000 so I could set up a second transmitter for the Wi-Fi.

It was previously getting so bad even my Nexus S could hardly get a signal. I've lost, on average, a full bar of signal from the home router sometime in the past month, for no reason I can explain.

[Bone]

Not too worried about my wireless speed. Only my laptop, iPhone, and iPad take advantage of it and even then I have the ability to wire my laptop (as I do when we record IGC episodes and use the webcam for broadcasting).

Yeah, it just seems that lately you get the N-band along with Gigabit ports. Sounds like you really need the Gigabit ports, so N-band should come as part of the deal.

[PathMaster]

One thing to note, is the new Wifi tech is already on the market, at least consumer router wise. Wireless AC should be a huge boost in speeds and range, but as always need both sides of the wireless connection to have the most benefit. And I have not seen any AC adapters as of yet.

Yes, I know AC has not been ratified at all, hell not even a certain spec of it yet. But, it is worth noting.

[Slack3r78]

Yes, I know AC has not been ratified at all, hell not even a certain spec of it yet. But, it is worth noting.

Eh, not sure I agree. 11ac clients don't really exist with any prevalence at this point, and the standard is due to be finalized by the end of the year. People got used to the idea of buying draft spec hardware because 802.11n spent so long in draft hell, but that was kind of a special case. 11n was held up partially due to patent concerns (http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/09/dark-australian-patent-cloud-looms-over-802-11n-spec/) that haven't reared their head in the same way with 11ac. The spec was basically done for quite a long time before it was officially published.

11ac as a draft has only been around about 18 months and the very first draft spec hardware is barely 6 months old. It'll be a nice improvement, but I wouldn't worry too much about buying 11ac routers in the immediate future.

EDIT:

11ac also operates on the 5GHz band; I'd be skeptical of range claims until it's been out in the wild a while. 5GHz is far more vulnerable to physical barriers than the 2.4GHz band.

[PathMaster]

Valid points all. I thought they were further along in the drafts. Still worth noting if someone personal upgrade cycle is due in a year from now. But yea, otherwise then, hold off on AC until it is far closer to be ratified.

Will be interesting to see how the rang claims stand up in the field.

[Psykoboy2]

Trying to decide between the Netgear and the Cisco. I just want to swap out the router and see if that changes anything. If it does, I'll just stick with whatever one I go with and if it doesn't...well, back to square one, I suppose.

[PathMaster]

Costco for the warranty/ease of returns!

[Slack3r78]

Still worth noting if someone personal upgrade cycle is due in a year from now.
Well, my concern there is that we're literally on first generation chipsets right now. It generally takes a while to get the hardware and firmware to run stable. 11n is incredibly mature at this point and the hardware in general is rock solid. 11ac is much more of an unknown.

tl;dr - it would really suck to buy a really expensive 11ac router only to find out the thing reboots itself all the time.

[Karak]

So what you're saying is they're inconsistent in high speed situations? That's a fucking selling point. Scott, listen to Mot, get a new router.

No not really.

Well, my concern there is that we're literally on first generation chipsets right now. It generally takes a while to get the hardware and firmware to run stable. 11n is incredibly mature at this point and the hardware in general is rock solid. 11ac is much more of an unknown.

tl;dr - it would really suck to buy a really expensive 11ac router only to find out the thing reboots itself all the time.

Been there done that with other technologies and routers as well. Newer doesn't always mean better. People need to think before just purchasing new shit like a kid in a fucking candy store. The amount of new shit with bad firmware is atrocious.

[PathMaster]

Well, my concern there is that we're literally on first generation chipsets right now. It generally takes a while to get the hardware and firmware to run stable. 11n is incredibly mature at this point and the hardware in general is rock solid. 11ac is much more of an unknown.

tl;dr - it would really suck to buy a really expensive 11ac router only to find out the thing reboots itself all the time.

Ah, okay. That does make sense. Let others beta test for the masses.

Just disregard my previous comments. Listen to Slack3r78.

[Bone]

I made myself wait years to get an N modem, and feel like it was a wise choice to let the dust settle. How long was that shit in draft anyway?

[PathMaster]

I remember draft N items being out for a year or two at least before it was finally ratified. I think there were two draft versions two and draft 1 did not play well with the final specs.

[Bone]

Seemed to me like 5 years of draft N with devices being sold left and right. But that could be my memory failing again.

[Mot Wakorb]

Been there done that with other technologies and routers as well. Newer doesn't always mean better. People need to think before just purchasing new shit like a kid in a fucking candy store. The amount of new shit with bad firmware is atrocious.

I agree with this - I'm staying away from ac until it's ratified, Pre-N had quite a few incompatibilities with ratified-N.

[Psykoboy2]

Went with a NetGear WNDR 3700 and things are looking pretty good.

Here's the results from going from modem to box:

http://speedtest.net/result/2032997244.png

Here's the result from the Linksys:

http://speedtest.net/result/2032971805.png

Here's the result from the NetGear:

http://speedtest.net/result/2033075146.png

My wireless connections are also faster. I did FaceTime with my iPhone to some family and their image was much clearer than I remember it being. Speedtest on my MBPro also showed improvement from what I remember.

I think I'll be sticking with this one.

I appreciate everyone's help. One thing though and I can't find anything on it that relates: On the router itself I'm getting an amber light from the PC connection while the other two (I'm wired into my MBPro at the moment as well as a switch to connect the 360, PS3, TiVo [soon to be DirecTV], etc.) are green. Any idea what that means?

[Karak]

Went with a NetGear WNDR 3700 and things are looking pretty good.

Here's the results from going from modem to box:

http://speedtest.net/result/2032997244.png

Here's the result from the Linksys:

http://speedtest.net/result/2032971805.png

Here's the result from the NetGear:

http://speedtest.net/result/2033075146.png

My wireless connections are also faster. I did FaceTime with my iPhone to some family and their image was much clearer than I remember it being. Speedtest on my MBPro also showed improvement from what I remember.

I think I'll be sticking with this one.

I appreciate everyone's help. One thing though and I can't find anything on it that relates: On the router itself I'm getting an amber light from the PC connection while the other two (I'm wired into my MBPro at the moment as well as a switch to connect the 360, PS3, TiVo [soon to be DirecTV], etc.) are green. Any idea what that means?
The manual should point it out.
Here is what I got.
Might want to verify you don't have some issues with your cables.
LINK light on the 6120 should be amber if 100/10 and blue if gigabit

Another post
The blue led showing on your 3700 is the 802.11A status, the WAN link light is the one below it (under the USB light), and yours may be showing green. Mine does the same thing, so I think it's normal. It was amber when connected to my previous SB5100 (100Mb) 100/10.

I swapped out the cat5e for cat6 and the light turned blue.

If you still can't figure it out, it looks like this is NOT a router internal setting thing, via the manual and the official forums. You really may need to replace some cabling there or something as many posters indicated that they had the same issue until they replaced their cables. Which is what I was pointing out yesterday about cables really impacting speed regardless of the age or newness of the router.

[Psykoboy2]

The manual should point it out.
Here is what I got

That mentions the 6120. Is that perhaps the cable modem? Something I forgot to mention was that the link light on my cable modem was amber with it plugged into the LinkSys router and blue when I had it straight to my box. It's now blue going into the NetGear, so that's also different.


The amber I was speaking of earlier is on the NetGear. It's lit under the port I am using my PC for. The other two ports being used are lit green.

[Karak]

That mentions the 6120. Is that perhaps the cable modem? Something I forgot to mention was that the link light on my cable modem was amber with it plugged into the LinkSys router and blue when I had it straight to my box. It's now blue going into the NetGear, so that's also different.


The amber I was speaking of earlier is on the NetGear. It's lit under the port I am using my PC for. The other two ports being used are lit green.

Sorry the poster of that first post had the same issue and was in the same tech forum. Apologies, the rest are your router. They were all indicating this particular issue with the light.

Not knowing the various settings and in and outs I can simply say that 99% of the time those lighting changes indicate issues with the signal, or a setting concerning the signal. So concentrating on just what you have now, it looks like something(cable/PC setting) thinks you are at 10/100. That's about all I got there from the forums. I did call the IT tech at work and he concurred that for the additional reason below.

You are getting some serious dropoff in speed just by plugging into the router. NO way you should have a 6 meg dropoff in speed just by going into a router. Well at least I had never heard of it and either had he. I mean you may notice a bit but that seems like again you have a setting or signal issue which are almost always worsened by the more you put in between the various devices, longer cable, router, blah blah blah. The last time this kind of thing happened to us it was bad cat cabling. Then again later with a bad cable Internet install in a clients home. I am not saying I am right, just saying this seems backed up by what I found on the forums and our past experience. I am sure others can chime in if they think I am wrong or stupid.

[Psykoboy2]

Also you are still getting some serious dropoff in speed just by plugging into the router. Again makes me think you have a cable issue.

Straight into the modem and I get mid to high 70s and sometimes into the 80s. Into the router and I'm getting mid to high 60s. Compare that to the LinkSys when I was getting mid 30s to 40.

So the dropoff isn't near as serious and I've noticed speed increase all around from wired to wifi.

[Karak]

Straight into the modem and I get mid to high 70s and sometimes into the 80s. Into the router and I'm getting mid to high 60s. Compare that to the LinkSys when I was getting mid 30s to 40.

So the dropoff isn't near as serious and I've noticed speed increase all around from wired to wifi.

Correct 100% but its still indicating that you have an issue. The comparison is actually where it indicates an issue. You are having signal loss or a setting issues somewhere. Now...its much faster, and you could be totally happy with that. I am just pointing out that the dropoff is not something you have to live if you don't want to, as the problem has continued, despite being overall much faster. Losing 20 megs a second is nothing at all to sneeze at is all. That loss equals MORE than most peoples full download speed:) To try to put it into perspective.
7 bucks for a cable:)

Hope that helps.

FYI this might also clear it up a bit if you like. Though a 10% drop is still a bit high for overhead but would be around 7-8 megs max drop.

So, the problem is: electrical noise! All the cables are shielded, and the power cords are segregated from the data cables, so the noise is coming directly from the devices. And low and behold, when I separated the router and modem by a few slots on my rack, I'm getting full speed minus about 10%, which is probably reasonable for router overhead and marginal residual noise.

[Karak]

And sorry I just hate loss for no reason:) Gotta get those downloads asap.

[Psykoboy2]

Not at all, man. I'm appreciating all the input from everyone.

[J Arcane]

IME, there's always some loss when you add a router compared to running straight from a modem.

That extra overhead is always going to cost you some. As for your PC getting lower speeds than the rest, perhaps it's the network adapter in your PC?

[muddi900]

The house router is an older Netgear that is so weak that in order to get consistent signal on my Transformer

Both Apple and Asus learned the hard the way that Aluminium doesn't work with wifi.

[Mot Wakorb]

IME, there's always some loss when you add a router compared to running straight from a modem.

That extra overhead is always going to cost you some. As for your PC getting lower speeds than the rest, perhaps it's the network adapter in your PC?

There shouldn't be loss through one of these devices (not current ones at least.) You're not adding enough overhead in NAT translations at all, because the firewall does the job of keeping a table without mangling the packets.

Like Karak said, start by replacing the following:

The Ethernet Cable between your modem and your Netgear
The Ethernet Cable between your Netgear and your PC.

Now - as for the amber/blue light situation. It's 100% dependent on how your network adapter negotiates with your device. If your laptop only has a 10/100 network card, then amber should be what you see. If it has gigabit, that means the handshake failed at gigabit speed and dropped back to 10/100 to avoid further loss. The best test like Karak mentioned, change cables. Something as simple as a damaged or bent wire inside the cable can cause this to happen as each ethernet cable has 8 wires - in gigabit, four are send, four are receive. If one of those fails, it will drop back to 10/100.

Things like those speed tests as well are to be taken with a grain of salt as network congestion can HIGHLY effect those tests - a real test is to use a multi-threaded download tool such as DownThemAll in firefox and download a large file. Then you take the speed you're downloading at and multiply whatever number you're getting by eight. So, for example, if you can theoretically download a file at 8 MB (capital B - Bytes) per second, you multiply that by 8 and get 64Mb/sec (small b - bits) transfer rate. Now, the other side has to be ready for a connection of that speed as well, so again, internet congestion can cause misreads. Internet/networking is sold at Megabit speeds for marketing and technical reasons.

[Mot Wakorb]

7 bucks for a cable:)

Where the hell do you buy your cables man!?! Why spend that much???

Monoprice 7' CAT-6 Cable: $1.67 (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10232&cs_id=1023207&p_id=2115&seq=1&format=2)

Monoprice 10' CAT-6 Cable: $2.11 (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10232&cs_id=1023208&p_id=3436&seq=1&format=2)

[Karak]

Where the hell do you buy your cables man!?! Why spend that much???

Monoprice 7' CAT-6 Cable: $1.67 (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10232&cs_id=1023207&p_id=2115&seq=1&format=2)

Monoprice 10' CAT-6 Cable: $2.11 (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10232&cs_id=1023208&p_id=3436&seq=1&format=2)

I meant dropping down to the local expensive random store:) I wasn't thinking online for some reason.

[Slack3r78]

Both Apple and Asus learned the hard the way that Aluminium doesn't work with wifi.

lol, you never used a TiBook.

[J Arcane]

Both Apple and Asus learned the hard the way that Aluminium doesn't work with wifi.
In this case, it's not just the Transformer's fault. I get shoddy signal with my other devices too.
There shouldn't be loss through one of these devices (not current ones at least.) You're not adding enough overhead in NAT translations at all, because the firewall does the job of keeping a table without mangling the packets.
This is a nice thought, but I've literally never seen it be true in real life on consumer-level hardware.

lol, you never used a TiBook.
I did!

Think was pretty sweet for its age, honestly, even if it was falling apart.

[Mot Wakorb]

This is a nice thought, but I've literally never seen it be true in real life on consumer-level hardware.

Just as my argument here is anecdotal, yours is as well - I've not had issue like you have with consumer hardware. Milage varies for everyone.

[Bone]

My routers typically have little to no real impact on my speeds. Else I would have just used the cable company's modem as my router.

[Psykoboy2]

http://speedtest.net/result/2038316698.png

Didn't do a damn thing. I'm now getting a green light on the port on the router the PC is plugged into. Not sure what changed, but I'd say we're good.

[Mot Wakorb]

http://speedtest.net/result/2038316698.png

Didn't do a damn thing. I'm now getting a green light on the port on the router the PC is plugged into. Not sure what changed, but I'd say we're good.

If you did nothing, replace the cable. Likely bad somewhere.

[Slack3r78]

If you did nothing, replace the cable. Likely bad somewhere.

Seconded. Something's causing the switch to autodetect 10/100 instead of gigabit. Cable's most likely culprit.

[PathMaster]

Cable issues are a bitch in any scenario.

[AntonThaGreat]

Cable issues are a bitch in any scenario.

I've had times where one bad cable took out an entire office network, that one was a bitch to figure out. We were getting all kinds of strange errors and behavior all over the place.

[PathMaster]

My most recent issue was a bad port out of several 48 port switches. Took an entire building down on site.

[Karak]

I've had times where one bad cable took out an entire office network, that one was a bitch to figure out. We were getting all kinds of strange errors and behavior all over the place.

Thats what I was saying in my first post. A fucking cable can completely debilitate your workflow. Our work basically started up that if something appears hitching with no known cause we look to cables first:)

[PathMaster]

Thats what I was saying in my first post. A fucking cable can completely debilitate your workflow. Our work basically started up that if something appears hitching with no known cause we look to cables first:)

I am afraid to even think about that to be honest. Our Network room is an ungodly mess of wires. Old phone system with copper and newish switches. Lines labeled incorrectly or illegibly. Yuck! Not my fault luckily. Frankly though, I am more worried that it sits beneath a bathroom and it is in the same room as the boiler. DUST!

[Slack3r78]

I am afraid to even think about that to be honest. Our Network room is an ungodly mess of wires. Old phone system with copper and newish switches. Lines labeled incorrectly or illegibly. Yuck! Not my fault luckily. Frankly though, I am more worried that it sits beneath a bathroom and it is in the same room as the boiler. DUST!

You really, really do not want to see the wiring closets where I work. Unmitigated disaster is an understatement. All our racks have cabling guides, but for some reason our cable guy (who's been here literally decades) never actually used them. We're talking closets that can have a dozen plus 48 port switches where cables are just intermingled, hanging at random, or strung out between racks. It's nightmare fuel.

[PathMaster]

*cringe*

It would be interesting to show off cable disasters, but that would be a different thread.

[Karak]

I am afraid to even think about that to be honest. Our Network room is an ungodly mess of wires. Old phone system with copper and newish switches. Lines labeled incorrectly or illegibly. Yuck! Not my fault luckily. Frankly though, I am more worried that it sits beneath a bathroom and it is in the same room as the boiler. DUST!

Hahahaha. We spent 20,000 restoring the room, under the floor AC and moving the entire room. I got them to buy correct wallmounts and so forth so it isn't so bad. SADLY that actually doesn't stop from the random bad cable or pinched cord:)