Slow Speed With Wired Router

[Slack3r78]

Originally Posted by PathMaster

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

No not really.

Originally Posted by Slack3r78

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]

Originally Posted by Slack3r78

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]

Originally Posted by Karak

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:



Here's the result from the Linksys:



Here's the result from the NetGear:



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]

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

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

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



Here's the result from the Linksys:



Here's the result from the NetGear:



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]

Originally Posted by Karak

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]

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

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]

Originally Posted by Karak

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]

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

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]

Originally Posted by J Arcane

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]

Originally Posted by 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?

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]

Originally Posted by Karak

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

Monoprice 10' CAT-6 Cable: $2.11

[Karak]

Originally Posted by Mot Wakorb

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

Monoprice 7' CAT-6 Cable: $1.67

Monoprice 10' CAT-6 Cable: $2.11

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