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Wireless Speed: 208 mb/s, Wired Speed: 102 mb/s--What's wrong?

SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today!Registered User regular
Since I actually updated my Cable Internet to the new standard, I've found a strange arrangement: via my living room router, a T-Mobile branded Asus AC 1900 (a popular model), my Xbox One X's internal speed test gets 208 mb/s (down) pretty easily (actual download speeds from Xbox Live are more like 130 mb/s, but the point stands). My LG smartphone next to the router gets 130 mb/s, which isn't too unusual. My Surface Pro will get Wifi speeds matching the Xbox, as you might expect.

However, my wired PC in the adjacent room, over a 25 foot Cat 7 cable seldom goes over 102 mb/s.

Granted, 102 mb/s isn't that bad, but it seems like it should be a lot better (in fact, if I use my separate BT/Wifi antenna hooked to my PC, I get comparable speeds through the wall of my apartment). For the life of me, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong--wired network settings, both in Windows 10 and in the router itself, stump the hell out of me. The shielded Cat 7 cable is supposed to be cable of doing that over that distance....at least, that's why I bought it to replace a "much inferior" Cat 5 cable I had lying around.

Synthesis on

Posts

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    Is your PC getting gigabit or 100mbit on the wired connection? Sounds like something is limiting the network interface to 100mbit. check what speed the adapter is telling you it's running at.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    Is your PC getting gigabit or 100mbit on the wired connection? Sounds like something is limiting the network interface to 100mbit. check what speed the adapter is telling you it's running at.

    Assume I'm really stupid in this area, because I am.

    Under network properties, link speed receive/transmit is 1000/1000. In the old ethernet status box, it says 1.0 Gbps. Should I look elsewhere?

  • useruser Registered User regular
    edited May 2019
    Your NIC might be a bit finicky with respect to what cables it works best with. They're not all created equal.

    Cat7 is a database center standard and is intended for an environment where you can pair it with certified and compatible jacks, patch panels, switches and other equipment.

    For a basic computer you would probably get better performance from Cat6.

    user on
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited May 2019
    Maybe, but the cable's reviews suggest the vast majority of people are buying it for your usual home PCs. Plus, I think technically Cat 5 should've done the job too over only 25 ft, even if not as well.

    Synthesis on
  • useruser Registered User regular
    Well, I also use the T-Mobile AC1900 -- using Cat6 and my onboard NIC is Intel I211-AT.

    I would say your problem is either a finicky NIC (if it were Realtek I'd lean more towards that) or the cable. If its the former then you'd still possibly solve it by trying a different cable.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited May 2019
    Maybe. I still think I'm overlooking something in the settings. In any case, it's an older ASUS Z97-A motherboard, with an Intel network adapter. It should be able to do it, but maybe not--frankly, that's more believable than not having the right cable.

    I guess I can stop by Best Buy and pick up a Cat 6 cable after work. If it turns out I'm right, I can return it.

    Synthesis on
  • SiliconStewSiliconStew Registered User regular
    A properly terminated Cat 5 cable will do 1Gb at 100m just fine. Could simply be a faulty cable or a bad port, 100Mb can get by with the right 2 pair, but 1Gb needs all 4 pair working. Try moving the cable to a different port on the router and try the other Ethernet cable. Other most likely cause is not having both pc and router ports set to Autonegotiate for speed and duplex. The 1Gb standard requires both be set to Auto, it'll fall back to 100 otherwise if there's a mismatch. Even if your device allows you to hard set a port to 1000 speed, that's not part of the standard, so actual behavior will be unreliable.

    Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited May 2019
    A properly terminated Cat 5 cable will do 1Gb at 100m just fine. Could simply be a faulty cable or a bad port, 100Mb can get by with the right 2 pair, but 1Gb needs all 4 pair working. Try moving the cable to a different port on the router and try the other Ethernet cable. Other most likely cause is not having both pc and router ports set to Autonegotiate for speed and duplex. The 1Gb standard requires both be set to Auto, it'll fall back to 100 otherwise if there's a mismatch. Even if your device allows you to hard set a port to 1000 speed, that's not part of the standard, so actual behavior will be unreliable.

    Oh boy. I hope it's not this, though it might be--it may not actually be possible to change autonegotiate/duplex settings on a TM-AC1900 router (there is no option to enable Telnet features). Which basically means I need to buy a new router (which honestly might be the only way I make headway, though like buying a new cable, it kind of sucks just to throw money at the issue and hope it works out).

    Nice to see that ethernet settings still suck. I guess for most people, you're lucky if you can get 100 mb/s anyway.

    EDIT: Holy crap--toggling between "1.0 GBPS Full Duplex" and "Autonegotiation" (the original setting) under Speed & Duplex in the ethernet device under Network Adapters in the Device Manager....and I immediately got 212 mb/s in a Speedtest.net running. I have no idea if it's going to persist, but at least it's probably not the cable then! Going to 1 Gigabit caused it to go to 104, but setting it back to Autonegotiation got it to 212.

    It probably won't "Stay", but that's the first time it ever reached that.

    EDIT: It did not, but it's still encouraging in a way. At least I can probably rule out the cable itself. That being said, bypassing the router yielded very little advantage (speeds stayed around 105 mb/s)....unfortunately, I'm under the impression you need to have a competent router to get +100 anyway (plus I need some sort of router in the end of the day), so bypassing doesn't necessarily mean it's exclusive a PC-side issue. Or maybe not.

    This has also reminded that I still haven't flashed the TM-AC1900 to ASUS RT-AC68U.....which was something recommended when I first bought the router, but I avoided doing out of fear of messing up and bricking it. Though if I'm seriously considering replacing it, that might not be a bad idea.

    Synthesis on
  • SiliconStewSiliconStew Registered User regular
    Looking up various ASUS routers show they all can do at least 750Mbps LAN to WAN throughput, and that you are getting above 100Mbps with your wireless connections shows that general router throughput is not the problem. However, I see references to a bug in the QoS implementation on your router that affected wired download speeds. Turn off QoS and try again. Make sure you've left your PC set to Autonegotiate. When you are only getting 100Mbps with Autonegotiate, does the router interface also report its ports running at 1Gb?

    When you say you still only got 100Mbps bypassing the router, was that with the PC on Autonegotiate? What did your NIC report for the autonegotiated speed/duplex? If so, and the QoS change didn't help, I still wouldn't rule out a damaged port on the PC, but you might as well try motherboard bios updates and driver updates for the NIC as this failed test would tend to point to the problem being with the PC rather than the network. However, it is also possible that your ISP was throttling the connection because of the change in MAC address of the device connected to their modem. Depending on how they manage their network, they may throw unknown devices in their lowest speed tier by default.

    Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited May 2019
    Looking up various ASUS routers show they all can do at least 750Mbps LAN to WAN throughput, and that you are getting above 100Mbps with your wireless connections shows that general router throughput is not the problem. However, I see references to a bug in the QoS implementation on your router that affected wired download speeds. Turn off QoS and try again. Make sure you've left your PC set to Autonegotiate. When you are only getting 100Mbps with Autonegotiate, does the router interface also report its ports running at 1Gb?

    When you say you still only got 100Mbps bypassing the router, was that with the PC on Autonegotiate? What did your NIC report for the autonegotiated speed/duplex? If so, and the QoS change didn't help, I still wouldn't rule out a damaged port on the PC, but you might as well try motherboard bios updates and driver updates for the NIC as this failed test would tend to point to the problem being with the PC rather than the network. However, it is also possible that your ISP was throttling the connection because of the change in MAC address of the device connected to their modem. Depending on how they manage their network, they may throw unknown devices in their lowest speed tier by default.

    I haven't really changed any settings on my TM-AC1900 because, to be honest, they are cryptic as fuck. Problematically so. At least everything relating to WAN/LAN--the wifi settings are pretty straightforward.

    I've only changed settings available under Device Manager's Network Adapter entry (it's your most generic Intel Ethernet adapter). I've only changed it between autonegotiate and 1.0 Gigabit.

    I actually updated my motherboard BIOS a few years ago, and there have been no further updates since then (it's an ASUS Z97-A...it's not new). I appreciate your help, but I need to take a step back--what settings am I looking at on the Router's own internal UI software? I don't know if all router software is this bad, but this is, in any case (I can't even find anything on the TM-AC1900 described as Speed and Duplex settings....it's actually possible they don't exist, since T-Mobile might've deliberate hidden them in their branded distribution of this model). If you try and search "Duplex settings on a TM-AC1900" the large majority of results are...how to flash your T-Mobile Router to the ASUS default.

    And then to make matters worse, there's reporting that many ASUS routers will deliberately turn on a throttle to 100 mbps the moment your internet usage declines to a certain point. So unless you're running a 24-hour-server (in which case why would you buy a TM-AC1900?), you're not going to breach 1000 mbps. Which would explain why I got 212 mbps on Speedtest once, and never again.

    That's not very encouraging, but maybe it's worth taking the hint.

    Again, thank you for your guidance, but I'm afraid I need you to dumb it down a little further. Until this morning, I didn't even know that Duplex settings were a thing.

    EDIT: To be clear, I don't even know for certain that flashing it to an ASUS RT-68-whatever will fix the issue. It's just that if you search "Duplex settings on TM-AC1900", all the results assume you've already done it, and it's known that T-Mobile stripped out certain settings because they were selling the router for half the normal price. At least if none of this works, I might have the option to buy a repeater (or two) for my small (~1050 sq ft) apartment to hopefully create a ~200 mpbs wifi signial in my bedroom and go back to using wifi.

    Synthesis on
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    So, I was going through some other basic features in preparation for the "crack open the router and hope for the best" step.

    Anyone else heard of the Windows Auto-Tuning Feature? Me neither, but it's been around since Windows 8 at least, so it might be my own ignorance.

    I noticed that the last time I managed to break the ~100 mbps range was immediately after toggling network settings..which really does seem like it might be more of something in my PC. Some general recommendations encourage you to turn the Auto-Tune feature off if your network infrastructure is on the older side.

    I was surprised to find mine was already off, so for the hell of it, I turned it on. In the last 30 minutes since then, I've run about 8 speed tests on two different websites, and they've all beaten 200 mbps down (my record was 230 mbps, though it varies a good bit).

    So apparently that was it. At some point, Windows Auto-Tune was turned off (I can't recall when, or even ever hearing of the feature), and turning it on seemed to fix the issue.

    I should still flash my router, but it is a relief to find what the issue was...and not have to buy a new cable (or router).

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