A slow switch will drastically decrease your internet speed

[snowdog]

I have 120 mb internet since a couple of weeks, perhaps a month or 2, I was annoyed and blaming my provider for not providing the speed I expected, I knew my setup limited me somewhat:

Modem - CAT5 100mbps - Linksys switch - CAT5 100mbps - my pc

I have the switch in between because we have many cabled devices in the network, and the 4 ports on the modem are NOT enough.

I was getting only 40 mb at best, me annoyed of course, windows said the network connection bandwith wasn't ever above 50% so I expected at least 70-80 mbits of download tbh.


I just plugged in my pc directly to a port on the modem, 1gbps connection.

And poof :

A stupid Linksys WRT54G can't cope with more than about 50 mbps from 1 switch port to the other, stupid piece of ''beep''.

Here's me being mad at my ISP that they are providing me insufficient speed, lesson learned, plug in my pc directly to a modem using a gigabit connection, my parents pc's and devices like printers can be plugged in to the slower switch hehe .

So remember kids, plug in your pc directly to a modem with an as fast as possible connection to reach maximum internet speed, a 100mbps switch CAN limit your speed badly.


Before, I got speeds like this :

Which is more than 3x as slow...

MY own fault for being stubborn.

 

[snowdog]

Yeah I'm just surprised, I expected AT LEAST 50 megabits through the linksys switch, I found it hard to believe it was the switch's fault and blamed my ISP with a couple of mails . Was actually close to stepping down from 120mb to 40 mb...

A gigabit switch, if I buy one to replace the linksys one, would be okay ?

I mean, I have 2 cables going upstairs now... While I can leave this like it is ( and simply tidy up the 2nd cable which is going across the floor/house now) I'd rather not have the hassle of laying another cable upstairs...Would any gigabit switch in between the modem and my pc be fine to provide me with my full internet bandwith ?

 

[snowdog]

Using it as just a switch, its to slow at even doing just that...
The cisco modem is a router too, 4 port switch and wlan, the linksys is used for upstairs and the cisco one downstairs...

Have more than 2 devices cabled both down and upstairs, also using both as a wlan access point as obv. one has better reception upstairs and one downstairs.... In total I have 5 devices (pcs, laptops, etc) cabled in the network, and 4 wireless...

 

[snowdog]

Cat5 or cat5e ?. Cat5e is fine for Gbit but Cat5 may have issues. What are the max cable lengths you are running and are they solid or multi-strand cable ?.

The cables I used before were both 5e, incidentally the one I'm using now directly is a long cat5.

Ok, so at the switch you would be limited to 100mbit (12.5MB/s Max) divided by what ever is flowing through the switch at the same time if all cabling is up to spec. Your suggested expectation of 70-80Mbit/s certainly seems a reasonable expectation.

You unplugged the cable between the Cisco and the WRT at the WRT end and then plugged that same cable directly in to your computer or used a different cable of the same length or took your PC to the Cisco router and then connected with a different shorter cable ?.

That's what I thought, but apparently not!

Unplugged nothing, I plugged a 2nd cable in a free port from the cisco to another free gigabit port on my pc. I'm actually double connected right now (though obviously the ''old'' connection is unneeded for my pc)...
The ''new'' cable is longer than the 2 old ones combined...

Which one do you have ?. They currently have many different versions and hardware revisions.

Absolutely. Bad cables are another place to look for problems with link speeds (connectors damaged/stressed, cable kinked/bent at sharp angles or even being adhoc joined can all be detrimental to throughput).

One think to look out for on the router specs is max throughput rather than just max link speed. More expensive routers and switches tend to have better backend bandwidth available to service all ports simultaneously at top speed whilst cheaper units may not.

Results from a WRT54G V3.1 (taken from dd-wrt speed test here).
Unfortunately cannot find total throughput figures for the switch.

If you want to get good then look at the HP Procurve range. Not so expensive, very well built and come with a lifetime guarantee. I use a 1810-24G web managed switch at home and it is great. You should be able to get something like a 1410-8G unmanaged switch fairly cheaply (it is around 50quid here). Keep the Linksys if you want wireless connectivity and just plug it in to one of the Procurve ports. Netgear also get good reviews although, honestly, our server racks are generally filled with HP/Cisco (proper Cisco not home Cisco ) switches and routers at work.

RB

I'm not exactly sure what version I have except that it's the WRT54G model, not the GL, or any other faster version. I can't seem to connect to it right now, I'll look later, got to run to work now...