Gigabit Home Networking Upgrade Advice gbit and 100 devices

Manifest

Manifest

Manifest

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Hello all, this is my first post for donkeys so hope I dont alienate half the board with a forum faux pas.

Ive done a search and mostly found my answers but specifically I'm still looking for a couple answers.

I have 3 network points in my house put in by electricians when the house was built and they all terminate under the stairs, I have done a test with my gigabit NIC PC and WAN router by running a cat5e cable direct and 1gbit is achieved, however when I run through the home networking it tries 1gbit, crashes and returns to 100mbit. I have read that no more than 0.5" of your network cable can be untwisted otherwise you wont get 1gbit. Well for what ever reason the eletrician has untwisted about 6 inches and extended the wire length by stipping another length and using eletrican tape to join each 8 wire one by one, then it connects to female cat5e patch ports with another 6 inches untwisted! Im going to re terminate this for obvious reasons but there is no way I'm going to achieve gigabit with wire like that? I'm surprised I even manage to achieve 100mbit to be fair.

My second question is regarding running 100mbit and gigabit devices all from the same WAN router which is a gigabit switch itself. I know the devices auto negotiate to their fastest speed but I have a couple specific questions.

The gigabit WAN connects to the Netgear gigabit switch (capable of 100/10 also), this gigabit switch then connects to two devices, one is the ps3 (gigabit) and the other is the skybox (100mbit). So both devices go through the same port on the WAN router, will that one port fail to 100mbit or will this all be dealt with by the Netgear switch, so one port on the netgear runs at 100 and the other runs at 1gbit?

Ive read so many articles regarding gigabit networks running at the lowest bottleneck speeds, so one device is 100mbit and then the whole network runs at this speed unless you use a different subnet. I cant believe that this is true though, surely it only limits the one port on the switch to 100 and not every other device?

Many thanks for your help in advance, I know its all a bit wordy but I've spent days learning how to set all my gear up properly to upgrade to gigabit.
 
Each device that can run at gigabit will run at gigabit providing the cabling is ok. I've got a mix of 100 and 1000 devices on mynetw ork. The 1000 devices will run at full speed.

If you're switch had lights on it, it may show you which are connecting at 100 and which ones at 1000
 
Thanks for the reply man.

My gigabit switch has the lights on it to tell you whats going on but due to the cabling under the stairs nothings gonna run at 1000 just yet. So the WAN's switch port with the netgear switch attached to it will still run at 1000 even when the gigabit switch attached to it has a 100mbit device and a 1000 device attached to it?
 
Kinda tired, can you explain how things are connected..

Router > 1000 > Switch > 1000 >PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4

etc

Even if the link between the switch and router is 100, anything connected to the 1000 switch from then on will be 1000 (if the cables are ok)
 
Think you've pretty much answered it.

WAN Port 1 ----> 1000 ----> Netgear Gb Switch port 1 ----> 1000 ----> PS3
Netgear Gb Switch port 2 ----> 100 ----> Sky HD BOX

My question is specifically will WAN Port 1 switch to 100 cause it has a 100mbit device going through it or will it still connect to the Netgear at 1000 and the Netgear will limit just port 2. I guess my concern is I want my ps3 at 1000 so don't want the skybox, which will be albeit going through a switch separately will still enter the WAN Port 1, to limit what the ps3 can receive data at as my PC will be in WAN Port 2. I need my PC and ps3 to have 1000 capabilities.

Hope that makes more sense even though it's messy.
 
FYI, it's LAN port on the router.


WAN = the port you'd connect to the wall / modem.


--


All your devices will perform at the highest speed possible regardless of other slower devices connected to the switch.
 
Yeh I know, it's a WAN Router so I mean port 1 on it, yeh it has a dedicated WAN port to connect to the ONT.

Sorry, been up all night I've really explained that poorly my bad.

Yeh so I'm wondering it a 1000 LAN port that's connected to a 1000 switch that then has a 1000 device and a 100 device hooked to it, will the overall speed of all 3 be 100? I've read that the LAN port might drop to 100 but I was hoping only the 1000 switch would. So my PC which is in a different LAN port can communicate using 1000 all the way through the switch to the 1000 device?
 
Thanks very much for the help chaps, got it, for the record I can't believe how many articles are on the net saying that one device can limit all. Glad I asked now.
 
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Even if the connection between the switch and the router was only 100. If the switch is capable of 1000, then every 1000 device connected to the switch will operate at 1000
 
Sometimes it is better to post than google, I read on a few occasions that with 1 100 device and 1 1000 device going through the same LAN port the LAN port with switch to the lowest speed. Now I understand that regardless the switch of capable will connect to the router at 1000 and only the port on the switch which has the 100 device will drop, leaving the rest at 1000 still.
 
If you were using a hub (who does these days?), then the whole network would have to drop to the lowest common denominator, but with a switch, each device (and switchport) is distinct.
 
paradigm said:
If you were using a hub (who does these days?), then the whole network would have to drop to the lowest common denominator, but with a switch, each device (and switchport) is distinct.
Click to expand...

Didn't know this, don't think I've ever used a hub though.
 
My guess is that the 6 inch extended piece of cable may only be cat5e so preventing the Gig speeds. If you can, reterminate under the stairs to eliminate the extra pieces of cable.
 
pdw8 said:
My guess is that the 6 inch extended piece of cable may only be cat5e so preventing the Gig speeds. If you can, reterminate under the stairs to eliminate the extra pieces of cable.
Click to expand...

Cat5e is more than capable of doing gigabit, it's all cat5e, the issue is that gigabit require 4 twisted pairs of wire, mine have all been untwisted you see but yeh I'm going to terminate properly!
 
Sorted, 1 gig all round

Took near on the whole day in the end, I had multiple issues which I will explain through pictures if anyones interested.

So this was how my fibre cabinet was left by the builders and fibre engineer.

IMG_2547.JPG


The wires with white tape on are my exposed cat 5e cable which breaks every gigabit rule there is, the unlabelled wire is phone sockets from around the house.

IMG_2066.JPG


Those bare wires were then joined one by one to another length of cat5e so that it would reach the kinda patch panel at the top. I cut these out completely.

IMG_2057.JPG


Here are the ends that sit in the patch panel where you connect your patch cables too.

IMG_2056.JPG


Problem I had which made life well fiddly was that there was no lengh to pull from the wall and I had to cut the wires quite close to get at some good wire.

Popped RJ45 ends on and plugged them directly into the router, best of a bad situation.

IMG_2061.JPG


Moved some bits around and made it tidy,

IMG_2060.JPG


Checked my switches and devices and still 100 :(

Then I inspected my faceplaces and found that even though they are cat 5e they were missing two pins or they were pushed down and not making contact.

IMG_2058.JPG


Can you see from left pin 3 and 5 just arent there. So replaced all my wall sockets with brand new ones and now I connect at gigabit all round my house.

Small things like this make me happy.
 
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Bit naive really, when I bought the house (new build) you get a huge list of optional extra's, £75 per home networking port, anyway I expected a Network Engineer of sorts to come fit it, I wouldnt have known any different.

If I'd known I would have arranged it all myself which A would have been cheaper and B I would have had cat 6 fitted but I should future proof for some time yet.
 
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