Taking advantage of my internet connection

S33A

S33A

S33A

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Joined
6 Aug 2013
Posts
39
So, we have BT FTTP Full Fibre 900. It's great, but what's even greater about it, is that when connected via a network cable to the router, we often see speeds over 1.2gbps - 1.4gbps. What's not great is the office is on the floor above where the router is and therefore is currently connected via Wifi. Sadly this only returns approx 430mbps.

For normal use this isn't a problem, but there are times for work I transfer a lot of video files / image files and also any game updates etc.

Also, given we can achieve these connection speeds, it would be great to actually capitalise on them.

Therefore, I'd like to create a hard connection between my office and the router. I've established there is potentially a route down inside the stair well (inside the wall) and I'm not worried about the DIY elements.

My challenge is, what exactly do I need cable/connector wise. Ideally, I'd like to terminate each end with a nice face plate, then run a short lead into the router / computer (ends respectively). From my research, I believe I need the following:

CAT6 UTP Solid Core Cable (approx 15m, appreciate I'll likely have to buy a roll)
2 x CAT6 RJ45 Face Plates
2 x CAT6 Terminated Network Cables (from faceplate to respective devices)
1 x Punch Down Tool
1 x pack of RJ45 connectors and boots.

My alternative thoughts are to purchase a 30m+ pre terminated CAT6 cable and then run a passthrough faceplate on each end.

What's everyone's thoughts on the above? Am I on the right track and if I went with option 2, would I notice any negative effects?

Cheers,
 
If you are getting pre-terminated patch leads for connecting the devices to the faceplates I don't see that you'd need the connectors and boots.

Don't forget back boxes for the faceplates.

There's quite a difference in the lengths you are proposing for your two options: 15m faceplate to faceplate vs 30m for a pre-terminated cable?

If the overall lengths of the connection are the same you shouldn't notice any difference and 30m should be fine anyway.
 
S33A said:
So, we have BT FTTP Full Fibre 900. It's great, but what's even greater about it, is that when connected via a network cable to the router, we often see speeds over 1.2gbps - 1.4gbps
Click to expand...

How are you measuring this? It'd be quite a surprise to get those sort of figures when the ONT itself only as 1Gbps customer port.
 
2j8sWpR
VersionMonkey said:
If you are getting pre-terminated patch leads for connecting the devices to the faceplates I don't see that you'd need the connectors and boots.

Don't forget back boxes for the faceplates.

There's quite a difference in the lengths you are proposing for your two options: 15m faceplate to faceplate vs 30m for a pre-terminated cable?

If the overall lengths of the connection are the same you shouldn't notice any difference and 30m should be fine anyway.
Click to expand...

The length is purely an estimate until I've started getting my exact route sorted. So the 30m reference was in form of this should be plenty. Maybe I'd get away with going closer to the 15m I believe it should be. But would rather be longer and leave some coiled in the wall than short. Noted on the boots / connectors, that would only be if I get a unterminated length and "properly" wire into the face plates.

the-evaluator said:
How are you measuring this? It'd be quite a surprise to get those sort of figures when the ONT itself only as 1Gbps customer port.
Click to expand...
I'm using a mixture of fast.com and speedtest.net, I've uploaded some pics below from just now (after running a cable from my office down the stairs the router). First is it's settle on competition, second is peak point in a second test. Morning is usually my slowest time per se to the whole day.

2j8sWpR
 
The images aren't loading, but fast.com is junk and best ignored. It'll give me readings like this:

Faksxfo.png


Which are simply impossible. My router has 1Gbps WAN & LAN ports so there's simply no way I can pull > 2Gbps through my FTTP connection.
 
Not sure what the current obsession is with saturating these "fast" internet connections with a single device?

If you enable each device to use the full amount of bandwidth, then other devices will suffer e.g. when a game update is happening (and then you are back to needing to implement QoS etc)
 
Apologies, I've been trying to get the images to upload but no luck.

Ok, well that makes sense. what's the best way of me actually testing true speed?
 
Can confirm fast.com is junk... my line comes up at 1.5Gbps there when its 900/900... Speed test seems much more accurate:



Fastest peak ive seen is around 1.1gbps which is about where it should absolutely max out. Seems I was connected to the work vpn during the test so it thinks im 200 miles away from london as well where im about 40.
 
So much testing. In our old office in Salford Quays we had a 2Gbps leased line. And after about a year of using it, one of the ladies in the office asked if we could get an upgrade because our internet was very slow all the time. I tested it, and basically she was syncing her home NAS with the office and her laptop. And her home network connection was 70Mbps down and 18Mbps up. So her entire system was running at 18Mbps because it’s limited by the slowest part of the process.

You might have 900Mbps down, but I bet you no-one on the other end is supplying you with data at 900Mbps except BTs test server.
 
WJA96 said:
No, but it’s incredibly rare anyone will give you ALL their bandwidth for uploading/downloading.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ - most things I download on my connection run at 900Mbps+
I do agree that for most it really isn't necessary to have the full speed as most won't see much difference unless you're transferring a lot of large files, as OP is.
But if you're paying for the speed, I'd be definitely willing to put in a bit of effort to run an ethernet cable, but that's just me.
 
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0007 said:
I beg to differ - most things I download on my connection run at 900Mbps+
I do agree that for most it really isn't necessary to have the full speed as most won't see much difference unless you're transferring a lot of large files, as OP is.
But if you're paying for the speed, I'd be definitely willing to put in a bit of effort to run an ethernet cable, but that's just me.
Click to expand...

You differ as much as you like. I’ve just tested 5 sites and downloaded a large file from each, BBC iPlayer (maxed out at 400Mbps), Sky (maxed out at 330Mbps, Apple Cloud (maxed out at 600Mbps), Google Drive (maxed out at 800Mbps) and Microsoft OneDrive (maxed out at 500Mbps. And then I tested the connection to my office NAS and that gave me the full 900Mbps because I’ve told it I’m THE priority user, so it slows everyone else down to keep me fast.

It’s not just the line coming out of the data centre, in some of these sites I’m sure they have multiple VERY fast links to the internet, it’s the speed the supplying server can actually read the data from its data storage while supplying lots of other users as well AND your client has to be able to take an incoming data stream and write it to local storage while doing all the other stuff a PC does in the background.

Even if I want to do a true speed test for a 1Gbps file transfer across my local network I need to configure a few things to make sure the local devices aren’t running anything else in the background to make sure I get a true test of the transfer speed.
 
WJA96 said:
You differ as much as you like. I’ve just tested 5 sites and downloaded a large file from each, BBC iPlayer (maxed out at 400Mbps), Sky (maxed out at 330Mbps, Apple Cloud (maxed out at 600Mbps), Google Drive (maxed out at 800Mbps) and Microsoft OneDrive (maxed out at 500Mbps. And then I tested the connection to my office NAS and that gave me the full 900Mbps because I’ve told it I’m THE priority user, so it slows everyone else down to keep me fast.
Click to expand...

Could be your ISP then, not sure who you're with.
Of the ones you listed I only use Google Drive and I am getting around ~920Mbps.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying every single thing I download is always 900Mbps, it's just that most things are - or it will at least burst close to it, for me at least.
 
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