Virgin Media upgraded to 10Mb recently - question

EffBee

EffBee

EffBee

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Joined
9 Dec 2006
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Hi all,

Virgin have been charging me extra for some months for 10Mb connection speed, up from 2Mb.

I got it working today after a week of messing about - courtesy of their tech support people. There was a problem in that their online system didn't recognize my billing details and wouldn't change the package I am on.

So the result is I have got roughly twice the speed up from 2Mb - but it is not anything like the 10 Mb advertised.

Now, I'm not complaining too hard - the extra speed I have is nice, and wasn't too expensive.

But..

Can I have some opinions on why the speed isn't better.

I have a Motorola Surfboard SB4100 cable modem which I understand is up to the job.

I connect to a router via Ethernet. I believe the SB4100 is 10/100 Mb BUT I am probably only connecting it to a 10Mb network card. My understanding of Ethernet is that the packet collision mechanism limits the maximum network speed (capacity) so a 10 Mb card won't actually work at 10 Mb most of the time.

Before I start taking my router to bits and swapping out the NIC for a 10/100 Mb jobbie does anyone have any helpful comments please.

Thanks in advance.
 
u need to connecting it to a 100Mb network card then u should see the full 10Mb speed.

also try connecting the modem straight to the pc via Ethernet
 
Last edited:
gareth170 said:
u need to connecting it to a 100Mb network card then u should see the full 10Mb speed.

also try connecting the modem straight to the pc via Ethernet
Click to expand...

Thanks for that - that is the way I'm thinking as well :)

The figure I had in mind from my old Novell CNE days for ethernet was that it usually operated optimally at about 30% to 40% of it's maximum rating - since I am getting about 3.5Mb/s on a 10Mb card that implies strongly a card upgrade is needed. I have old 10/100 PCI ethernet cards around - just hope there is a spare PCI slot in my very old PC used as a router. PCI was quite new when I bought it so there are loads of ISA slots in there. Haven't opened the box for three years so not quite sure what is going on in there.

The PC is much too far from from the point where the cable connection comes into the house for direct connection unfortunately - the longest cable I have is 6 metres - and in any case I prefer to keep all the PCs on the "safe" side of my Smoothwall firewall/router connected by wireless cards as securely as I can make it.
 
christ man, didn't know anyone still used pc's with ISA slots :p

i'd just buy a WRT54GL router, and put Tomato firmware on it, it's very neat
 
Just a possibility: Are you sure your old PC can route that much bandwidth? Off the top of my head, sounds like you're on a Pentium Pro or something.
 
bledd. said:
christ man, didn't know anyone still used pc's with ISA slots :p

i'd just buy a WRT54GL router, and put Tomato firmware on it, it's very neat
Click to expand...

LoL, I never throw much away. A couple of years ago I very reluctantly got rid of a Compaq 386s which was in it's prime in 1990 or so.

Don't really want to spend much money just now - but I will take your suggestion on board for another day.
 
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