Why my internal network never goes over 10mbps

**Mowax** · 30-01-2012, 07:39 PM

Afternoon,

OK I have, linksys router which is flashed with DD-WRT and then from there via a really old lan cable that I have had in place for ages, and tonight I thought I'd bring home a piece of cat5 cable (that's what it says it is, Cat5e) Now I thought before routing it that I'd give it a test and tried plugging a laptop straight into the back of the linksys with the cable and I got about the same speeds as the network cable that lies under the floor when I transferred a file from my main PC to the laptop

So.....Do I need some kind of different router as I've checked all the lan setting as far as I can see and they are all on auto duplex and negotiate and all the 100mbps are ticked etc. I have at the moment

linksys > pc and the like and then too a netgear 10/100 switch via ethernet > netgear switch 10/100 and all the gear on the end of this. I was under the impression of when the new cable was installed then I'd get better transfer rates and speeds etc.

No point putting this cable in if the speed is the same? maybe some homeplugs? But then again if it's the router then this is the problem as no matter what I connect then the speed is going to be the same.

What did I miss?

**ferguj1** · 31-01-2012, 12:16 AM

CAT 5E and CAT 5 (which is probably what your older cable is) will yield nearly identical results on data transfer with your 100mbps router. CAT 5E, however, would be the minimum requirement should you step up to a Gigabit router.

You never stated what your transfer speeds were, but a lot of other issues could also affect that speed such as older, slower HDDs. I can say with almost certainty that homeplugs will be quiet a bit slower.

Also, as you may already be aware, 100mbps on router is not the same as MBs on file size. The max speed of your router would be 12.5 MBs per second. 8 bits per byte.

**Mowax** · 31-01-2012, 09:13 AM

Ah thanks very much for the reply.

OK my data transfer speeds never get above 11.5 meg, I have a new modem/router coming today, it's a "super hub" are so they call it, as I have just increased my package and there fore the modem needs to change as I'm going up too 50 meg.

OK back to the "linksys" that I have, that's a bit of a shame then if the router it's self won't be able to reach speeds above that.

The main rig that I have that I do all the data transfer too and from has 2 x 64 GIG SSD's set up stripped and 2 x 1TB spinpoints set up as "Mirror" for data redundancy and data transfer or what ever is rapid on this machine.

I know that I do the odd transfer from USB drives so that speed was to be expected but I thought that I'd get much beter speeds.

Thanks for clearing that up for me then mate. It looks as though I'll have to get another router then as that's the bottle neck for now.

The older cable is really old, like 6 or 7 years and all it is, is a huge Ethernet cable.

The new cable as I say is the cat5e which was plugged direct into the router and then to the laptop.

So I'll have to go and look for a gigabyte router then, would you recommend any?

The new modem should be here today and it can be set as "modem" mode, and also "modem/router" mode so it might be an idea to pull the old linksys out and have a play with the new modem as a router as well, see if it's got the capabilities, I was just hoping to keep the linksys as I like DD-WRT and all the functionality that you get with it.

How ever If I must change so be it.

**ferguj1** · 01-02-2012, 02:52 AM

Originally Posted by Mowax

So I'll have to go and look for a gigabyte router then, would you recommend any?

Don't really have any experience with those, however if I see any good reviews around I will pass them on to you. If you were to upgrade to gigabit, then that would increase your theoretical maximum transfer speed to 125 MBps over wire. So that would be a nice increase over your old, providing everything else could keep up.