Yet another gigiabit ethernet issue

jimbo45 · 12 Apr 2016

Hi there

A lot of those expensive grade cables are used in commercial offices / centres where you have LONG runs, a load of other electrical equipment which could cause interference without decent shielding,heat considerations, vastly different load factors etc.

Top end cable like that would be grossly overkill -- like using electric transmission line (pylon) cable for internal electrical wiring in a home.

For short runs - especially < 5 metres or even < 10 metres - cheaper cable should work just fine in a normal home.

I would still suggest looking at the Wifi-Ethernet Bridge idea as you can use the latest 5GHZ wifi bandwidth and with really fast wifi speeds your computer would probably get just as good results on your LAN as if everything was connected by LAN cable.

Even copying several GB of data files over this type of connection would be as good as LAN anyway -- while 433 MBit/s isn't 1 GBit/s you are unlikely to see any difference -- the bus speed of your computer would limit transfer speeds in any case especially via USB connections (whether USB 2 or USB 3). SSD to SSD over this type of connection is just fine too --I do this regularly.

As an example copying a Movie (approx 4GB in size) from a laptop external (portable self powered - "passport type") USB 3 HDD to NAS box via this type of connection - copy rate is around 101 Mbits /sec. Copying from the same laptop's SSD to the USB 3 external HDD directly connected -- rate is 131 Mbits/sec.

Copying from Laptops SSD to NAS HDD over same connection is around 160 - 270 Mbits/sec -- varies a bit - average over 200 Mbit/sec though.

I'm happy with that type of performance.

When I was using LAN all the way through (no Ethernet-Wifi bridge) I was getting identical speed of around 100 Mbits/sec - so having completely wired LAN all round offers me ZERO advantages.

For homes these days Wired LAN should be going the way of the Dodo.

Note of course this pre-supposes you have decent broadband in your area.

You can also use the 2.4GHZ band but the speed won't be as fast -- I think around 300 Mbits/sec is the maximum on a 2.4GHZ network with current protocols --should still be plenty fast enough for normal purposes.

Finally It took me less than 3 hours to upload nearly 3TB of Movies / TV episodes to my NAS box with this connection -- 3TB is a LOT of data to transfer over a HOME network using Wireless especially done the old fashioned way!!!

Best thing I ever did on Networking was to get rid of loads of LAN cable and go for the Wifi Bridge !!!. "She who must be obeyed.." !!! was happy too with me removing boxes out of TV room and loads of cables. That alone made the exercise worth it.

Cheers
jimbo

NavyLCDR · 12 Apr 2016

Like I've said already. I've made a 6ft patch cable with cheap Chinese wire marked as Cat 5e that would only connect at 100 Meg on an otherwise rock solid gigabit network even though all 8 lights lit up on the tester. But, whatever. All I know is how I got my devices and hubs to connect at Gigabit speeds.

And we have to remember, none of us have actually seen the network infrastructure we are talking about. So none of us can say with 100% certainty what the problem is or is not.

bro67 · 12 Apr 2016

NavyLCDR, I have up to 30' of Cat-5e runs in my house and have no issues with 1000 mbps connections between switches and A/P's. So I highly doubt that it is a cable issue. More of an adapter and driver issue.

Cat-5e works fine with 1000 mbps. Cat-6 if you are talking of going with 10 gbps, which no one that I know of, is going to pay that much in equipment, unless they happen to be doing live broadcasts out to the world on a Fiber connection from their home.

NavyLCDR · 12 Apr 2016

bro67 said:

NavyLCDR, I have up to 30' of Cat-5e runs in my house and have no issues with 1000 mbps connections between switches and A/P's. So I highly doubt that it is a cable issue. More of an adapter and driver issue.

Cat-5e works fine with 1000 mbps. Cat-6 if you are talking of going with 10 gbps, which no one that I know of, is going to pay that much in equipment, unless they happen to be doing live broadcasts out to the world on a Fiber connection from their home.

How exactly do you know what quality cable erdihu has at his/her location? What quality connectors are on that cable? Yes, good quality Cat 5e with decent connectors will support gigabit speed. $.03 / ft stranded crap cable from China marked as Cat 5e that comes coiled up in a plastic bag with a zip lock baggie of connectors won't.

Now, back to my original question....how can you POSSIBLY comment on the quality of the cables and connectors at the location in question and make the judgement that it likely isn't the cable when you haven't even seen it?

There are millions of Realtek chip based network adapters out there running on Windows on gigabit networks with no issues at all.

linw · 14 Apr 2016

Hear, hear, NavyLCDR. Couldn't agree more.

All "cat 5e" is not made equal. Like you say, cheap Chinese "5e" cable just cannot be relied upon to go Gb. I ordered 2 x 20 metre so-called 5e cables from a local auction site and they would only do 100 Mb. The supplier replaced them with cat 6 cables and all was well.

Oh, yes, I have Realtek NICs with Realtek drivers! Woe is me - not.

erdihu · 30 Apr 2016

So, here's what I found since my last post here.
After started using a CAT6 cable, I had a more stabile gigabit connection. However, I noticed that when I move the cable/laptop a bit the connection dropped down to 100Mbps again.
I remembered that few months after I bought this laptop, my ethernet card broke down and Dell has replaced it by sending a techinican to my home. I suspect that there is some kind of connection problem with the daughter board (where ethernet chip is on) and the mother board. Or it can be that they have used a bad daughter board. I am not an electrician so I did not open it up. So this specific issue is only related to bad quality parts/inadequate technicians which Dell is using.
I just wanted to drop this here in case one day someone may find this from Google.