[SOLVED] Considering buying 2.5 Gbps USB dongles for home PCs - would 1 Gbps router need changing?

King Mustard

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Mar 17, 2010
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I want to improve transfer speeds between my two PCs. 100 MB/s isn't really enough.

Our ISP is BT Broadband and we use their BT Smart Hub (sometimes called the Home Hub 6), which was released in 2016.

I am considering buying 2x Plugable 2.5G USB-C and USB to Ethernet Adapter (totals £64) for the two PCs in the house, which are both currently connected via CAT5e cable to the above wireless router.

Presumably, the router will limit the speed to 1 Gbps.

What options do I have?

Is a wireless router replacement the only possibility to get this working?

I ideally don't want to spend over £100 total, as the upgrade from 1 Gbps to 2.5 Gbps would then not be worth it for me.

I also can not run any more cabling.
 
Last edited:
Solution
Easy, buy the QNAP 2.5gbe switch https://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-QSW-1105-5T-2-5Gbps-negotiation-unmanagement/dp/B08CKT147N

Connect one of the ethernet ports from the switch to the BT hub and connect the two pc's to this switch. DONE.

You'll now be able to transfer files between computers at 280-300MB/s and still get internet from the BT hub. You may need to enable jumbo packets on the BT hub to achieve those speeds but I would recommend not doing jumbo packets if you can because some devices on your network might not like it.

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Our ISP is BT Broadband and we use their BT Smart Hub (sometimes called the Home Hub 6), which was released in 2016.

I am considering buying 2x Plugable 2.5G USB-C and USB to Ethernet Adapter (totals £64) for the two PCs in the house, which are both currently connected via CAT5e cable to the above wireless router.

Presumably, the router will limit the speed to 1 Gbps.

What options do I have?

Is a wireless router replacement the only possibility to get this working?

I ideally don't want to spend over £100 total, as the upgrade from 1 Gbps to 2.5 Gbps would then not be worth it for me.

I also can not run any more cabling.
What benefit do you believe you will get from changing from 1GE to 2.5GE -- meaning what is the use-case that you believe will be improved by faster peak LAN speeds ?
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
I want to improve transfer speeds between my two PCs. 100 MB/s isn't really enough.
If you have large files to transfer, then you might benefit. If you transfer 100s (or 1000s) or small files, the overhead will negate the network speed improvement.
Since you can't run new cable, you will have to get a multigig switch and then uplink that to your router. I don't see any multigig switches that will fit you limited budget.
 

ajohnson30

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Jul 26, 2012
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I'm a little confused here. Are you saying that you're currently connected at 100mbps to your router, and you want to increase your PC-to-PC speed? If that's the case, I would bet that your 2 PC's already have 1gbps capable network ports (NICs), but your router (being old) does not, as you said.
Why don't you see if 1gbps is enough? You may not get 2.5gbps out of USB anyway, and as kanewolf said, multigig switches are not budget friendly.

Just buy a cheap 5-port gigabit switch for now, like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-5-Port-Gigabit-Network-Switch/dp/B0863M7C1L
(or this for uk ppl)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-5-Port-Gigabit-Network-Switch/dp/B0863M7C1L

Plug both your PCs into the switch, then run a third line from the switch to the router.

The PCs will talk to each other at 1gbps, but when they talk to the router, they'll slow down to it's 100mbps

HTH,
Aaron
 
Easy, buy the QNAP 2.5gbe switch https://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-QSW-1105-5T-2-5Gbps-negotiation-unmanagement/dp/B08CKT147N

Connect one of the ethernet ports from the switch to the BT hub and connect the two pc's to this switch. DONE.

You'll now be able to transfer files between computers at 280-300MB/s and still get internet from the BT hub. You may need to enable jumbo packets on the BT hub to achieve those speeds but I would recommend not doing jumbo packets if you can because some devices on your network might not like it.
 
Solution

King Mustard

Distinguished
Mar 17, 2010
212
2
18,695
I'm a little confused here. Are you saying that you're currently connected at 100mbps to your router, and you want to increase your PC-to-PC speed? If that's the case, I would bet that your 2 PC's already have 1gbps capable network ports (NICs), but your router (being old) does not, as you said.

Just buy a cheap 5-port gigabit switch for now, like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-5-Port-Gigabit-Network-Switch/dp/B0863M7C1L
(or this for uk ppl)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-5-Port-Gigabit-Network-Switch/dp/B0863M7C1L

Plug both your PCs into the switch, then run a third line from the switch to the router.

The PCs will talk to each other at 1gbps, but when they talk to the router, they'll slow down to it's 100mbps

HTH,
Aaron
My two PCs and the wireless router are 1 Gbps/100 MB/s (real world transfer speed in MB/s) only.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Getting better than gigabit speed would require running new cable.
WiFi is not going to do it.

Putting a 2.5 dongle on each end leaves the existing Cat5e for the connection.
As running new cable is apparently a non starter, your options would seem to be none.
 
Getting better than gigabit speed would require running new cable.
WiFi is not going to do it.

Putting a 2.5 dongle on each end leaves the existing Cat5e for the connection.
As running new cable is apparently a non starter, your options would seem to be none.

Times have changed, 802.3bz multi-gig networking standard was created to aide in the adoption of higher speed networking with the realization that company networks are mostly already wired with cat5e. To speed up adoption 802.3bz was created to utilize existing infrastructure and offer 2.5gbe and 5gbe speed on shorter distance runs of cat5e. A home is considered short distance in most cases unless you live in a mansion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5GBASE-T_and_5GBASE-T


Here's a quote:
WIKIPEDIA said:
"
History[edit]
As faster Wi-Fi protocols such as IEEE 802.11ac were developed, there was significant demand for cheap uplinks faster than 1000BASE-T. These speeds became relevant around 2014 as it became clear that it would not be possible to run 10GBASE-T over already widely deployed Cat5e cable. IEEE 802.3bz also supports power over Ethernet, which had previously not been available at 10GBASE-T. "


The OP has the answer though, just get a 2.5gbe switch for $100 and connect it to the BT router. Any 2.5gbe client connected to the switch can do 2.5gbe and still get internet from the router.
 
What about just having the two wireless dongles and create a peer to peer network for just the ones that need the higher bandwidth.

I agree a cabling solution is much more desirable for regular high bandwidth connections.

Wifi is half duplex, so whatever speeds they advertise you can only get half of that in real world transfers. Also, the speeds they advertise assumes you'll use 160mhz channel width which isn't feasible in the real world until the adoption of wifi 6E is more readily available. In all likelyhood, his real world wifi speeds would never get over what gigabit ethernet can handle, let alone approach 2.5gbe.