Diagnostic Test: Poor Quality Cable Detected

[saternal]

I have been seeing significant decrease in DL speeds recently thus did a diagnostics test from my Intel Gigabit Card Diagnostic test.: Test Cable Connections and Frequency Response. Results shown as follows:

Cable Offline Test

Poor quality cable detected
Possible causes: Faulty cable, faulty
connector, or a speed/duplex mismatch.
Verify that the speed/duplex setting on
the switch/hub is configured for auto-negotiation.

Test details

Cable Quality:

Low


The test detected a bad connection.
Distance to problem: 20 meters.

Is this accurate? i'm figuring 20m is the actual length of the Cat 5e cable so could it be that there is a problem with the RJ 45 connector at the end of my wire which is connected to the router? And when it says 20m, is it 20m from my router or 20m from my desktop?

Can someone else try this test and let me know if it shows the same result? TY in advance.

 

[i7Baby]

Move your PC closer to the router and try a different cable.

 

[saternal]

Move your PC closer to the router and try a different cable.

Can't do that right now. My monitor is fixed to the wall in my room and the router is in the living room which about 8m away. Btw I already tried changing speed and duplex mode and problem still persists.

 

[i7Baby]

Try a different long cable then.

 

[bill001g]

You are lucky your motherboard has that ability most times you must buy a expensive tool called a tdr. Unlike a tdr though it can only test from one end so it can only guess at some problems. You should though test with the other end of the cable unpluged and see if you get anything different.

Most times it is the ends of the cable causing issues. I would not mess around too much withe the speed and duplex settings leave it all in auto. If you start messing with it you will need to set both the router and the pc end correctly or you will get worse issues.

If this is a normal ethernet patch cable then it is easiest to just replace it. If it in is cable that is in the wall then I would ensure that the wires are in the proper color order on both wall plates and there are no lose wires. It is highly unlikely it is the wire itself that is in the wall since it would have to have been damaged.

 

[saternal]

OK. I've tried moving my pc to the living room and using a different 1m cable to connect direct to the router. Same results. This time however it says the distance to problem is 0 m. I guess this rules out the 20m cable I have in the wall as the cause of the problem. Could it be my router then? BTW I I can rule out the NIC as well cause I'm currently using a brand new one that I bought to replace the motherboard LAN. I seriously thought the problem was with my motherboard's NIC thus I bought an Intel NIC and installed it into the PCIe 2.0. Doesn't make any difference besides being slightly faster now. My DL speed tested on speedtest shows 5 Mbps DL speed and 50Mbps UL speed. This is far from normal.

 

[kanewolf]

OK. I've tried moving my pc to the living room and using a different 1m cable to connect direct to the router. Same results. This time however it says the distance to problem is 0 m. I guess this rules out the 20m cable I have in the wall as the cause of the problem. Could it be my router then? BTW I I can rule out the NIC as well cause I'm currently using a brand new one that I bought to replace the motherboard LAN. I seriously thought the problem was with my motherboard's NIC thus I bought an Intel NIC and installed it into the PCIe 2.0. Doesn't make any difference besides being slightly faster now. My DL speed tested on speedtest shows 5 Mbps DL speed and 50Mbps UL speed. This is far from normal.

You might want to check the documentation for that test. It may be that the other end of the cable is supposed to be unplugged from everything when running the test.

 

[Kewlx25]

OK. I've tried moving my pc to the living room and using a different 1m cable to connect direct to the router. Same results. This time however it says the distance to problem is 0 m. I guess this rules out the 20m cable I have in the wall as the cause of the problem. Could it be my router then? BTW I I can rule out the NIC as well cause I'm currently using a brand new one that I bought to replace the motherboard LAN. I seriously thought the problem was with my motherboard's NIC thus I bought an Intel NIC and installed it into the PCIe 2.0. Doesn't make any difference besides being slightly faster now. My DL speed tested on speedtest shows 5 Mbps DL speed and 50Mbps UL speed. This is far from normal.

You might want to check the documentation for that test. It may be that the other end of the cable is supposed to be unplugged from everything when running the test.

My 7 year old Integrated Intel NIC on my $600 Dell has both an online and offline test. Neither care if the NIC is plugged in, but the offline test will cause the NIC to lose link as it does a frequency response sweep. But yes, still need to check documentation.

saternal, have you tried a different port on your router?