[SOLVED] Ethernet connection slows from 400mbps to 100mbps within a few minutes ?

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Parroty69

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My ethernet has 400mbps immediately after plugging and the adapter status for Realtek PCIe Family Controller shows that it has 1 gigabit:
View: https://imgur.com/cGKpHrP

But after a few minutes it slows down to 100mbps in a speedtest and the adapter status says the speed is 100mbps:
View: https://imgur.com/gDpnIuV

I used multiple cables to test it but a cat6 stays at 100mbps the whole time. And a crappy broken cat5e cable that i had lying around (the one that is in the pictures) begins at 400mbps and slows down to 100mbps like I said
Both cables are UTP cables and the cat6 one is a flat cable. Cat 5e cable is round
I think this is a cable issue because trying out different cables give different results. Do you have any suggestions to fix this issue?
 
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Solution
Sounds like you have 2 bad cables. The cat5e sounds like it was somehow damaged or is just very old.

The cat6 cable you have is a fake cable. Flat cables have wires that are too thin to meet the specification of ethernet. Because the wire is none conforming you can get all kinds of strange errors.

Buy a cat5e or cat6 cable that is pure copper with wire size 22-24

Parroty69

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I would check the ethernet port itself, do any of the pins looked corroded, broken or bent?
You mean on the adapter or the cables?
The adapter looks fine
And the cat 6 cable also looks fine
The cat 5e cable's pins, however look a bit dark
I also forgot to mention that the cat 5e cable has a broken outer layer and I can see the individual colored wires
 
Sounds like you have 2 bad cables. The cat5e sounds like it was somehow damaged or is just very old.

The cat6 cable you have is a fake cable. Flat cables have wires that are too thin to meet the specification of ethernet. Because the wire is none conforming you can get all kinds of strange errors.

Buy a cat5e or cat6 cable that is pure copper with wire size 22-24
 
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Parroty69

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Sounds like you have 2 bad cables. The cat5e sounds like it was somehow damaged or is just very old.

The cat6 cable you have is a fake cable. Flat cables have wires that are too thin to meet the specification of ethernet. Because the wire is none conforming you can get all kinds of strange errors.

Buy a cat5e or cat6 cable that is pure copper with wire size 22-24
My cable is a fake cable? I thought it was real because I bought it from a reputable seller.
And is 26awg enough? I think it is already thick enough for general purposes.
Is copper clad aluminum good?
Do I need a STP cable?
 
My cable is a fake cable? I thought it was real because I bought it from a reputable seller.
And is 26awg enough? I think it is already thick enough for general purposes.
Is copper clad aluminum good?
Do I need a STP cable?

26awg would probably be ok as a cat5e if it were full copper strands. But 26awg copper clad aluminum won't meet spec. No way CCA 26awg can get close to cat6 spec. Most Cat6 cable is 23 or 24awg. So when your adapter does a cable test, the best speed it can negotiate is 100mbps.

I've been burned by buying cables on Amazon, even with reputable brand names that aren't even flat cables. Just regular cables that claim cat6. But had tons of issues when switching my home to 10gbe.

I swapped all my cables out to "CABLE MATTERS" brand 23awg cat6 cables and now everything works as expected at 10gbe. Make sure it's real bare copper, not CCA(copper clad aluminum).
 

Parroty69

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I actually do have a 24awg cat 5e cable that has pure copper but it's connected to my nas which I can't take offline for a long time. But I can take it out and test it for a brief period of time so I can make sure that its 100% a cable problem and if it is then I will invest in a new cable that meets spec. But if it isn't then I may have to service my motherboard. I will edit this when I have the results.
I forgot to ask, can I use patch cables to connect from my router to my computer?
 
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Parroty69

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26awg would probably be ok as a cat5e if it were full copper strands. But 26awg copper clad aluminum won't meet spec. No way CCA 26awg can get close to cat6 spec. Most Cat6 cable is 23 or 24awg. So when your adapter does a cable test, the best speed it can negotiate is 100mbps.

I've been burned by buying cables on Amazon, even with reputable brand names that aren't even flat cables. Just regular cables that claim cat6. But had tons of issues when switching my home to 10gbe.

I swapped all my cables out to "CABLE MATTERS" brand 23awg cat6 cables and now everything works as expected at 10gbe. Make sure it's real bare copper, not CCA(copper clad aluminum).
Is cat6 26awg pure copper any good?
 
Is cat6 26awg pure copper any good?

The higher the awg number, the thinner the cable. So 23awg will be thicker than 26awg.

26awg is usually shielded between each pair to make up for the difference and achieve the same bandwidth. But since 26awg is thinner, it has more resistance over longer cable runs. For long cable runs, use 23awg. For short cable runs, such as in your room, 26awg should be fine.

Personally I prefer 23awg cat6, the price difference isn't that much. It also gives me a little more piece of mind when using POE. But then 23awg will be harder to fish through walls and around bends, which is one of the reasons 26 and 28awg are used. Also, in a tight server rack space, thinner cable will be a little cleaner looking. But for a home, that only has a few ethernet ports thicker wire is fine.
 

Parroty69

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The higher the awg number, the thinner the cable. So 23awg will be thicker than 26awg.

26awg is usually shielded between each pair to make up for the difference and achieve the same bandwidth. But since 26awg is thinner, it has more resistance over longer cable runs. For long cable runs, use 23awg. For short cable runs, such as in your room, 26awg should be fine.

Personally I prefer 23awg cat6, the price difference isn't that much. It also gives me a little more piece of mind when using POE. But then 23awg will be harder to fish through walls and around bends, which is one of the reasons 26 and 28awg are used. Also, in a tight server rack space, thinner cable will be a little cleaner looking. But for a home, that only has a few ethernet ports thicker wire is fine.
About what length of cable is 26awg good for?
What about patch cables?
 
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Parroty69

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I found this ethernet cable from UGREEN NW102 it is advertised as having gold connectors but I doubt that does anything and it is also advertised as passing Fluke's testing
It is 26 awg and has pure copper wiring and it is round
Is it any good?
 
26 awg is in the grey area. If it is fairly short it will work.

If you read though the massive technical requirement for ethernet cable it says 22-24. It also has a small exception that you can use 26 for the final patch between wall jacks and end equipment. I forget the exact limit on how long this cable can be.

Most times you see 26awg the cable is also stranded cable. This make the cable more flexible and people prefer this for the final patch cord. These take different ends if you were to replace the ends yourself.

It will likely work just do not go more than say 10ft.

The cost of copper metal is near record highs so many companies are trying to keep the cost down on cables. Unless you are buying large amounts of cable you are better off paying the small amount of difference and get quality cables. The hassle of dealing with random network issues just is not worth the small amount of money.
 
Yup, Bill is right, since you're only buying 1 cable. Spend a little more for a quality cable. The old saying is "Buy Once, Cry Once."

26awg is probably fine for the lengths used inside your room. But I would spend more on 24awg or lower if you can.

Patch cord and ethernet cable are the same thing. Patch cables are generally shorter and used to connect from a patch panel to a switch.

This monoprice cable isn't bad, I'm not sure what length you need: https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Cat6-Ethernet-Patch-Cable/dp/B01MFCYEBL
 
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Parroty69

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Yup, Bill is right, since you're only buying 1 cable. Spend a little more for a quality cable. The old saying is "Buy Once, Cry Once."

26awg is probably fine for the lengths used inside your room. But I would spend more on 24awg or lower if you can.

Patch cord and ethernet cable are the same thing. Patch cables are generally shorter and used to connect from a patch panel to a switch.

This monoprice cable isn't bad, I'm not sure what length you need: https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Cat6-Ethernet-Patch-Cable/dp/B01MFCYEBL
I don't need any more than 10ft. I'm probably choosing a 6.5ft one.
Also the cable you suggested is a little expensive because the pvc outer layer (plenum) is made to be fireproof and is coated in a fire retardant (no offense). I don't think I would need a plenum cable because it is meant to be used in INSIDE of the aircon itself of buildings that have open air conditioning (where fire risk is higher)
 
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Parroty69

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I found a 24awg pure copper cat6 cable that is 6.5ft.
The specifications say they are TIA/EIA-568-B.2-1, 1mhz to 100mhz, UTP and stranded

It is from the same brand as the cat5e cable (cat5e cable was broken because it was a few years old)
Do I need a shielded cable if I have four fluorescent lights in the room?
Should I get a solid cable or a stranded cable?
 
100mhz is much lower than the cable I linked which is rated to 550mhz. But 100mhz should be fine for gigabit.

I don't think you need shielded if the florescent lights are in the ceiling and the cable is along the floor. If it's drop ceiling and you're laying the cable over the lights then you might want shielded.

I prefer solid, but stranded is fine as long as the awg is the same.
 

Parroty69

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100mhz is much lower than the cable I linked which is rated to 550mhz. But 100mhz should be fine for gigabit.

I don't think you need shielded if the florescent lights are in the ceiling and the cable is along the floor. If it's drop ceiling and you're laying the cable over the lights then you might want shielded.

I prefer solid, but stranded is fine as long as the awg is the same.
My cables are going to be on the floor so I don’t think I would need any shielding. The fluorescent lights however, are on the upper part of the wall
Do you think I would need shielding?
The specifications of the cables are a bit inconsistent. I’m buying from the manufacturer themselves but the product page has the picture saying that it 500mhz and supports 10gb base t but the description of the product says that it is 1-100mhz and doesn’t say the speed
But I don’t think I’m going to need 10gig speed because I only have a 1gig adapter.

Also I found the specifications for the cat6 flat cable. It is 32awg and has CCA wires.
I think this is a very bad cable. Can I use it on my xp machine?
(It has kaspersky antivirus)

How can I test an ethernet cable with just one or two computers and without special network testing equipment?
 
Yup that is very bad very thin wire and not copper.

It is not related to the version of OS. If I remember correctly gigabit ethernet was in the late 1990's and xp came out in early 2000. All depends on what the electronics in the machines are. The machine might have a gigabit port. This is all about things at the very low level like resistances and voltages it is not really software.

In any case it is pure luck what happens when you use a non certified cable. The standards are there so you know it will always function at the stated rates. When you use non certified cable you are purely left with the manufactures statements. It likely only functions in some limit conditions. If this other wire actually worked well the groups that put out the standards would have amend the standard to include it. All you can do is try it. These fake cable tend to work at short distance, if they did not work at all then people would constantly complain and never buy them. The fake cables also tend to go bad very easily because the thin wires come loose in the heads easier and the ones with CCA the 2 different metals expand and contract at different rate due to heat so you get different resistances over time.

As you might guess this is extremely technical. No easy way for a home user to test this. They make a very expensive meter, one popular brand is fluke, used to certify cables. These are so costly that only companies that do cable installations in commercial buildings can justify the cost.

Almost nobody needs shielding. Most times you see the requirement to keep the signals inside the ethernet cable from interfering with other equipment. In a hospital or a airplane are 2 examples where it is common. It is extremely hard to install properly. So the standard for installing shielded cable requires that both ends of the shield be connected to a ground. Although very similar you can not just connect it to the ground wire of your house outlets. You need a dedicated ground wire. Not a realistic options for a home user. You sometimes see shielded cable installed in data centers where every rack does have a dedicated ground wire. Installing it incorrectly actually increases the chance of interference since the shield now acts as a antenna. But it all doesn't really matter. In a home install there is almost never the interference in the first place so there is no problem to solve and no signal for the shield to amplify if it is incorrectly installed.

Cat6 cables is a strange cable type. It was originally designed to run gigabit over 2 pair of wires rather than 4 that cat5e uses. No chip vendors really supported it so it basically became a dead cable. The cable vendors had put so much money into the research so they now used marketing bull to get people to buy it. You average consumer always thinks bigger number is better. People buy so called cat8 cables because of this. What has happened since the cable was invented is we now have 2.5g, 5g and 10g ports. There is also a new cable type called cat6a. The key thing that makes cat6 and cat6a cable is the mhz. This is where you see the 500 or 550mhz. Cat6a cable is what you need to use if you have 10g ports. What makes this messy is 10g works on normal cat6 cable at shorter distance, like 50meters rather than 100m. This is not part of the standard but everyone knows it works. In general if you have faster ports you buy cat6a the cost difference between cat6 and cat6a is not much anymore.


Likely far more than you really need to know. The short version is the flat cable is garbage and the new cat6 cable will work fine for your gigabit ports.
 

Parroty69

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Yup that is very bad very thin wire and not copper.

It is not related to the version of OS. If I remember correctly gigabit ethernet was in the late 1990's and xp came out in early 2000. All depends on what the electronics in the machines are. The machine might have a gigabit port. This is all about things at the very low level like resistances and voltages it is not really software.

In any case it is pure luck what happens when you use a non certified cable. The standards are there so you know it will always function at the stated rates. When you use non certified cable you are purely left with the manufactures statements. It likely only functions in some limit conditions. If this other wire actually worked well the groups that put out the standards would have amend the standard to include it. All you can do is try it. These fake cable tend to work at short distance, if they did not work at all then people would constantly complain and never buy them. The fake cables also tend to go bad very easily because the thin wires come loose in the heads easier and the ones with CCA the 2 different metals expand and contract at different rate due to heat so you get different resistances over time.

As you might guess this is extremely technical. No easy way for a home user to test this. They make a very expensive meter, one popular brand is fluke, used to certify cables. These are so costly that only companies that do cable installations in commercial buildings can justify the cost.

Almost nobody needs shielding. Most times you see the requirement to keep the signals inside the ethernet cable from interfering with other equipment. In a hospital or a airplane are 2 examples where it is common. It is extremely hard to install properly. So the standard for installing shielded cable requires that both ends of the shield be connected to a ground. Although very similar you can not just connect it to the ground wire of your house outlets. You need a dedicated ground wire. Not a realistic options for a home user. You sometimes see shielded cable installed in data centers where every rack does have a dedicated ground wire. Installing it incorrectly actually increases the chance of interference since the shield now acts as a antenna. But it all doesn't really matter. In a home install there is almost never the interference in the first place so there is no problem to solve and no signal for the shield to amplify if it is incorrectly installed.

Cat6 cables is a strange cable type. It was originally designed to run gigabit over 2 pair of wires rather than 4 that cat5e uses. No chip vendors really supported it so it basically became a dead cable. The cable vendors had put so much money into the research so they now used marketing bull to get people to buy it. You average consumer always thinks bigger number is better. People buy so called cat8 cables because of this. What has happened since the cable was invented is we now have 2.5g, 5g and 10g ports. There is also a new cable type called cat6a. The key thing that makes cat6 and cat6a cable is the mhz. This is where you see the 500 or 550mhz. Cat6a cable is what you need to use if you have 10g ports. What makes this messy is 10g works on normal cat6 cable at shorter distance, like 50meters rather than 100m. This is not part of the standard but everyone knows it works. In general if you have faster ports you buy cat6a the cost difference between cat6 and cat6a is not much anymore.


Likely far more than you really need to know. The short version is the flat cable is garbage and the new cat6 cable will work fine for your gigabit ports.
Thank you for the very detailed reply.
The flat cable that is bad is 16.5ft and I'm planning to buy a 10ft one
I have also found another cat6 cable that is 23awg, solid wires (not stranded) and pure copper wires and 50 micron gold on the connectors and 100 microinch nickel, the new cable is from the same manufacturer as the 24awg stranded cable and the cat5e cable that was broken. Should I choose the new cable over the 24awg one?
Does the new cable have enough gold and nickel to meet spec?

Cat8 cables are bull, overrated and marketed to home users when they won't even benefit from it? Unbelievable!

I don't think gigabit ethernet was very common among consumers at the time, I think it's only 10/100 ethernet.

Also the broken cat5e cable now seems to be working fine at 400mbps for hours now but it drops to 200mbps once a while so I will be replacing it. Funny how a broken cat5e cable beats a flat cat6 cable
View: https://imgur.com/VLMmCHl

Ethernet adapter speed from status section shows 1gig


Should I choose the new cable over the the 24awg one?
Does the new cable have enough gold and nickel to meet spec?
 
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For 10ft, I think both cables will do gigabit ethernet just fine. That 32awg you bought is just garbage, you got scammed. If you can leave a review, I would leave a really bad one.

But the new cable you selected will be a little more futureproof, if you step up to 2.5gbe, 5gbe or 10gbe. That's the problem I ran into when I upgraded my network. I had to swap out a few cables for more reputable ones, however I was switching to 10gbe so I could see the failures right away. At 2.5gbe and 5gbe, this might manifest as lower speeds, or occasional drops to lower negotiated speeds like falling back to gigabit.

2.5gbe are becoming more and more mainstream, being incorporated into higher end laptops and desktops now. 2.5gbe network cars are starting to price <$30 as well. Also routers and Docsis 3.1 modems are starting to come with 2.5gbe ports as well. Here in the United States, internet plans are hitting over 1gbps as well. My internet service is technically 1200mbps, but since my docsis 3.1 modem only has a gigabit port, I'm not getting the full bandwidth of my internet service.
 

Parroty69

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For 10ft, I think both cables will do gigabit ethernet just fine. That 32awg you bought is just garbage, you got scammed. If you can leave a review, I would leave a really bad one.

But the new cable you selected will be a little more futureproof, if you step up to 2.5gbe, 5gbe or 10gbe. That's the problem I ran into when I upgraded my network. I had to swap out a few cables for more reputable ones, however I was switching to 10gbe so I could see the failures right away. At 2.5gbe and 5gbe, this might manifest as lower speeds, or occasional drops to lower negotiated speeds like falling back to gigabit.

2.5gbe are becoming more and more mainstream, being incorporated into higher end laptops and desktops now. 2.5gbe network cars are starting to price <$30 as well. Also routers and Docsis 3.1 modems are starting to come with 2.5gbe ports as well. Here in the United States, internet plans are hitting over 1gbps as well. My internet service is technically 1200mbps, but since my docsis 3.1 modem only has a gigabit port, I'm not getting the full bandwidth of my internet service.
I can’t leave a review anymore because the store I bought it from removed it from their listing. The cable model is an Orico PUG-C6B.

I think I will buy the 23awg cable because it only costs a bit more

I think the specifications are a bit inconsistent, the pictures of the manufacturer website say the it is 500mhz, but the description of the product says it is 100mhz. I don’t plan on recabling my house anytime soon.

Does the 50 micron gold and the 100 microinch nickel do anything?
Why did you choose to use upgrade your house to 10gig when you only have 1.2gig, is it to futureproof it?
 
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