Question HELP!!! Whole farm internet - 5 acres

[jmtraining71]

Just recently bought a 5 acre property with 2 houses, a pole barn and a garage. Previous homeowner has some kind of mesh/relayed system in place so that they would only pay for internet into the front house, and then ran ethernet out to each subsequent building via buried Cat 5. The system looks a little something like this:

Main internet into modem into router into switch ------buried line-----> garage switch & wifi antenna ------buried line-----> barn switch & wifi antenna------buried line----> back house router

I hope this makes sense. My problem is that I am paying for 1Gig speeds, and when everything is hooked up to relay I am only seeing about @300-400 mbps DL at the front house getting the main line, and only about 80 mbps at the back house, which is where I live. Now, when I unhook the 1st switch from the main router unit the speeds at the main house jump to about 800-900 down. But like I said, as soon as I plug that switch in it bogs the main unit down to about 300-400. Is there anything I can do to "open up" the system or is it simply too much "stuff" going on. I figure worse comes to worse I will just get service to both houses, which Spectrum said they can.

Thanks in advance

 

[kanewolf]

Just recently bought a 5 acre property with 2 houses, a pole barn and a garage. Previous homeowner has some kind of mesh/relayed system in place so that they would only pay for internet into the front house, and then ran ethernet out to each subsequent building via buried Cat 5. The system looks a little something like this:

Main internet into modem into router into switch ------buried line-----> garage switch & wifi antenna ------buried line-----> barn switch & wifi antenna------buried line----> back house router

I hope this makes sense. My problem is that I am paying for 1Gig speeds, and when everything is hooked up to relay I am only seeing about @300-400 mbps DL at the front house getting the main line, and only about 80 mbps at the back house, which is where I live. Now, when I unhook the 1st switch from the main router unit the speeds at the main house jump to about 800-900 down. But like I said, as soon as I plug that switch in it bogs the main unit down to about 300-400. Is there anything I can do to "open up" the system or is it simply too much "stuff" going on. I figure worse comes to worse I will just get service to both houses, which Spectrum said they can.

Thanks in advance

Could that switch be a 100mb device? Is that switch required? If there is only 1 line going outside the house, maybe the switch could be removed.

 

[jmtraining71]

Could that switch be a 100mb device? Is that switch required? If there is only 1 line going outside the house, maybe the switch could be removed.

The switch is a Gigabite switch....I did remove it from the equation and it made very minimal difference.

 

[bill001g]

So is the 80mbps actually say about 94mbps. That is the magic number that says you have a port running at 100mbps. Most likely some bad cable or bad jack.

The switch causing such a huge drop is more of a mystery. This would almost have to be traffic related. Normally in complex installs you would look for a loop. In your case it is unlikely but if for example you would plug a cable between 2 ports on any switch on your network you will get a loop. This can actually completely crash a network.

I would start testing piece by piece. Use only 1 pc and unplug any other equipment.

You would start with the pc directly plugged into the router. Then add the first switch and plug your pc into that switch. Then plug the first buried line into the switch and plug your pc directly into the other end of the buired line in the garage. Continue until you start to see a problem.

In general a bad cable just does not work at all. It might drop to 100mbps. In a very rare case you might get lots of errors which would drop the transfer speed. You should be able to detect that with a ping command to the router IP. You should almost never see packet loss on a lan network.

Lots of things to test but maybe you get a clue where to look.

 

[jmtraining71]

So is the 80mbps actually say about 94mbps. That is the magic number that says you have a port running at 100mbps. Most likely some bad cable or bad jack.

The switch causing such a huge drop is more of a mystery. This would almost have to be traffic related. Normally in complex installs you would look for a loop. In your case it is unlikely but if for example you would plug a cable between 2 ports on any switch on your network you will get a loop. This can actually completely crash a network.

I would start testing piece by piece. Use only 1 pc and unplug any other equipment.

You would start with the pc directly plugged into the router. Then add the first switch and plug your pc into that switch. Then plug the first buried line into the switch and plug your pc directly into the other end of the buired line in the garage. Continue until you start to see a problem.

In general a bad cable just does not work at all. It might drop to 100mbps. In a very rare case you might get lots of errors which would drop the transfer speed. You should be able to detect that with a ping command to the router IP. You should almost never see packet loss on a lan network.

Lots of things to test but maybe you get a clue where to look.

Thanks for the advice. I may just have to start testing piece by piece. The only issue is the nightmare of cords this dude has set up across the property. He way a bit of a DIYer....not much of a labeler.

If I wanted to hire a professional who runs these kind of systems.....what would I search? Sorry my tech knowledge is fairly limited.

 

[kanewolf]

Thanks for the advice. I may just have to start testing piece by piece. The only issue is the nightmare of cords this dude has set up across the property. He way a bit of a DIYer....not much of a labeler.

If I wanted to hire a professional who runs these kind of systems.....what would I search? Sorry my tech knowledge is fairly limited.

Low voltage installer/technician.

 

[gggplaya]

5 acres is big. How many feet between buildings. Ethernet is only spec'd to about 300 feet. That includes the length it takes to get out of the house and into the house to the switch. Exceeding those lengths could lead to lower bandwidth.

Make sure you do not have any flat ethernet cable anywhere inside the house.

 

[jmtraining71]

5 acres is big. How many feet between buildings. Ethernet is only spec'd to about 300 feet. That includes the length it takes to get out of the house and into the house to the switch. Exceeding those lengths could lead to lower bandwidth.

Make sure you do not have any flat ethernet cable anywhere inside the house.

Probably a good 1000 ft between the two houses....with several switches along the way.

 

[kanewolf]

Probably a good 1000 ft between the two houses....with several switches along the way.

The key is that the maximum distance allowed between active devices (switches in your case) is approximately 300ft.

 

[punkncat]

I AM a low voltage installer.

Just about the LAST thing I would want to do is to come onto a property like that with some DIY madness going on and try to make sense of it. The first thing I would want to know is HOW the cabling was ran. For instance, is there a nice layout of pipe run from spot to spot, or direct burial, or what?
The way you describe makes me think of some PVC with a bunch of unmarked spaghetti...

It may well cost you less to have your ISP come out and run the proper cabling as new/direct burial where you need it. The issue here is that they are going to probably run so many feet off the street access and charge you exorbitantly for everything past that. Maybe not.
I would search around for home alarm installers that aren't ADT and the like and see if they also do data cabling and such, if the net provider gives you some crazy amount.

So, with that aspect said, you can purchase tools that will tone a wire from end to end, you can get ones that check each jack for proper wiring and connection (once you know what they are end to end) and so on. Best bet is if you have some time to read, a friend that can help, and some walkie talkies. That is pretty much what I would do.

Edit- I will say that if your area is anything like where I am LV professionals tend to be VERY busy.

 

[jmtraining71]

Well I think I may have stumbled on the problem. After calling Spectrum, calling the router company (TP Link) and getting nowhere....I called to have Spectrum come set up internet to the back house. Well, after mindlessly clicking and reading about different router settings......long story short I realized my the WAN/LAN port on the router in the back house was set to cap at 10/100 Mbps full duplex. SO, I switched it to 1000 and VOILA!!!!! Speed tests running anywhere between 500-750 Mbps DL.

I then tried to open it up fully to the 2.5 Mbps and it seemed to throttle the speeds back down to under 100 Mbps.....not sure why this is? Maybe someone has some insight here. I have not messed with the main router in the from house. Maybe if I set them both to 2.5 I would be running as close to full power as I can?

 

[bill001g]

2.5g is much more sensitive to poor cables. Can be some end is not crimped well enough.
I know 2.5g and 5g ethernet are rated to run on cat5e what I don't know is if you can run the full 100 meters on cat5e. I really wish they would not lock the official standards behind paywalls. You can't really trust third party sites who are trying to sell stuff to have real data.
Generally when you are trying to go long distances I would always recommend cat6a for anything over 1gbit. That I know is rated to run 10gbit at 100 meters.