Question I'm paying for 1.5Gbps but only getting 90mbps maximum ?

[Secondus]

Hi guys.
So I've got Bell Fibe internet in Canada, I am paying for 1.5Gbps. Due to location in my home, I couldn't do a direct ethernet cable from modem to laptop, so I got a TP-Link 2000 Wall Powerline adapter.
I'm under the impression that this would have worked just fine, which it does, I connect no problem and can even remote play from laptop to devices near flawlessly (which did not work in the past due to severe latency). I have checked the hardware on both devices, the ports on the modem are gigabit, and my laptop is fairly new (2021), and in the status it shows the speed at 1.0 Gbps, and I went into the properties and confirmed the Speed & Duplex were at 1.0 Gbps.
Problem is the download speed, which funny enough is actually faster on the 5Ghz network than ethernet? The TP Link device is fairly new (less than 2 months old).
Could the issue be that i'm using 2 different Cat cables? The TP Link device that is connected to the modem, is using a Cat 5e for the connection. While the other TP Link device (that is connected to my laptop) is a Cat 7 cable. Is the device the problem?
Look forward to hearing what you guys think.

Thanks.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi guys.
So I've got Bell Fibe internet in Canada, I am paying for 1Gbps. Due to location in my home, I couldn't do a direct ethernet cable from modem to laptop, so I got a TP-Link 2000 Wall Powerline adapter.
I'm under the impression that this would have worked just fine, which it does, I connect no problem and can even remote play from laptop to devices near flawlessly (which did not work in the past due to severe latency). I have checked the hardware on both devices, the ports on the modem are gigabit, and my laptop is fairly new (2021), and in the status it shows the speed at 1.0 Gbps, and I went into the properties and confirmed the Speed & Duplex were at 1.0 Gbps.
Problem is the download speed, which funny enough is actually faster on the 5Ghz network than ethernet? The TP Link device is fairly new (less than 2 months old).
Could the issue be that i'm using 2 different Cat cables? The TP Link device that is connected to the modem, is using a Cat 5e for the connection. While the other TP Link device (that is connected to my laptop) is a Cat 7 cable. Is the device the problem?
Look forward to hearing what you guys think.

Thanks.

When you have 90Mbit throughput, the first thing you have to replace is the cabling. You need to test with a single new 100% copper cat5e or cat6a factory made cable direct to your primary router.

 

[Secondus]

When you have 90Mbit throughput, the first thing you have to replace is the cabling. You need to test with a single new 100% copper cat5e or cat6a factory made cable direct to your primary router.

Hey thanks for the quick reply. I'm using the Cat 5e cable that came with the device I purchased, no good probably? The Cat7 cable was purchased because the other Cat5e cable that came with it was too small. So I should buy a new Cat5e or Cat6a and connect it directly from my laptop to the router?

 

[bill001g]

When you see speeds say between 90-95mbps it is a very good indicator there is some port running at 100mbps. It is very different than say if you say 125mbps or 30mbps. Those could for example indicate issues with the powerline connection or some software on the pc.

This is almost always a bad cable. In you case you have multiple cables in the path. You say you see the status at 1gbit on your pc that would mean it is more likely the bad cable is between the first powerline box and your router. If you have a separate modem it could be the cable between the router and the modem.

In any case you best first test would be to take your laptop and put it near the router and test with a short cable directly to the router. Note even if you use the same cable that is going from the router to the powerline unit and connect it to your pc. Just because it works to your pc does not mean the cable is good.
It would be nice if ethernet cables just totally failed rather than partially work at lower speeds and on some devices and not others.

Key here is to be sure you do not have fake cables. Those flat cables that you see sold all over the place have wires that are too thin to meet the required standard to actually be a ethernet cable.

 

[Secondus]

Just reporting back here, so I got new cables and connected directly to my laptop and was getting about 100 MB/s downloads. So I think there could be an issue with the wiring in the home causing the Powerline slower speeds?
I have something else with my wifi though, I did a speedtest on my iPhone 12 because I was curious, and got about 300mbps, but when I do the same test on the same network on my brand new laptop (literally just purchased this week, Aorus 17X 4080) I get 65mpbs? What gives here? The wireless card on here is a Intel 6E AX2210 160mhz card, and it's up to date with the drivers. I have also tested with my old laptop and am getting about 250mbps in the exact same spot on the same network, what's going on with the new machine (both have same network cards)?

 

[freeco1982]

test the speed from all your laptops and phones to your ISP

 

[Secondus]

test the speed from all your laptops and phones to your ISP

What do you mean?

 

[bill001g]

A fancy wifi card in your pc does nothing special if your router can not also support things like wifi6e.

You need to check the status on your wifi card and see how it is connecting. Maybe it connected to the 2.4g radio

 

[freeco1982]

speedtest.net
find your isp name on their homepage
and test the speed

 

[freeco1982]

btw isp promises the speed TO 1.5gbps not all the time 1.5gbps and don't forget that another devices on your home also uses the internet, so the speed can change if another devices around you is using also the internet

 

[Secondus]

A fancy wifi card in your pc does nothing special if your router can not also support things like wifi6e.

You need to check the status on your wifi card and see how it is connecting. Maybe it connected to the 2.4g radio

I made sure it's connected to the 5ghz band, I am more or less trying to determine what is causing the issue because both laptops have the exact same wireless card, but one is getting 300mbps while the other is getting 50mbps

 

[freeco1982]

View: https://youtu.be/48nLfj2Vl80

 

[bill001g]

If you have 2 laptops with the same wifi card you would expect similar performance.

If you check the status on the wifi connection it should show you the transmit and receive speeds. These are not actually the speeds but the data encoding method used. Is there any difference in these numbers between the 2 laptops.

 

[Secondus]

If you have 2 laptops with the same wifi card you would expect similar performance.

If you check the status on the wifi connection it should show you the transmit and receive speeds. These are not actually the speeds but the data encoding method used. Is there any difference in these numbers between the 2 laptops.

So on both decides, side by side, viewing the network adapter status on both devices, it will occasionally jump up to like 866mbps, 252 mbps, 40mbps, so it doesnt seem to stay consistent. Using the speedtest again on both machines side by side, the one im typing this one on is getting about 60mbps, while the other is sitting at about 200-220.

 

[bill001g]

So here is a massive table to what those numbers mean. 866 is generally what you want to see it is 80mhz channel a using 2x2 mimo with a strong signal so it can use qam256.
I do not see 252 or 40.....now if you are using wifi6 then it might be someplace in the massive right side of this chart.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...nKQ1O7abij/pubhtml?gid=1367372895&single=true

Mostly there is little you can do. You might try to force the setting if the driver in the pc has that option. Most times all this can only be set on the router
In general the router and the pc attempt to negotiate the highest rate they can. All I can think of is one of the pc is getting less signal level for some reason.

 

[Secondus]

So here is a massive table to what those numbers mean. 866 is generally what you want to see it is 80mhz channel a using 2x2 mimo with a strong signal so it can use qam256.
I do not see 252 or 40.....now if you are using wifi6 then it might be someplace in the massive right side of this chart.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...nKQ1O7abij/pubhtml?gid=1367372895&single=true

Mostly there is little you can do. You might try to force the setting if the driver in the pc has that option. Most times all this can only be set on the router
In general the router and the pc attempt to negotiate the highest rate they can. All I can think of is one of the pc is getting less signal level for some reason.

Thanks for the helpful info. I’m using a Bell Home Hub 3000, do you know where I can begin to investigate the issue?
Things I have done:
Reset network settings, uninstalled and reinstalled drivers, rolled back to previous older version drivers, changed wireless channels, and adjusted network adapter settings to the recommended values.

 

[bill001g]

This is one where if all your devices did the same thing then you could say it was the router or windows drivers or maybe something else.

When 2 identical wifi card have a large difference in performance at the same location you are then trying to find what might be different between the 2 cards. I assume you upgraded you old laptop with this newer wifi6e card, unless you "old" laptop is less than a year old.

This is hard when is it a laptop. It is pretty easy to swap a pcie card in a desktop machine for testing. All I can suggest is dig though all the settings and drivers etc on both machines and see if you can find any difference.

 

[Secondus]

This is one where if all your devices did the same thing then you could say it was the router or windows drivers or maybe something else.

When 2 identical wifi card have a large difference in performance at the same location you are then trying to find what might be different between the 2 cards. I assume you upgraded you old laptop with this newer wifi6e card, unless you "old" laptop is less than a year old.

This is hard when is it a laptop. It is pretty easy to swap a pcie card in a desktop machine for testing. All I can suggest is dig though all the settings and drivers etc on both machines and see if you can find any difference.

Sorry so I was mistaken
Old Laptop (Intel 6 AX201)
New Laptop (Intel 6E AX210)
I read the numbers wrong initially, so they are in fact different cards.

 

[bill001g]

There is another difference the 201 uses cnvio which is using the chipset for part of the wifi feature where the 210 all the function is on the board. It should not make any difference. It means though you can not swap the cards

Since you are using wifi5 it really shouldn't matter. Even if you were running wifi6 they should be the same since the only real difference between wifi6 and wifi6e is that wifi6e can use the 6g radio band.

All I can think of is they run different drivers. Maybe check the intel site and see how the drivers compare and see which you have loaded.

 

[Secondus]

There is another difference the 201 uses cnvio which is using the chipset for part of the wifi feature where the 210 all the function is on the board. It should not make any difference. It means though you can not swap the cards

Since you are using wifi5 it really shouldn't matter. Even if you were running wifi6 they should be the same since the only real difference between wifi6 and wifi6e is that wifi6e can use the 6g radio band.

All I can think of is they run different drivers. Maybe check the intel site and see how the drivers compare and see which you have loaded.

I will attempt the drivers again, I updated it to 22.190.0.4
That was the latest version I found on the intel website, I was previously running 22.180.0, that was the driver version that came with the computer, there was no change from that version to the newest. Should I try to go back even further?

 

[bill001g]

Wifi issues can be very hard to debug everything good is locked up in the wifi chip with little information you can get.

Maybe try to intentionally set it to 2.4g and see what speed you get. Then try it back at 5g.

Did you ever open the laptop. This is what you see if a antenna is loose.

 

[Secondus]

Wifi issues can be very hard to debug everything good is locked up in the wifi chip with little information you can get.

Maybe try to intentionally set it to 2.4g and see what speed you get. Then try it back at 5g.

Did you ever open the laptop. This is what you see if a antenna is loose.

I will attempt the switch to 2.4 when I get home tonight. I have not opened the laptop yet, it is brand new

 

[bill001g]

Maybe try the laptop next to the router to get the best case number. If that is also slow you start to suspect a defective wifi card.

 

[Secondus]

Maybe try the laptop next to the router to get the best case number. If that is also slow you start to suspect a defective wifi card.

The day I got the laptop, I put it near the router to download and was getting what I was getting with the old laptop, about 50-60MB/s.

 

[bill001g]

That would mean that there is some issue with poor signal levels. Those are the worst to find could be a issue with the unit, the antenna or something silly like the case of the laptop blocks signals in some strange way related to how your house is constructed.

Could you take both laptops to say a public library and see if they connect at different rates.