[SOLVED] Network speeds SLOW on ethernet desktop, much faster on wifi Laptop

nickbeef

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Jul 15, 2015
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My cable modem is down on the first floor of my house. I pay for up to 400Mbps speed. Obviously, that's not quite what I get. Here's what I'm getting so far, using speedtest.net results:

Laptop wifi:
Ping: 16
Download: 228.81Mbps
Upload: 9.07

Desktop ethernet:
Ping: 8
Download: 9.26Mbps
Upload: 9.30

Desktop wifi:
Ping: 12
Download: 45.88
Upload: 11.32

I'm happy to answer any hardware questions. Here's what I know about my screwy ethernet connection - the mobo gets up to 1000Mbps, connected to 5e cable going to my window, into a paper thin jumper cable out the window, down a maybe 80ft Cat 5 cable, back into a window jumper cable, and then into a Cat 5e cable into the modem. So, yeah, a lot of potential points for slowing things down. Any suggestions?
 
Solution
Just so anyone who's interested knows - I solved this by replacing my mickey moused cable situation by dumping the cat 5 cable and the "paper thin" windows jumpers, after I realized that I could use a regular "flat" cat 6 cable in the window sill. Here are my current speedtest results:

ping: 10ms
dowload: 480.55 Mbps
upload: 10 Mbps

Much, much better downloads. My only remaining question is why my upload speeds have remained constant? I'm guessing this is something on my ISP side. But either way, godd enough for now.

nickbeef

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Your "paper thin" cable is your first problem. You need 22 to 24 GA all copper cable.

Ok, but is there another way for me to get the cable out the window? My girlfriend hates this solution, but running cable down from the third floor to the first floor inside the house, down multiple flights of stairs and across multiple doorways is not an option, and hiring an electrician to run cable through the walls, while the "correct" solution, is more then I want to spend and no-go with my girlfriend.

If there's no better solution to hard wiring through ethernet, I'll have to eventually bite the bullet and set up a mesh network. That's what the cable guy suggested, but then again, he wants to rent me the hardware.
 

nickbeef

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what kind of cable? how long?
I mentioned this in the last paragraph of my first post. Sorry, it's a bit complex and messy.

Also, aside from just getting a good connection to my upstairs office, I would ideally like to be able to stream games from my desktop down to the TV on my first floor. But that's another thing altogether.
 
Mesh is the wrong solution. It will likely be worse than than the direct wifi connection you have to the router. Mesh is the new marketing gimmick to get people to spend money on stuff. They really are just fancy wifi repeaters and suffer from many of the same issues the older repeaters have.

Although running down the inside of the walls is always optimal you could drill straight through the outside wall like the ISP do. You want to use outdoor rated cable but if can use indoor stuff if you are willing to replace it every few years. The sun eventually destroys the plastic and water can then damage the indoor cable. You could put boxes in the wall in the rooms if you wanted to make it look better and the wire on the outside can be painted or hidden in most cases.

The cost to get the wire run in the walls is not so much the electrician it is the guy who needs to patch all the holes and repaint to match. If you could find closets that line up where you want to run the wires it is not that hard a DIY project since you can completely re texture and paint the walls in a closet and it does not have to exactly match the other rooms.
 

nickbeef

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It's my girlfriends condo, so i think any drilling holes in the wall is a good option. Unless, MAYBE, I could use some existing covered outlet holes that are already in the wall (I can see two covered boxes on the wall in my upstairs office right now.) Maybe my next best option would be to upgrade my desktop wifi, since that what I'm using now and it seem to be better. I just always assumed that "wired is better", but now I'm thinking wired is just more stable, not necessarily faster? Who knows.

My current wifi adapter is probably old 802.11b/g/n. I'm assuming it's old because my laptop gets better speedtest results from the same upstairs room
 
Wired will always be faster. No wifi can even come close to ethernet no matter what their magic numbers say. If you stated speed the same way you would call a ethernet cable a 2gbit cable because you add receive and transmit speed. The funny thing is wifi can't actually send and receive at the same time but ethernet actually can. Ethernet also runs the same speed if the cable is 1ft long or 100 meters. Wifi speeds drop off exponentially based on distance not even considering walls in the way.
 

nickbeef

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Jul 15, 2015
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18,545
Just so anyone who's interested knows - I solved this by replacing my mickey moused cable situation by dumping the cat 5 cable and the "paper thin" windows jumpers, after I realized that I could use a regular "flat" cat 6 cable in the window sill. Here are my current speedtest results:

ping: 10ms
dowload: 480.55 Mbps
upload: 10 Mbps

Much, much better downloads. My only remaining question is why my upload speeds have remained constant? I'm guessing this is something on my ISP side. But either way, godd enough for now.
 
Solution