Will a router slow internet?

[ddrumman2004]

I just upgraded my cable internet to Cableone's 50mb speed...for the same price I have been paying all these years! Even less the first year!
Anyway, I got a new Motorola modem that is also wireless but it seems either the wireless is not working as my laptop keeps trying to validate the pass key. Anyhow tech supports says to swap the modem. I'll do that Monday.

But right now, I have the modem going through my Netgear wireless router and the max speeds on download, with wireless, is 10mb and that's what the tech told me it would be...with wireless. That's no problem with me as it's twice as fast than before.

Now my desktop is hard wired through the router and I'm only getting 10mb speed with it. When I hard wired my laptop through the modem, I got 45 to 50 mb speed. But through the router...just 10.

Is the router causing this?

 

[The_Jeff]

It could be your cheap router is dropping the wired speed to match the wireless. You should have the option to turn it off.

Some, as I understand it, if they have one 10 mbps connection, even wired, will drop the rest of them. Practically any desktop from this millenium should have a 10/100 wired card.

 

[Quest]

(1) check your PC's NIC to see if it's set to auto-negotiate between 10/100/1Gb speed, if not, set it to auto (ditto with your netgear router LAN ethernet port, which I assume it's already 100Mbps capable.

(2) test your download/upload (WAN to LAN) speed by going to either speedtest.net or my fave (speakeasy.net).

Q.

 

[Rand]

also dont confuse MB mb Mb etc.

you should get max 6MB/sec on that internet.. for which you would need a wireless N connection..

the average "wireless g" connection even though its 54mbit is usually much slower in reality.

For instance I have at my house a 30mbit/5mbit

I would only get about 1.9MB/sec so now I run a linksys e2000 for the laptops that gets around 10MB/sec (5ghz band) and still have an older router providing a wireless G access point(2.4ghz band) for legacy devices... ie my wireless laser printer.. streaming netflix to PS3, cell phones etc.

 

[Quest]

Originally Posted By: Rand
also dont confuse MB mb Mb etc.


Try typinhg while a 21 mnth old kid constantly interrputing your kb...

 

[Quest]

and yes: when it comes to storage, you go by the bytes (1 byte = 8bits); when it comes to data transmission, it's always in bits...

so, never confuse with bits and bytes..

Good point.

Q.

"Capital B= byte", small B = bits

 

[Rand]

Originally Posted By: Quest
Originally Posted By: Rand
also dont confuse MB mb Mb etc.


Try typinhg while a 21 mnth old kid constantly interrputing your kb...



I wasnt actually talking to you quest but the OP..

usually when you list your download speed from a computer you use MB(megabytes) or KB(kilobytes)
vs when you buy your isp service its rated in mb(megabit) or kb(kilobit)
was just mentioning it.

for general purposes you would divide megabits by 8 to get megabytes..
for example my cable ""roadrunner extreme""
is rated at 30mb/5mb
which equates to aprox.. 3.6MB/sec and 600KB/sec

 

[Carbon]

Originally Posted By: Rand

usually when you list your download speed from a computer you use MB(megabytes) or KB(kilobytes)
vs when you buy your isp service its rated in mb(megabit) or kb(kilobit)
was just mentioning it.


Wouldn't mb be millibits? Now that's a small unit.

 

[Colt45ws]

Yes, it could. The router probably just does not have the processing power to route packets at the rate it is being fed them.. They are usually pretty weak and have limited memory.

 

[ddrumman2004]

And just why is my router "cheap"?

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: ddrumman2004
And just why is my router "cheap"?


The more expensive router has more processing power that can handle faster transfer. Usually if you are using something in the 15Mb/s speed most router would not be the bottleneck, now if your connection is 50Mb/s and you really use it, then the router may slow it down enough that you are not getting the benefit of 50Mb/s.

cheap is usually something less than $80, a good and high end consumer router can go from $110-200.

 

[Quest]

+1 with PandaBear.

I'm using an airlink-101 wired router that has the ability to move 86Mb/s from WAN to LAN (download) but rarely do I see any issues with that (my subscription package with TV only max'ed out @ 34Mb/s, and shared with the computer connectivity.

While most of the home-based routers are pretty-much what I considered "toys", models that are less than 3 yrs old are typically capable of up to 18Mbp/s of throughput (WAN-->LAN). More powa? Get more powerful routers then.

For small biz operation, get Fortinet or Astaro.


Q.

btw: my airlink101 uses an RISC chipset.

 

[zyxelenator]

try wire vs wireless on speedtest.com if wireless significantly less it is router, if not--your ISP sucks. or your wifi card. Do not use belkin

they are [censored]

 

[OVERKILL]

Very common for the device to be underpowered to attempt to do SPI and NAT at that speed, particularly if it is a few years old.

You are quite likely maxing out the device. You need a new one.

 

[brianl703]

I bought a Routerboard RB750GL for testing. It's a $70 router based on RouterOS which in turn is based on Linux. It has no wireless interfaces, but does have 5 gigabit wired interfaces.

http://routerboard.com/RB750GL

I noticed no slowdown when I connected this device between my laptop and my fileserver. As I recall, I got around 80% utilization of 100mpbs, which is what it was before. I did not test it at gigabit speeds. NAT was turned on.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: ddrumman2004
And just why is my router "cheap"?

What's the model number of your router?

 

[rjundi]

I noticed on my "high end" router (Cisco E3000) I was getting slow downs. I have a 25Mbps download(comcast). After a few days using xfinity's own speedtest I would only get 3Mpbs wireless or through 1Gbit ethernet throught my router. I isolated it to my router not the cable modem.

I googled and found out something in advanced settings called Pnp should be off and MTU from Auto set manually to 1350. Its been fine for weeks now holding steady.

If you are paying for 50Mpbs you need a current router but beyond that make sure to google it and see if known issues.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: rjundi
I noticed on my "high end" router (Cisco E3000) I was getting slow downs. I have a 25Mbps download(comcast). After a few days using xfinity's own speedtest I would only get 3Mpbs wireless or through 1Gbit ethernet throught my router. I isolated it to my router not the cable modem.

I googled and found out something in advanced settings called Pnp should be off and MTU from Auto set manually to 1350. Its been fine for weeks now holding steady.

If you are paying for 50Mpbs you need a current router but beyond that make sure to google it and see if known issues.



You really shouldn't have to tweak your MTU on cable, and uPnP shouldn't affect your bandwidth either... Unless you have a rogue application exploiting it

I always disable uPnP... but that is for security reasons.

Regardless, your issue sounds like something firmware related, and I would hope you have reported it to Cisco/Linksys so they are aware of it. Also, are you running the latest firmware? If not, this may have already been addressed in a more recent version.

 

[brianl703]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL

You really shouldn't have to tweak your MTU on cable


Except that, as of the last time I checked, at least some, if not all, of Comcast's DHCP servers set the MTU field to 576. So if your DHCP client honors that setting, an MTU of 576 is what you get. I have no idea why they do this. I only know that they do and I had to tell my DHCP client to ignore their MTU setting.

Ref: http://mathema.tician.de/node/409

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: brianl703
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL

You really shouldn't have to tweak your MTU on cable


Except that, as of the last time I checked, at least some, if not all, of Comcast's DHCP servers set the MTU field to 576. So if your DHCP client honors that setting, an MTU of 576 is what you get. I have no idea why they do this. I only know that they do and I had to tell my DHCP client to ignore their MTU setting.

Ref: http://mathema.tician.de/node/409



Most routers have a default MTU of 1500 for DHCP/Static (and 1492 for PPPoE). There are some out there that do override that with a provided MTU however. They would have "auto" or "automatic" for the MTU field.

Depends on the equipment of course