Upgraded to 360mb - Speed Question

Alan3002

Hey guys. I've upgraded to 360mb. I was on 100mb before and was told the speed upgrade should be in place by Saturday evening.

Recieved my Compal modem today and when it was all hooked up I had no connection, had to ring Virgin Media and they basically said Night Line didn't inform them that my old box has been taken so the Compal wasn't activated.

A few hours later and they had activated it for me. Ran a speed test and got ~20Mbps. Gave it the benefit of the doubt for now. Connected up my Archer router and ran another speed test. Varied from 50-60Mbps.

Now I'll wait until Saturday evening and re-run my tests but I can't help feel that something isn't right. It was almost too easy to bridge the Compal compared to my TC7200.

I've attached my Archer info page, can someone have a quick glance over it and check if everything seems good. It seems alright to me but I feel like even though I'm not at 360mb yet that I should still be getting my old 100Mbps speeds (which I was getting).

degsie

Check if you are on ipv4 or ipv6.

ED E

degsie wrote: »

Check if you are on ipv4 or ipv6.

Look at the image, he's on V4.

OP assume you've done a wired test?

Alan3002

ED E wrote: »

Look at the image, he's on V4.

OP assume you've done a wired test?

Heya, yeah it's all done through wired tests. Checked again a while ago and still the same speeds.

Hopefully by this evening the speeds will increase.

paulboland

Alan3002 wrote: »

Hey guys. I've upgraded to 360mb. I was on 100mb before and was told the speed upgrade should be in place by Saturday evening.

Recieved my Compal modem today and when it was all hooked up I had no connection, had to ring Virgin Media and they basically said Night Line didn't inform them that my old box has been taken so the Compal wasn't activated.

A few hours later and they had activated it for me. Ran a speed test and got ~20Mbps. Gave it the benefit of the doubt for now. Connected up my Archer router and ran another speed test. Varied from 50-60Mbps.

Now I'll wait until Saturday evening and re-run my tests but I can't help feel that something isn't right. It was almost too easy to bridge the Compal compared to my TC7200.

I've attached my Archer info page, can someone have a quick glance over it and check if everything seems good. It seems alright to me but I feel like even though I'm not at 360mb yet that I should still be getting my old 100Mbps speeds (which I was getting).

The speed upgrade takes 24-48 hours to be applied to the router
It will reboot automatically when they send the signal to the router
It should be done by Monday/Tuesday at some stage if not before

I assume you are using the correct cable a Cat5e or Cat 6 cable as you will need this to get over 100mb and your Pc or Laptop has a Gigabyte 10/100/1000 Lan Ethernet Connection

If your PC or Laptop is only 10/100 Fast Ethernet you will only get max speed of 90mb-95mb and possible less during peak hours

Alan3002

paulboland wrote: »

The speed upgrade takes 24-48 hours to be applied to the router
It will reboot automatically when they send the signal to the router
It should be done by Monday/Tuesday at some stage if not before

I assume you are using the correct cable a Cat5e or Cat 6 cable as you will need this to get over 100mb and your Pc or Laptop has a Gigabyte 10/100/1000 Lan Ethernet Connection

If your PC or Laptop is only 10/100 Fast Ethernet you will only get max speed of 90mb-95mb and possible less during peak hours

Hey there, thanks for the info with regards to the speeds but I'm aware of all that.

What I'm worried about at the moment is why my speeds are now lower than when I was on 100Mb broadband even while waiting for the speed increases.

I just did another test and I'm getting 40mb according to SpeedTest which is vastly lower than when I was on my 100mb broadband running tests.

I might try revert bridge mode in a few minutes and run some tests again.

Alan3002

Ok so Virgin told me that the full 360mb is in effect on the box at the moment. After running a speed test last night off my Archer router I was only getting 40mb.

I'll have to test after work today but I didn't reset my Archer router since changing Virgin modem. I just plugged it right in again to the new Compal hub (in modem mode).
Maybe I should factory reset my archer router back to scratch.

degsie

Check speeds directly from the Compal (just disconnect the Archer and plug in a laptop/pc instead) and see what speeds you get. Remember you have to use a 1Gb ethernet port.

Alan3002

degsie wrote: »

Check speeds directly from the Compal (just disconnect the Archer and plug in a laptop/pc instead) and see what speeds you get. Remember you have to use a 1Gb ethernet port.

Cheers.
I just checked and my Archer has x4 gigabit ethernet ports as does my Asus 990fx R2.0 motherboard.

The powerline adapters (which were getting the full 100Mb on my old package) are rated for 500Mbps so they should be able to handle 360Mb broadband.

It just didn't make sense to me that my speends dropped to 30-40Mb when bridged off the Compal instead of the TC7200.

Will do further tests and a reset on the Archer when I get home though to make sure.

paulboland

Alan3002 wrote: »

Cheers.
I just checked and my Archer has x4 gigabit ethernet ports as does my Asus 990fx R2.0 motherboard.

The powerline adapters (which were getting the full 100Mb on my old package) are rated for 500Mbps so they should be able to handle 360Mb broadband.

It just didn't make sense to me that my speends dropped to 30-40Mb when bridged off the Compal instead of the TC7200.

Will do further tests and a reset on the Archer when I get home though to make sure.

Most powerline 500mb adapters have only Ethernet port 10/100 and are not as good as a wired direct connection to a router
The listed speed of 500mb is the link speed between each adaptor
It's a theoretical maximums between adaptors not the internet speed you will get

You can only get at max 95mb with these powerline adaptors with with 10/100 Ethernet port average speeds been 40mb to 85mb depending on the wiring in your home and distance between the adaptors and make sure neither of the powerline adaptors are plugged into any Gang Mains Power Extension Lead as that will reduce the speed lot more

Make sure you don't have the powerline adaptors plugged into in a power extension socket or other power source connected if a powerline adaptor connected to double power socket as that will reduce the adaptors link speed and also the internet speed a lot




It's best if using a powerline adaptor that have a Ac pass through socket built in so you can connect other power source and not loose a power socket

You would need a gigabyte powerline 10/100/1000 adaptor to get over 100mb and don't expect much more than 150mb

bk

As paulboland says your issue is likely with the power line adaptors.

First thing you should do is directly connect the Virgin Compal modem directly to your laptop. As in:

Compal -> Cat5e/Cat6 -> Laptop

With nothing else in between (archer, powerline adaptors, etc.).

I suspect you will get much better results by doing that and confirm the issue isn't with Virgin. You can then look at fixing the issues within your own home network (likely the powerline adaptors).

Alan3002

Guys,

Thank you so much!!! Appreciate it massively. Can't believe I didn't know the old PowerLine kit had no Gigabit port. Went to argos there and bought a Gigabit pair (Unfortunately my house setup dictates that I go wireless or PowerLine).

I'm now getting ~210MB which is a massive improvement over the ~40mb I was getting earlier today when I tested. Sure, it's not 360Mb but I can't connect my PC straight into my router. Also, all my cables were cat 5 but I was allowed take a bunch of cat5e cables from work today which are now installed on all my new powerLine adapters.

Lads, I wouldn't know where to begin if it wasn't for boards.ie and you lot. Thanks a million.

For anyone interested, these were the adapters I purchased.

ED E

Homeplugs rated speed is like wifi, its theoretical. .11N is 300Mb but practically up to about 120 most of the time, same goes for homeplugs even with gigE ports.

Alan3002

ED E wrote: »

Homeplugs rated speed is like wifi, its theoretical. .11N is 300Mb but practically up to about 120 most of the time, same goes for homeplugs even with gigE ports.

That's good to know. I tested downloading a steam game and was getting 25mb/s which is a huge improvement and I can live with that.
On my phone on the 5ghz network a speed test told me I was getting the full 360mb broadband which surprised me. When I go upstairs the 5ghz signal gets extremely weak.

degsie

Alan3002 wrote: »

That's good to know. I tested downloading a steam game and was getting 25mb/s which is a huge improvement and I can live with that.
On my phone on the 5ghz network a speed test told me I was getting the full 360mb broadband which surprised me. When I go upstairs the 5ghz signal gets extremely weak.

I presume you mean 25mB/s?

Alan3002

degsie wrote: »

I presume you mean 25mB/s?

Indeed. Megabytes per second.

sly2000

FYI, the narrower band 2.4Ghz will give you better range as it travels better through obstacles while the wider band 5.0Ghz will give you a higher speed. Also take in consideration that the 5.0Ghz is not as congested as the 2.4Ghz.