Forum Discussion

Tom41's avatar
Tom41
Up to speed
19 days ago

Cables too old for high speed Internet?

I understand we are supposed to be on Gig 1 Broadband. However, I’ve tested at various times of day both wired and wireless, and only seem to get a top speed of 700-800 Mbit/sec. 

I’m wondering whether the cables coming to our house are too old to cope with these higher speeds. They were originally installed in late 1994 for analogue cable TV, and have not been replaced since then. If this is the case, would a re-pull be necessary to connect us with better cables? Or should I go straight for FTTP if it’s available in my area?

4 Replies

  • nodrogd's avatar
    nodrogd
    Very Insightful Person
    18 days ago

    If the cable was deteriorating it would fail completely in a relatively short time frame. 1Gb uses the same transmission spectrum as all the other speeds, so you would not notice any difference. You are more likely to have a rusted joint or have issues with an ageing splitter or isolator than the cable itself.

    My cabling is from 1993 on various speed tiers starting at 2Mb up to 350Mb now. Only ever had issues with joints, & failed isolators due to a lightning induced surge.

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person
    18 days ago

    1Gb Ethernet will max out at around 940 mb under ideal conditions, so you are doing alright.

  • IWFT's avatar
    IWFT
    Tuning in
    18 days ago

    I had Gig1 activated recently, up from 500mb where I had no issues and was getting 750-850mb on every Speedtest over a number of speedtest providers, after some troubleshooting and going through all my system/driver/network settings it turned out to be because I had QoS enabled (to prioritise traffic to specific PC's) on my third party router, apparently consumer routers processors get overwhelmed at around 800mb of scanning QoS packets, and disabling QoS had me at a constant 1Gb every test. Could be a number of things, just thought I'd reply having a similar issue recently.

    Other things worth considering:

    • On a wired connection ensure you are using at least a Cat 5 ethernet cables for 1Gbps link between devices.
    • Power Profile on the computer is set to at least performance mode (to ensure the network card is not forced into power saving mode).
    • On the network card driver settings, make sure the link speed is set to 1000mb TX/RX.
    • On the network card driver settings make sure anything labelled "Green" and "Power Saving" is disabled as this can reduce performance to save power resulting in lower speeds.

    Hope this helps or gets you on the right path while troubleshooting.