Getting the most out of your wired connection
Although a wireless connection gives you more flexibility to position your devices around your home, it can occasionally suffer from interference, which can affect your internet speed. An Ethernet cable is generally not affected by interference so will give you a faster, more reliable connection.
There’s much you can do to get the very best connection speed and performance from your Virgin Media Router. This article guides you though how to:
- Check your equipment can support our superfast speeds
- Make sure you are using the best ethernet cable
Ethernet Cable
There are different types of ethernet cable available and the type is important when it comes to speed. Older cables can only support speeds of up to 100Mbps where newer cables can support speeds much greater than this.
The type of cable we recommend is Cat6. The type of cable should be printed on the cable itself as shown below.
Check your equipment
Computers
If you are connecting your Virgin Media Router directly to your computer, an ethernet cable will be connected to a Network Interface Card (NIC). Some NIC's can only handle speeds of up to 100 Megabits per seconds (Mbps) so you will not be able to enjoy the full speed of our superfast broadband. The maximum speed you will likely see on a speed test is about 92Mbps. A Gigabit NIC can handle speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) which can take full advantage of our superfast broadband.
If you don't have a Gigabit NIC on your desktop computer you could get one installed to take advantage of the full speed we provide. Contact your computer vendor or a computer shop for more information.
Laptops are difficult to upgrade so if you don't have a Gigabit NIC on your laptop you may find that you can achieve faster speeds by using wireless.
Routers
If you are using your own router with our Super Hub / Hub 3.0 in Modem Mode, your router will also need to have Gigabit ethernet ports. Check the details that came with your router to see if your router does have Gigabit ethernet ports.
Powerline
We’ve tested a lot of Powerline kits and found that 200Mb kits usually give speeds between 20 and 90Mbps, while 500Mbps kits can give speeds anywhere between 20 and 200Mbps.
Although for many people, 200Mb adapters will let you do all the things online you want, to get the best out of your super speedy broadband we recommend faster 500Mb adapters.
Your Powerline adapter does need to have a Gigabit port to achieve speeds of over 90Mbps. Check the details that came with your Powerline kit to see if they do have a Gigabit port.
