Heading into fiber internet 1000 d /100 u, what pre-requisites should I be preparing?

[er557]

Currently on 200/5 on cable, I use a tplink archer c9 running dd-wrt, which I hope I may continue using as main router. the dd-wrt revision is quite outdated but stable. Anything else regarding lan cables or lan driver? I use the intel I210 gigabit on board, one of two identical ports.

 

[Static~Charge]

Since your current WAN speed is 200/5, I assume that your in-house network is already gigabit? The Archer C9 has gigabit Ethernet ports (LAN and WAN), so it should be up to the task. As long as your network cables are Cat 5e or better, and any switches on your network are gigabit speed, then you should be good to go.

 

[er557]

Nothing special in the lan driver settings department then? it has stuff like jumbo packets and transmit buffers, set to default. I currently usually get 170/5 on the pc, and don't know if it's due to congestion of the isp or something on my end. Haven't bothered with that up till now. The other parts of the network exist of three powerline adapters, which are 500mbps and giga ports, connected to two tplink wr1043nd access points configured with gargoyle firmware, also giga ports. Of course the tv and sat receivers don't have or need gigabit speeds. Full hd content streams fine @about 55mbps. The main pc will be doing most of the leg work, and hence needs to meet such high speed in it's configuration, otherwise the achieved speeds might be un-optimal. I will try the isp's router first just to get a baseline of what to expect, after which I'll deploy the c9.

 

[Solaris17]

Dont mess with the ethernet options. Things like "jumbo packets" or more correctly jumbo frames are only supported when the infrastructure supports them.

Your limiting factor will be the CPU. Gig ports are nice but dont guarantee gig throughput. Thats on the router CPU. pushing packets requires processing power. The more speed you push the more the CPU works to push that many packets. Its entirely possible you might top out at say 700mb/s because your CPU is controlling other things like devices or outbound requests, DNS resolution etc etc.

With all that said, unfortunately I dont know if your router will do it specifically.

 

[er557]

Yeah, I guess we'll wait and see. I certainly won't be risking a brick by updating to a more recent version of dd-wrt, before doing all due research. Surely the isp's router would be able to handle the speed, or they wouldn't be giving them away; only after seeing that will I try the c9. I really hope the method will be dhcp to connect to wan, as it is more direct and more fool-proof, as opposed to pppoe, which might handle "gamer" configurations better but is more limited for high speeds.

 

[SamirD]

Generally, it's going to be your router that will be the limiting factor with gigabit. But as you mentioned, the isp router should be able to handle it and be a good test bed.

That being said, I would try to find out if not getting full speed to the pc you want it to go to is because of the c9 or because of something else on the pc. I know with all the isp accounts I have, the speeds do hit their paid bandwidth levels and are usually overprovisioned by a bit so you should see spikes above 200 if all is set up correct. If not, then you need to fix that or you're going to see 175 even with gig service.

 

[er557]

It SEEMS I have been getting 200 when using other motherboard, and the marvell Yukon gigabit adapter, now with intel's i210 things seemed to settle lower a bit. So should I look for an updated driver for that, or tweak the windows rwin buffers(tcp stack), or even increase lan driver settings, which was not recommended by solaris?
edit: the cables I use haven't changed and are a short cat5e type

 

[NdMk2o1o]

It SEEMS I have been getting 200 when using other motherboard, and the marvell Yukon gigabit adapter, now with intel's i210 things seemed to settle lower a bit. So should I look for an updated driver for that, or tweak the windows rwin buffers(tcp stack), or even increase lan driver settings, which was not recommended by solaris?
edit: the cables I use haven't changed and are a short cat5e type

That should be Ethernet so there's no reason it can't provide you with your current 200mbps, you should be able to check the line speed in your router, cutting out the pc to rule that out, though as others have said as long as you have gigabit connections and cat 5e you should really be good to go.

 

[er557]

Is there a dd-wrt plugin for the router to be able to benchmark the speed internally without the pc?
Edit: I'll look into the router as a standalone, maybe testing with one of the wr1043nd gargoyle units. I also have in storage a brand new d-link dir-880L, which I am considering flashing with dd-wrt, although It may be locked for that due to AC band limitations in my country.

Edit #2: just checked backup pc connected to same router locally, it got 140mb, so it is definitely an isp congestion issue, not the main pc issue.

 

[SamirD]

It SEEMS I have been getting 200 when using other motherboard, and the marvell Yukon gigabit adapter, now with intel's i210 things seemed to settle lower a bit. So should I look for an updated driver for that, or tweak the windows rwin buffers(tcp stack), or even increase lan driver settings, which was not recommended by solaris?
edit: the cables I use haven't changed and are a short cat5e type

If you're getting the full 200 from the marvel yukon and not the intel, then I'd definitely look into the drivers. But I'd double check that the Yukon isn't getting the same speed as I know our Yukon is about the same speed as our Intels.

 

[er557]

Ok, an update, I upgraded the lan drivers to the latest intel i210 driver, works fine, also have (just for kicks, may revert back the tweaks) tweaked the lan driver parameters to their maximum settings, also disabled all offloading, as described in this guide(is it any good?)
https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/e...rnet-Adapter-Settings-for-Maximum-Performance

the max speed I am getting hasn't changed much, it is still in the 150mbps range, (ISP?) , yet it seems some specific websites don't render properly(or fully) in edge browser(is it even related to adapter settings?)
I state again, that in the backup pc that is connected locally as well, has a Marvell 88E8056® PCIe Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2, the speeds aren't much better at all.
So what am I looking at here, opinions welcome, also am I falsely concerned about the future fibre speeds?

 

[SamirD]

Here's what I would do to eliminate any driver issues and system issues.

Boot a linux live cd so that you're not using windows or your own drivers. Try more than one live cd and use dslreports.com/speedtest (I've found this to be the most accurate across all types of isps). See what your results are on two different live cds on the two different systems (4 tests total). Do all tests wired with known good cables.

If you're not hitting 200, could be your router, could be the isp. If you can repeat the test with the isp provided router and the results are still the same and less than what you're paying for--100% isp issue. If you repeat the test with the isp provided router and the results are what they should be (200+), then it's more than likely your router that's limiting your speed.

 

[eidairaman1]

Fiber-to-the-home installations you may need a cat 5e home run line to go from the outside to the inside unless if they're PON nid is inside home.

 

[er557]

 

[SamirD]

Nice! Is this through your router or the provided one?

Also, try dslreports speedtest--I'm curious what that test will show.

 

[er557]

This is with the provided router, which seems excellent so far. my archer c9 dd-wrt is outdated and could not keep up with that, also his wifi is very weak compared to this one- I get 400mbps on my tablet and 70mbps on an iPhone. Here is the dslreport

 

[SamirD]

So the nic on the dektop didn't factor in at all then? And is the dslreports test on wifi or wired? I would have expected it to be spot on with the other test site.

 

[er557]

it's on wired.
The desktop nic was upgraded to intel pro set latest version- a very good revision, I even tried teaming with the other adapter- didn't bode too well. Eventually I resetted the windows tcp ip stack completely, did a netsh, flushed dns, rebooted, and the speeds were great again.

 

[SamirD]

Yeah, teaming is more trouble than its worth--better to just set up two networks that can utilize each others resources. Glad to hear you got everything sort. Hate to hear that dslreports speed test report wasn't accurate--this is the first time I've found it fail me in terms of reporting the correct speeds.