A little network help needed!

[rah50]

I've just added a new room to the house for all my media goodies. My electrician added 2 runs of Cat 6 cable about 100 ft long at most. My problem is I'm not getting much speed thru them. My internet service is 40 mbps and I'm getting at least that to all my old outlets. however, I'm only getting 2 or 3 mbps to the new room. Any ideas on what could be wrong?

 

Thanks, and all thoughts greatly appreciated!

[realhifi]

I've just added a new room to the house for all my media goodies. My electrician added 2 runs of Cat 6 cable about 100 ft long at most. My problem is I'm not getting much speed thru them. My internet service is 40 mbps and I'm getting at least that to all my old outlets. however, I'm only getting 2 or 3 mbps to the new room. Any ideas on what could be wrong?

 

Thanks, and all thoughts greatly appreciated!

 

You should out on new ends to start. You don't say what is on either end of these but I'm assuming that there is a router feeding the long cables into what?

[rah50]

Thanks David:

 

The cables start at my cable modem and end directly at either my TV or MicroRendu, nothing in-between. Agreed, I'll put on new connectors at both ends, but I thought a bad connector would make it not work at all, not just incredibly degrade the speed.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Thanks David:

 

The cables start at my cable modem and end directly at either my TV or MicroRendu, nothing in-between. Agreed, I'll put on new connectors at both ends, but I thought a bad connector would make it not work at all, not just incredibly degrade the speed.

 

A bad cable can make parts of the transmission to not work at all and cause major packet resends, slowing everything down.

[artur9]

but I thought a bad connector would make it not work at all, not just incredibly degrade the speed.

That's not been my experience. I have/had a bad jack. The strange things it would do but it worked like 40% of the time. It "worked" well enough that I blamed other things.

[anji12305]

Were any of the cables terminated on site by the installer?

 

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[Paul R]

How long are the other cable runs? Same length or significantly shorter? If a lot longer, you may need to put a more powerful switch between your home network and that cable modem.

 

It won't hurt to reterminate the cable ends, but you also might want to check that the cable is not routed side to side with power cables, laid parallel with a flourescent light fixture, or other common issues. Most electricians today know how to run data cable, but there is always that exception to the rule!

[artur9]

Were any of the cables terminated on site by the installer?

 

Yes, they all were IIRC. I had to redo both ends of that one to get things to normal. It was the jacks that were defective.

[realhifi]

 

Most electricians today know how to run data cable, but there is always that exception to the rule!

 

Lol! My experience is the opposite. The exception are ones that DO know how to run data cable.

[rah50]

Got one end re-terminated last night on both cables, no change, a paltry 3 mbps on my 40 mbps line.

[wouterk]

Have you used a cable tester? Cat 6 is high grade, but proper termination is tricky. A good cable tester to see if your cable matches the CAT6 spec is expensive. Before checking speed across the Internet: how about between 2 computers?

[rah50]

Have you used a cable tester? Cat 6 is high grade, but proper termination is tricky. A good cable tester to see if your cable matches the CAT6 spec is expensive. Before checking speed across the Internet: how about between 2 computers?

 

No, I don't have access to a cable tester. I'll redo the other ends tomorrow when I have the time to move all my equipment blocking access to the outlets. What would I learn from checking the speed between two computers that I wouldn't get from checking speed over the internet? One of my main concerns is getting 4k Netflix speeds.

 

I really appreciate the help!

[baddog]

Bob - are the two new runs terminated in jacks in an outlet or are they just "hanging" outside the wall where they were run to?

 

Also you mention they are connected to your cable modem? What cable modem do you have? You note you have other ethernet runs also connected to the same cable modem, is that correct? Have you tried plugging them into one of the other LAN ports on the cable modem?