GRcade

Does the job, smut downloads quick enough etc.

Finally got gooseberry fool Virgin to connect me after 12 weeks. Now have 320mb down, 20mb up.

Its adequate for my usage.

Have very differing speeds across my house and wondering if there is anything I can do to improve it.

Paying for 200Mb, wife's laptop plugged into router gets 172Mb, which is pretty good and rules out major problems at Virgin's end.

My phone in the same room as router gets 50Mb, in the bedroom with my PC it gets 35Mb.

My PC is connected using Homeplugs - standard 1m cable from router to "in" plug, 5m + 1m (using a little connector) from "out" plug to PC. The PC basically tops out at about 30Mb (i.e theoretically slower than WiFi!). My research at the time said it was about 100m before you noticed serious speed drops from long ethernet cables, but is the fact I'm using a connector more of an issue? I'm fairly sure the copper wiring in the house is okay.

Should I invest in a 10m cable?

I don’t really know what’s good or bad

Jenuall wrote:Man this is a depressing thread to enter.

Agreed.

Does the job, I stream all TV content so download is the important one for me.

Dowbocop wrote:Have very differing speeds across my house and wondering if there is anything I can do to improve it.

Paying for 200Mb, wife's laptop plugged into router gets 172Mb, which is pretty good and rules out major problems at Virgin's end.

My phone in the same room as router gets 50Mb, in the bedroom with my PC it gets 35Mb.

My PC is connected using Homeplugs - standard 1m cable from router to "in" plug, 5m + 1m (using a little connector) from "out" plug to PC. The PC basically tops out at about 30Mb (i.e theoretically slower than WiFi!). My research at the time said it was about 100m before you noticed serious speed drops from long ethernet cables, but is the fact I'm using a connector more of an issue? I'm fairly sure the copper wiring in the house is okay.

Should I invest in a 10m cable?

Have you tested to see what speed your wife's laptop gets if you plug it in where your PC is? You need to narrow down whether it's a network issue or a device specific issue. If the speed is still only 30Mb when your wife's laptop is using that link then it would indicate that there is an issue with your internal network. In that case it might be worth trying the "out" homeplug in different parts of the house to see what speed you get elsewhere.

I know that the wiring in your house can have significant impact on the speed of home plugs, as well as whether you are using things like power extensions etc. Also, just to make sure, I'm assuming that you have a suitably fast pair of homeplugs?

Jenuall wrote:
Have you tested to see what speed your wife's laptop gets if you plug it in where your PC is? You need to narrow down whether it's a network issue or a device specific issue. If the speed is still only 30Mb when your wife's laptop is using that link then it would indicate that there is an issue with your internal network. In that case it might be worth trying the "out" homeplug in different parts of the house to see what speed you get elsewhere.

I know that the wiring in your house can have significant impact on the speed of home plugs, as well as whether you are using things like power extensions etc. Also, just to make sure, I'm assuming that you have a suitably fast pair of homeplugs?

Very helpful, thanks!

Can plug the laptop in upstairs over the weekend. Actually haven't checked the homeplugs so that's something I can investigate, as well as moving it to different sockets in the bedroom. The house was modernised by the last owners but not sure if that included the mains, if it's the copper in the walls I'm just going to have to make do or drill a hole through the floor!

I had the power strip plugged into the other plug on the mains socket, not the passthrough on the homeplug. Now getting 65Mbps. I look forward to accepting that, just like in 2001, my ping is not the reason I'm gooseberry fool at Quake

My Internet connection with Virgin is fast but drops a lot. Sick of getting booted out of Mumble or getting disconnected from games. But I think it's just the reality of living in Wales. Is "the Internet sometimes drops for a sec and it winds me up" even something I can complain about?

I can't get the speedtest.net to work properly, it keeps giving a speed far below what I'm actually experiencing. I pay for 350mbps on Virgin, and I get that. So here's a download from my server last night:

Which works out at 345.6 megabits per second. If the file was bigger it might have got to full speed before it finished.

Have you tried broadband.co.uk? No idea if their checker works differently...

Dowbocop wrote:Have you tried broadband.co.uk? No idea if their checker works differently...

My problem is I only get that speed from the server which is wired into the router, my desktop PC is upstairs on a powerline which cuts the speed to about 70mbps.
The server doesn't have a GUI, so I can't use web based speed tests. There's a ubuntu package for speedtest.net which runs on the server, but it always seems to report ~200mbps, even though other applications on the server can download at the full speed I expect, like in my screenshot above.

Nah, I see how that's a pain!

Got a new router:

Question for Sky Fibre Max users out there (on here, whatever) currently paying £43-45 a month for Virgin Media and I only ever use the internet, don't watch the TV as it's a low package so just freeview shut basically and I have Netflix 4k/dodgy iptv for all Sky channels (I know, absolute filth I am) which I don't ever watch it's just there. So the question is are Sky good for gaming? VM's download speeds are great but uploads are gooseberry fool and the wifi on the Supershitehub 3 is strawberry floating abysmal.

Broadband (Fibre Max) and phone is £30 so that's a saving of near £15 anyway and they seem to have better reliability than Virgin for gaming/wifi. Though just to point out my PC, Xbox One X and PS4 Pro are all using a wired connection, just the likes of my Firestick in my room and Now TV box in the daughters room using Wifi.

New house, new internet.

Apologies for the Ancient thread bump!
We're having 300mbs FTTP installed tomorrow!

This is what we've dealt with for years:


Game downloads are finally going to be within my grasp!
Gone are the days of waiting 36+ hours for mere patches to download (CoD ).

With 300mbs down it'll be over before I've boiled the kettle, had a gooseberry fool and made tea.
Glorious!

I shall post the improved speedtest result tomorrow