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Home network so so slow! :(

D

duragezic

Lifer
For some reason, since me and 3 others moved into this house, our internet and network hasn't seemed very fast. We have 3mbps/384kbps cable which we just had the Charter guy test the signal and he said it was all good and fast. But internet speed aside, something seems wrong.

For instance, yesterday I wanted to get Lost episodes off the Xbox that is connected to the network using a Linksys BEFSW 802.11b. As usual I FTP'd in but when I started to download them I was only getting 25-30k/s, got as fast as 70k/s, but that is messed up. At my last house it was 6-7mb/s with bursts of 10mb/s (I'm not on wireless). All of the Xbox settings are the same. Three of us here have XP machines with simple file sharing on, so I attempted to get the same episodes from someone's computer. JUST as slow, since the estimated time to finish 8 episodes was the same as slow FTP. Yet today I just got the same 8 episodes from yet anothe roomate's computer and it only took 6-8 minutes for the episodes, so that is much more acceptable speed.

We're all on the Linksys router. My only roommate on wireless said he was able to get 500-600k/s (max of 802.11b) right after I had told him my Xbox FTP speed was crap. So one would think cables... Well The cables that were left in the house may or may not be good ones, but two of my roommates ended up buying brand new 50' cables, and I switched from a really long possibly shady one to a 25' one that I know works. The Xbox however is connected to like a 100ft cable.

Does cat5e have a limit for cable length? Now this might explain why the Xbox FTP is so slow and why we can't play Halo 2 with Kai xlink without lagging out badly. Yet my one roommate with a 50' was just as slow as the box yesterday, but my other roommate with a also new 50' is fast today (didn't try yesterday).

Any ideas??
 
The defacto standard for CAT5 length is 100 meters - any longer you should be using some form of a repeater. Some people have success going longer then 100m, and some people have problems with slightly less then 100m. Jack crimping, cable quality, noise/interference from other devices all effect the signals ability to transmit.

Have you tried putting the XBox on a short patch cable right next to the router?
 
Ethernet has a max cable length of 100m, but this is because of timing issues, not signal degradation. The issues brought up Transition in the last thread (crimp quality, noise/interference, etc) are all more likely to be the culprit than cable length. I second his suggestion to try a different cable.
 
Ahh, well I will try the Xbox with a small cable to check. The Xbox won't boot without being hooked up, but I think just having the video out plugged into the Xbox (without being connected to TV inputs) will get it to boot. The router & modem are far away from the Xbox (and no TV is near it), hence the use of the 100' cable. Even if the cable I have is longer than that, that's still much less than 100m.

Still, Xbox aside, even accessing out people's computers on the network can be just as slow, and they are all using brand-new, shorter cat5 cables.
 
Maybe you could try STP cable instead of UTP. WHen my brother stayed in an house over a summer time at college, their network was crap. They were near a electric pole that had a transformer on it. The cables used there were less than 100 meters, but i'm not sure about the quality of the crimp and connectors used.

The one guy who was close to the router, was fine, but the rest of the roommates in this house had horrible speeds.
 
Originally posted by: RedCOMET
Maybe you could try STP cable instead of UTP. WHen my brother stayed in an house over a summer time at college, their network was crap. They were near a electric pole that had a transformer on it. The cables used there were less than 100 meters, but i'm not sure about the quality of the crimp and connectors used.

The one guy who was close to the router, was fine, but the rest of the roommates in this house had horrible speeds.
Click to expand...
Interesting, very interesting indeed! There are two poles near this house. One doesn't appear to have a transformer on it but the one that is closest to our house might (can't see through the trees right now).

I searched the 'Egg for STP cables but couldn't find anything. You mean a regular cat5 cable you buy is unshielded? If they are real expensive I've been thinking about just getting a wireless card, but would much prefer 10mbps network transfer speeds.
 
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