Switching from 10Mbps to 100Mbps?

[Donshyoku]

This is my first semester living on campus at a new college and I was really excited to be on their T1 line. However, my downloads are reaaaally slow! I've been here for 4 weeks and the first week, it was running fast. Downloads were about 500-600KBps, and topped out at over 900K. Since that week, I've been downloading under 100K constantly, for THREE WEEKS!

It is driving me nuts as I download a lot of large files (legally, just to keep that kick back).

I reinstalled Windows last night, so I doubt I have any bugs. I updated my LAN drivers, and to no avail. I checked the settings and it has me set at 10Mbps when my hardware can do up to 100. Any way I can change this? I think this has something to do with it. Corded at 10Mbps gives me about 70K/s dowloads and wireless at 54Mbps gives me about 90K downloads, so I am wondering if 100Mbps corded would solve it.

Thanks for listening to my rambling and any help!

--Drew

 

[spidey07]

leave your network card to auto detect speed/duplex.

your download speeds are likely an affect of all the other people using the internet.

 

[sieistganzfett]

the LAN at your school is only 10? wtf, are they still using 10Mbp hubs too or something? not 100 Mbps switches?? huh? if you switch yours to 100Mbps chances are it wont work at all. id say 2nd week sounds about right for everyone to kick open their computers and start surfing and d/l like mad.. hey, spring break is coming up, when they all leave you can see if its really the sher ammount of people, i think your speed will shoot through the roof again while their away on break. if you want you could try a different building's d/l speeds and their connection rate, but chances are its the same throughout the campus in any dorm, or classroom..

 

[Donshyoku]

I had the thought that it was just network traffic. But, it is just hard for me to believe that we are on that slow of a network! I sent an email to the tech support on campus to see if they are on a 100 network. Gah, where'd my $16,000 go!?

I do have it set to autodetect the network and that sets it to 10. After fishing around, I found the setting I was looking for to change it to half or full duplex 100 and it didn't work at all! As you mentioned...

This is really annoying!

 

[n0cmonkey]

If all you have is a T1, your speeds aren't that bad. T1s fill up quick. :evil:

Your $16kUSD probably went to maintaining the buildings, paying the staff, buying educational equipment, stocking the cafeteria, maintaining the grounds, paying for a teeeny little fraction of that T1, electricity, and any number of other little goodies. $16k isn't much.

 

[Donshyoku]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
If all you have is a T1, your speeds aren't that bad. T1s fill up quick. :evil:

Your $16kUSD probably went to maintaining the buildings, paying the staff, buying educational equipment, stocking the cafeteria, maintaining the grounds, paying for a teeeny little fraction of that T1, electricity, and any number of other little goodies. $16k isn't much.

I was just joking about the $16K, heh. Most of my friends are paying way more than that for thier schooling!

 

[skyking]

At 10baseT, your connection is already much faster than T1 can deliver. The slowdown is due to usage, and if the administrator is not smart, it is specifically P2P.

Do a little investigating. Ask around, and if the students report that they can use all the common P2P programs with no problems, weeelllllll.............THERE is your problem

 

[sieistganzfett]

how many colleges still run 10mbps lans in 2006 though??? and i get 1.544Mbps->193KB/s with my math, and 10Mbps->1.25MB/s with 100MBp/s at 12.5MB/s (approx what a hd did a little while ago) im still not getting how thats 900K during week 1, damn my arithmetic.

 

[skyking]

It is probably somewhat larger than a T1 . I would guess at least an OC3 if they have only one connection.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: sieistganzfett
how many colleges still run 10mbps lans in 2006 though??? and i get 1.544Mbps->193KB/s with my math, and 10Mbps->1.25MB/s with 100MBp/s at 12.5MB/s (approx what a hd did a little while ago) im still not getting how thats 900K during week 1, damn my arithmetic.

very many.

It's a very good method to control client traffic - make them run at 10 Mbs. It's all part of traffic engineering.

 

[Donshyoku]

Here is an interesting twist. I downloaded a PVR program for my desktop, that I use as a media center, today and... 1.02MBps!

But my laptop is still slow! Hmm....

The desktop also reported that it was running at 10MBps and got those speeds.

 

[sieistganzfett]

? none of the schools or small businesses ive been to still run that speed, how is that a good method to control client traffic? i never heard of this when i did my ccna, does this mean their backbone is just 100Mbps then instead of gigabit?

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: sieistganzfett
? none of the schools or small businesses ive been to still run that speed, how is that a good method to control client traffic? i never heard of this when i did my ccna, does this mean their backbone is just 100Mbps then instead of gigabit?

when you get into serious traffic engineering you're controling how much you can get in and get out of a data center or peering point. It's very similar to old school voice traffic engineering.

If you can contain it at layer1/2 that is a good thing. but you're right...modern ethernets are 10/100 and there is little need to be other wise unless you are trying to control traffic or if you have old hardware.

switched 10/100 only became affordable in the year 1999.

-edit-
you'll get more into this with the ccda/ccdp/ccie.

 

[Goosemaster]

1. your school definitely doesn't have a T1...or at least it has that plus something much aster...a T1 line will only get you 187KB/s theoretically.

2. since your NIC cards connection is so much faster than their internet link, or at least what portion of it they are allocating for residents, making any changes would be futile...

 

[Gerbil333]

Originally posted by: Donshyoku
It is driving me nuts as I download a lot of large files (legally, just to keep that kick back).

We have 10mbps routers in my dorm. The newer dorms have 100mbps switches, and everything plugs into gigabit switches somewhere. But, everyone on campus is restricted as follows (max of 3000/3000kbps, and only when bandwidth usage is < 300MBs in 24 hours): UMR Bandwidth Restrictions

Here's what happened when I downloaded too much one week: 256/256kbps

Have you checked to see if your school enforces a similar policy?