Full Fibre 300 - not getting full download speed

[#1]

OK well I've got home earlier than expected so I can confirm that the cable is Cat 5E and states on it that it supports Gigabit Ethernet.

I can also happily say that tonight I'm getting 300Mbps or thereabouts in every room in the house on my mobile! I haven't tried my PC yet but what I did notice is that my phone was connected on the 5 GHz frequency but I did nothing to select this. Maybe yesterday it was using the 2.4 GHz frequency or maybe Plusnet have actually done something at their end, I don't know?

[#2]

Your phone will connect to the strongest frequency band, but they can be a bit choosy. Your laptops wireless adapter should do the same, but sometimes they need configuring - sorry I can't help with that, as I don't have the experience.

[#3]

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@srangeley wrote:

... it still doesn't explain how I could get 300Mbps on my phone on Thursday but nowhere near that over the weekend 🤔

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That could easily happen if one of your neighbours router's was using the same WiFi channel number as yours, which potentially could halve your available bandwidth.

Ideally you need to use a WiFi channel scanner to find (preferably on the 5Ghz band) a WiFi channel that your neighbours aren't using, and set to router to that.

[#4]

but what I did notice is that my phone was connected on the 5 GHz frequency but I did nothing to select this. Maybe yesterday it was using the 2.4 GHz frequency

in the real world you'll be lucky to achive > 50Mb using a 2.4 ghz connection. The Plusnet Hub 2 is a Wifi 5 spec and so (in ideal conditions) a 5 ghz connection should be capable of 300Mb. For instance my laptop tops out at around 350Mb when 10ft from the router (that's on a 900Mb Full fibre connection).

[#5]

I think it's connected using 2.4GHz, not sure if it's possible to force it to use 5GHz instead?

@srangeley 

If you open this link http://192.168.1.254/basic_-_my_devices.htm its a quick way to display all the devices connected to the Hub two, importantly you can see if they have attached to either 2.4 or 5GHz.

If you see the problem again it would be helpful if you can post a screen shot of the test results

HTH

[#6]

Thanks, yeah I'm getting my head round it now!

So the only reason to have Full Fibre 500 or 900 would be either if you had a home network or a large household using loads of devices on Wi-Fi at the same time?

By the way, why is the Hub One not compatible with Full Fibre - too slow?

Thanks

Steven

[#7]

@Dan_the_Van 

Thanks, yeah I did that last night and could see my phone was connected using 5 GHz (didn't have time to check my PC).

At weekend though both were connected on 2.4 GHz - that's before I connected my PC with my LAN cable. I just need to confirm that my network port is set to use 1 Gbps as I still can't understand why I was only getting 85 Mbps with a cable!

Thanks

Steven

[#8]

By the way, why is the Hub One not compatible with Full Fibre - too slow?

The Hub One has an upload speed limitation of around 30Mb so will restrict all but the lower speed Full fibre products

[#9]

@srangeley 

Using the Hub menu's

To confirm the Hub and ONT connection is 1Gbps look here :- http://192.168.1.254/basic_-_status.htm  WAN link speed.

For a LAN speed connection you can check Advanced Settings >Technical Log >Event log

At the time a wired device connects you should see something like this message "Wire Lan Port 1 up, Speed 1000 Mbps" depending on the LAN port being used.

Ignore this message "Wire Lan Port 1 down, Speed 10 Mbps" as this is the port resetting the auto negotiate speed to the starting speed of 10Mbps.

HTH

[#10]

@Dan_the_Van 

I checked my Ethernet connection and it was set to 'Auto Negotiation' under Speed & Duplex.

I changed it to 1.0 Gbps Full Duplex and I managed to get over 200 Mbps on Speedtest.net. However after a restart it's back to its old ways:

17:04:02, 13 Dec.
A device connected to Ethernet port 1
17:04:02, 13 Dec.
Wire Lan Port 1 up, Speed 100 Mbps
17:03:59, 13 Dec.
A device disconnected from Ethernet port 1
17:03:59, 13 Dec.
Wire Lan Port 1 down, Speed 10 Mbps
17:03:58, 13 Dec.
A device connected to Ethernet port 1
17:03:58, 13 Dec.
Wire Lan Port 1 up, Speed 1000 Mbps

Any ideas why it's doing this please? I haven't touched the network cable!

Ideally I just want to use 5 GHz Wi-Fi but I can't seem to force my PC / phone to connect to 5 GHz and I only seem to have channels 36, 40, 44 and 48 available to select in the router settings? These get a poor rating on my Wi-Fi analyser app.

Thanks

Steven

[#11]

@srangeley 

Is the PC network card still fixed to 1000Mpbs Full Duplex?

I've seen this problem before where a fixed speed connection (1000Mbps in the case) is connected to a auto negotiating port on a switch, it struggles to negotiate the required speed, I suspect the Port 1 down message is caused by a auto negotiate restart on the  network card.

I would revert back to the network cards default setting and see if it stay connected a 1000Mbps

The Hub 5Ghz wireless uses channels that will not overlap adjacent channels, this can not be changed, maybe the devices see 2.4Ghz connection having better quality. Depending on the devices usage you may not notice the reduced speed.

[#12]

Yeah it was still set to 1.0 Gbps, I checked that. I've changed it back to Auto Negotiation now but it's still set to 100 Mbps:

18:12:42, 13 Dec.
A device connected to Ethernet port 1
18:12:42, 13 Dec.
Wire Lan Port 1 up, Speed 100 Mbps
18:12:39, 13 Dec.
A device disconnected from Ethernet port 1
18:12:39, 13 Dec.
Wire Lan Port 1 down, Speed 10 Mbps
18:12:38, 13 Dec.
A device connected to Ethernet port 1
18:12:38, 13 Dec.
Wire Lan Port 1 up, Speed 1000 Mbps

I've also changed the Wireless Mode on my Wi-Fi adapter to IEEE 802.11a/n/ac instead of Auto which means it's now connecting on the 5 GHz band and I've changed the channel to 48 instead of 36. I've just had around 146 Mbps on Speedtest.net so that's the highest speed I've had over Wi-Fi so far!

I suppose it's just a case of more experimenting to get the best overall performance.

Thanks

Steven

[#13]

Yeah it was still set to 1.0 Gbps, I checked that. I've changed it back to Auto Negotiation now but it's still set to 100 Mbps:

Thinking back, there was an similar issue reported some time ago if I recall with Xbox having this issue, do not think it was ever resolved.

Some experimenting will be needed for optimum wireless channel.

Do you do anything on the laptop which requires greater than 100Mbps?

[#14]

@srangeley I know you said the cable was cat5e but have you ever tried a different cable ?

I've seen at least one cat5e cable with a fault on one core cause it  to still work but negotiate 100Mb

[#15]

@Dan_the_Van

It's a PC but I doubt it really, I just like to get what I'm paying for as much as possible!

Steven