My home network is real simple, ISP supplied router with WiFi. Modem to connect the router to the internet. A NAS and two PC's plus various wireless stuff. The wireless stuff I'm not concerned about.
The NAS and both of the computers have Gigabit network adapters. The Router is supposed to be Gigabit. All of the cables are Cat6.
Why is Windows reporting the connection at 100Mbps? Any suggestions would be nice. I have time to write this as I'm transferring a movie from my NAS to my PC at 9.50 - 10.0MB/s so I can watch it. VLC doesn't want to play nice with these very large files.
There is not much I can do with the NAS as it's a consumer grade box. My PC does have an Intel nic, I'm using the onboard one. The wife's PC is Realtek as it's an AMD box.
Am I right in thinking that everything on the network has to be Gigabit for it to run at that speed. If this is the case just one item could be bringing it down to 100meg.
No, as long as everything between the source and destination is gigabit then you should get gigabit speeds. And it shouldn't matter if you're using a realtek NIC, it won't make that much of a difference. It definitely looks like something is running at 100mbps. Have you checked what the speed is between your computers rather than the NAS? It could be the NAS which is slow and not the network. Also you should check the link speed on your computers and the NAS if you can, there could be a damaged cable or something which is causing one of the devices to run at 100mbps instead of gigabit.
In Vista and I think windows 7 I had problems with poor network throughput which was related to the multimedia class scheduler service. You could try disabling that and seeing if it helps.
What model is the router? Sometimes they'll have Gig WAN but FE switchports.
Are the cables actually cat6 or some cheap stuff you got on ebay? Or did you crimp yourself (suspect no here). Links will fall back to FE speeds if they cant mange gig speeds. First thing to try is change the adapter properties on your PC from AutoNegotiate to 1000Mbps Full Duplex. See if that takes you offline or not.
It would appear that even switching the adapter from Auto to 1Gbit it's still falling back to 100.
My guess is that the router is at fault. It was supplied by my ISP so I think you can guess the quality. Look like I'm going to be replacing my router...
Any suggestions for a cheap router. It's going to have to be cheap as money is very tight.
A quick look from a UK supplier THIS would fit the bill. If I have just a little more cash I can get one from china like THIS one. The ASUS looks to be more feature rich, along with a higher price tag...
Dont bother, if you're BT based not virgin cable then your internet package will be <100Mb so not having gig to the WAN is fine. Just buy an 8Port Gig Switch to stick under the current unit.
Like this. I have 2x of them, great units. Then connect the NAS and PC's to the switch, switch to the router. Job done.
But before doing anything, make sure its not the cable. Get a 2-3ft patch cable and connect a laptop with a Gig NIC, make sure it links at 100Mb too.
