ISP speed question with and without routers

[Handruin]

I've been having some interesting results with my cable internet and I'm curious what others might think. I recently upgraded my charter.com service to a 16Mb / 2Mb service and I've noticed a large difference in speed when I'm using my Netgear WGT624 v2 router vs when the cable modem is directly connected to my system. I only have one computer using the net, so I wouldn't expect such a large difference in speed, but there is.

Here is the download going through my Netgear:

Download #1
------------------------------------------------------------
File size transferred : 10.88 MB (11405532 bytes)
Total time taken      : 11.45 seconds (11453 milliseconds)
Throughput            : 995.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
                      = 1.0 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
                      = 7960.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
                      = [B][COLOR="Red"]7.96 Mbps[/COLOR][/B] [Megabit-per-second]

This is without my router.

Download #3
------------------------------------------------------------
File size transferred : 10.88 MB (11405532 bytes)
Total time taken      : 6.33 seconds (6328 milliseconds)
Throughput            : 1802.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
                      = 1.8 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
                      = 14416.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
                      = [COLOR="Red"][B]14.42 Mbps[/B][/COLOR] [Megabit-per-second]

My first guess was that the WAN port is stuck at 10Mb at the router connection side when the cable modem is connected to the router. I confirmed that the cable modem will connect at 100Mb when directly connected to my PC, so I know it's possible. That's the only thing I can think of other than the router being extremely slow at what it does. Has anyone ever been able to test the speed of their router when actually routing traffic or know of a way that I can confirm this? My other option is to go buy a new router and see what the performance is like.

 

[Mercutio]

I've run into something similar for the internet connection at my office. I fixed it by replacing our router with an ancient Thinkpad and a couple PC Card NICs. The "new" system is also vastly more able to handle many hundreds of open bittorrent connections without much degradation in overall connection speed, something a WRT54G could not manage.

 

[Handruin]

I guess I could build a smooth wall and see how it performs, but I'd rather not have to run a dedicated system just for this. I'll try picking up a new router at bestbuy and see is anything improves. The WRT54G has been around for a while and needs another version/revision upgrade. If I find one that performs better I'll let you know.

 

[mubs]

You may want to verify that the router you buy does indeed have a WAN connection faster than 10 Mbps.

I never did tests like you, but always did feel some loss of speed using a router as compared to not using one.

 

[Handruin]

Mubs, I checked to see what my netgear has for WAN speed and it claims a 10/100 connection. however there are no indicator lights not any confirmation in the router's control panel to indicate what speed I'm actually connected at. My cable modem doesn't show this information either.

Thing is, I upgraded my speed mainly because i want more upload. So after they offered me this new package that had just become available in my area the day before I ordered it (she said I was the first customer with it in the area).

I did the normal speed tests at speakeasy and some of the others only to find hardly any difference. Then when I call charter to get this resolved, they send me to charter's test page which is obviously faster. They sent the tech guys out today and confirmed everything was great for signal strength, etc but the speeds were not even close to the 16Mb down. I've been getting 1.3/1.4 Mb upload and they seem to think that's as good as I'll get.

Then, when we started testing without my router was it noticeably faster in the download speeds, but only to their local test server. I still only get between 5 and 6 Mb down at speakeasy's server in NYC or another server in Portland ME. I don't really know which numbers to believe, but if you want to see how fast yours is, here is the Charter test server.

 

[mubs]

Maybe your TCP/IP settings need tweaking. Try one of these:

DSL reports - Tweaks

Speedguide.net - click on Broadband at upper left

Navas Cable Modem/DSL Tuning Guide