The Cat 5E cable has a maximum speed of only 100 megabytes per second.
The Cat 5E cable has a maximum speed of only 100 megabytes per second.
Hello all, I apologize as this might be a bit of a read. To preface the situation, I have 1.5gb up/down with my service provider. My computer is connected via CAT6 directly into the back of the router and is getting speeds above 1gb so nothing strange there. We have a CAT6 cable that connects from the router to the wall jack and leads to the downstairs living room (the router is on the second level). This connection was installed by the ISP handyman. Now, it gets tricky here as he initially had to split the cable to assist with a second phone line so we always only got up to 100 mbps from the wall jack in the living room. I have unhooked the second phone line and patched the cable so that it should be fully functional now and giving up to 1000 mbps. After the patch, I am still only getting 100mbps. Assuming the patch was done correctly, I looked a the wall jacks and have taken pictures of how they have been connected with the thought that something here may be wrong. I apologize to admins if I've linked these incorrectly. Here is the wall jack upstairs by the router: Upstairs jack Here is the wall jack in the living room: Downstairs jack Now, if anyone here can see anything wrong with how these are wired, please let me know as I do have a network repair kit and can make changes. However, if it all looks fine then what I may do is get a gigabit LAN switch and create two ends where I did the patch in case that is the issue. My last resort is to test the cable coming from upstairs and potentially swap out the cable leading to the downstairs wall jack. Thank you all for taking the time to read this, I look forward to your answers and ideas!
So, there are many problems here. First, one pair was missing from the upstairs end, but it's still attached to the bottom port. Second, you're using the wrong color pattern; both ends need to match either 568a or 568b. You can choose one, but both must be identical. Third, this doesn't look like a real ethernet cable because the twists on the pairs aren't tight enough. Since you might not be able to fix anything if the walls have the wrong type of cable, just make sure the pattern is right and maybe that will work out somehow.
Thanks for getting back so fast! I felt something wrong about the upstairs one, because those two wires at the bottom shouldn't be there. I'm going to make sure to pull both ends out (at the top and at the bottom) and re-punch them with the same code. Yeah, this is definitely an ethernet cable; just those wires near the end got a little messy tangled up. All of that was done by the ISP guy so I'll have to go in there and fix it myself. I'm going to share my findings here to see if that made any difference at all!
If you have enough slack, cut the wires back and only expose maybe an inch or two at most. The less you can untwist the better. This is just an example of a patch panel showing wires connected to it. That is your goal: how little wire you untwist. Check this link for more info on the patch keystone rack-mount switch:
Those wall plates are out. The PX100414 (Belden) is a 5e wire, not gigabit. I'll use standard keystone jacks for each end. I will keep the untwisted wire as short as possible and follow the 568B color code at both ends. Also, get a simple tester to test the jack: https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Cat6-Pu...003L11H48/ and another one from Klein: https://www.amazon.com/Klein-VDV526-052-...B004CI9NRM
Thanks to Kanewolf and bill001g for getting my answers. Last night I tested things myself and managed at least to show the cable tester had a short because the #1 light didn't come on. Basically, I took out the patch cord in the cable that was connected to both ends so I could figure out where the trouble was. Kane, you're probably right; the problem might be with the wall plates or the jack. When I plugged my laptop into it, the computer couldn't get internet and showed me a speed of 10/10. After everything else was working fine, I realized that the wall plate downstairs wasn't sending any signal. So today I'm going outside to get those keystones you suggested and try re-wiring with 568b to see if that fixes it. I'll let you know when it's done.
After putting in all the work that promised in the last post, the speeds are back down to what they were before I started this project. I replaced both the wall plates on the upper and lower floors with Cat6 plugs and ran everything correctly using the 568b standard. Honestly, something about the wire inside the wall is stopping me from reaching full speed at 100 mbps. My cable in the wall is actually Cat5e, which can go up to 1000 mbps. So unless I find a way to run a Cat6 wire straight from my router to the living room wall outlet, I'm stuck with just 100 mbps. Well, thanks for all the help and tips everyone!
If you need to run any network faster than cat5e, I would recommend cat6a. There was once a big price difference between them, but now copper prices have gone up, making the cheaper stuff catch up with the expensive one. Cat6a is good for full 10gbit speeds. The most important part of an ethernet cable is that it must be pure copper wire sized between 22 and 24 AWG. Be sure to check this clearly when you buy anything; if in doubt, just buy from another place. I'd bet that 90% of the cables on Amazon don't actually meet these standards. Check your current cable's markings instead. It should say cat5e or have other official labels like TIA/EIA. Most often it will list the wire size (AWG), sometimes you'll even see CU, which means copper. You definitely want to avoid seeing CCA. Even though the wire itself rarely breaks, I did notice you mentioned splicing in the middle. It could be a bad splice that's causing problems; try swapping out the cable or test each section separately to check if either end is working at 1gbit speed. Unfortunately, normal testers are just for checking basic connection and can't tell you about things like too much resistance or interference between wires. For a typical home user, it's cheaper to just replace all cables blindly than to buy expensive tools that people rarely use.