One look, is the ethernet port bad?

[CreamyCornCob]

Hello, this journey maybe coming to an end. This is from a previous thread below. The issue was download speeds stuck at 9mb down. Everything was changed except re-installing drivers. So at the advice here, fired up ubuntu to see if its still at 9mb down, thus telling me the port is indeed dead. Is that your take from it based on this screen? Thank god its still under warranty.

Ubunto network:

 

 

 

 

 

[SupaKomputa]

Your ethernet card is operating at 100mbps.

Change the cable to CAT5e or CAT6.

[CreamyCornCob]

@SupaKomputa in the thread I posted, we changed everything, and changing three cables. Still stuck at 9mb down my friend.

Anything else?

[mariushm]

Everything in the chain must be without problems to get 100mbps or 1gbps

 

So your ethernet connector on your motherboard must be good.

The ethernet port on your switch or modem or router must be good

The jacks at the ends of the ethernet cable must be good (all wires inside cable must make proper contact with those metal contacts at both ends)

over the length of the the cable the cable must be good (make sure you didn't step on it with chair, that no wires are broken throughout the cable and so on)

 

For 10 mbps, only 4 wires need to exist in the connectors, wires 1-2 and 3-6 ... so if there's no continuous connection between your motherboard's ethernet port and the final connector on one of the other 4 wires that can explain why everything falls back to 10mbps. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#Cabling

 

You can test the ethernet port on your switch / modem /  router by connecting a known good device (pc, laptop, console) to your modem/router/switch ethernet port - if you get 1gbps then the ethernet port on switch/modem/router is good.

You can test the ethernet cable the same way ... creating a connection between two known good devices.

That leaves you with visually checking the port on your motherboard to make sure the pins aren't bent or shorting each other, that they're all in their proper channels, if they're all "springy" so that when you insert the plug the pins will bend and make good contact.

[CreamyCornCob]

@mariushm Narrowed down. So with Ubuntu showing 10 mb/s, its not the OS or drivers.

So with the same cable from the router/modem, I plugged in two different laptops. Each were 100mb down now (not 400, but thats congestion I assume) from 9mb down. 

We unplug the same cable from the laptop and into the desktop ethernet - 9mb down.

 

So that eliminates the cable, the router/socket. But it DOESN'T eliminate the ethernet jack itself on the desktop.

I looked with a magnifying glass at all the pins, they are all 'springy' and sprung up to their resting position.

I looked at the pins to see if they were touching, they were all aligned and spaced apart perfectly.

 

So is it safe to say, something internal in that socket is bad? I think so, whats your take?

note: around the time of the speed drop, I had unplugged a USB drive and it instantly shut the pc off, in miliseconds. Never seen that.

Its running fine now but, could maybe that surge that caused the instant shut down damaged the ethernet port?

[mariushm]

Then probably the ethernet chip has a fault or maybe the transformer that isolates the ethernet jack is faulty.

As you have a desktop easiest solution would be to install another card in the pc.

Look at the free slots and see if you have an empty PCI slot or a pci-e slot (x1 or x4 or x8, doesn't matter, can plug x1 cards in any size slots)

Ethernet cards are super cheap, 1-3$ on eBay ... even in retail stores they're cheap.

ex.

PCI card: https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rc-400-lx/p/N82E16833166017

PCI-e card: https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rc-411v3/p/N82E16833166019

or https://www.newegg.com/tp-link-tg-3468/p/N82E16833704060

 

 

[SupaKomputa]

Surge is known to cause damage to ethernet ports, usb port and audio.

Why don't you just buy a cheap pcie card, after narrowing all possibilities,  i think the port is broken.

[CreamyCornCob]

@mariushm and @SupaKomputa Thank you much for your help, so the ethernet port is bad, glad its narrowed down and thanks again.

I think I can squeeze in a pci card, its a micro gigabyte, have one sole pci behind the gpu.

 

Well the journey is over it seems  Again, TY for your detailed input Mariushm.

 

[mariushm]

I agree, a PCI card would be your best option.

There is a pci-e slot but seems to be blocked by the video card.

You can then go in BIOS and disable the onboard network chip if you want to (but you don't have to)

 

Try finding a PCI card that's more narrow (less tall), so it won't choke video card fans so much.. ex this one's nice : https://www.newegg.com/startech-st1000bt32/p/N82E16833114004

 

[CreamyCornCob]

Ah fantastic! Yeah I thought about the case bracket thing, didn't know they made even smaller ones

So when the card comes, its just uninstalling and installing the LAN drivers for this card and fingers crossed @mariushm ?

 

Can the bracket just be removed? Been a while since I held a simple nic card.

Yup the other PCIe slot is blocked by the gpu.

Thanks so much.

 

[mariushm]

You can have multiple network cards in your computer. Windows will automatically work with the one that has a network cable plugged in.

If you want to, you can turn off one by going in Device Manager, right click on it and select Disable.

On most motherboards, you can turn off the onboard network card from bios, and then it won't even show up in Windows / Device Manager, it's like you physically unplug card from pc.

The chips on these cheap network cards are super common (used on motherboards for 5-10 years or more already, so most likely Windows will auto detect and install drivers. If not, card may come with a CD.

It's very unlikely but you may have to go in bios to enable the PCI slot. Should be enabled by default, saying it just in case.

[SupaKomputa]

 

This is smaller

[mariushm]

Just now, SupaKomputa said:

 

 

This is smaller

It's pci-e, he needs PCI.

 

He has a free pci-e slot but it's obstructed by video card so unusable. In theory a pci-e riser could be used but would be expensive and too much of a hassle and complicated...not worth discussing it.

[SupaKomputa]

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

It's pci-e, he needs PCI.

 

He has a free pci-e slot but it's obstructed by video card so unusable. In theory a pci-e riser could be used but would be expensive and too much of a hassle and complicated...not worth discussing it.

can pci handle gigabit?

better get a usb gigabit dongle than using old pci.

 

[mariushm]

4 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

can pci handle gigabit?

better get a usb gigabit dongle than using old pci.

 

Yes, PCI can do 1 gbps.

Most basic PCI bus is 32bit wide, and runs at 33 mhz... so max bandwidth is (32 bit/ 8bits in a byte) x 33 Mhz = 4x33 = ~133 MB/s

 

1gbps is 1.000.000.000 bits / 8bits = 125'000'000 bytes = less than 125 MB/s which is less than 133 MB/s

 

USB would be worse option... usb 2.0 would limit you to ~38MB/s (~300mbps), usb 3 may make 1gbps doable but cheap usb adapters are flakey...

and usb has higher overhead and much higher cpu usage, esp. at high transfer speeds.

 

pci and pci-e has dma, hardware offloading, less cpu usage... usb by definition is the other way... usb device has to wait until computer "talks" to it, while regular cards can simply start talking, so less latency, less cpu usage, because cpu doesn't have to pause other tasks to ask "hey usb device, did more data come through the cable?"

 

 

Edited May 28, 2019 by mariushm
forgot some zeroes, fixed math

[CreamyCornCob]

Well thank you very much to the both of you. Years ago, I've built many many PC's, maybe 40-50 high end machines, but that was in the early 2000's. Then time stopped and got out of building, only to start a simple open air design for myself in 2019. So much has changed, but some things remain the same.

 

So its kind of all new, but it isn't if that makes sense. And that's why I appreciate the help. Its sort of like feeling your way around in a dark room that you're used to be familiar with - but all of the furniture has changed

 

Thank you again for all the help.

Will report back and touch this thread just to say it worked, which I'm sure it will.

 

Cheers 

[CreamyCornCob]

Fixed ! ! !

 

Well well 

We did everything. Before ordering the new ethernet card, one more thing.

Power the pc down, unplug psu, reset/kill all power on mobo.

 

Damp, not wet or dripping, on goes the isopropyl alcohol on a que tip and lighty cleaned inward and out on the ethernet pins a few times. Blow to make sure its dry (it wasn't wet) and any fibers from the que tip.

 

Powered everything up and....

 

We did it!! Of all the swapping of ports, router ports, cables, running ubuntu, changing settings, plugging in other devices.... It was a single or few pins that decided to get dirty

Keep in mind, this mobo is new from 6 months ago and the cat6 were unplugged only a couple of times, but still somehow they got smedged.

 

It made sense with pins 1-2-3 and 5 making contact, the others not and it defaulting back to 10mb.

So I want to thank everyone from both threads, Thank you very much for all your time and help, LTT group is the best.

And that's : @mariushm - @SupaKomputa - @brwainer - @Tadrith - @Eniqmatic - @Lurick - @Mira Yurizaki - @_Syn_ - @Mdgtman91 - @Donut417 

Cheers!

 

 

[SupaKomputa]

Good damn that fixed... congratz.

Hmm makes me think about and old motherboard with the same problem.