limited top speed

[brucenewman981]

Evening, firstly I would like to apologise if this is the wrong section to ask this in but its the only one related to networking I could find, if it is the wrong section let me know I will remove this post.

Recently I have upgraded to 1gig network the engineer that installed it tested speed from router at 984MB, speeds Im getting over cat6 "copper" come up between 550MB on speedtest to 1.2Gb on fast (netflix speed check) and 770 on cloudfare speed test site.

Downloads from steam and rockstar servers seem to hover around 60MB which is closer to the results from speedtest. Are there any settings in windows I should be aware of that could be impacting my download speed? Would changing DNS server help? Could it be a hardware issue on my end? Did I perhaps get a wack cable that doesnt meet the cat6 standards, I read online that majority of cables that are advertised as cat6 do not meet the standards since there is no official certification and its an honour based system. 
Lastly, what could be the potential cause of this disparity between different sites apart from different testing servers.

[kirashi]

6 minutes ago, brucenewman981 said:

Evening, firstly I would like to apologise if this is the wrong section to ask this in but its the only one related to networking I could find, if it is the wrong section let me know I will remove this post.

No need to apologize; personally I'd say that the Networking subforum is the right place for this kind of stuff.

 

6 minutes ago, brucenewman981 said:

Recently I have upgraded to 1gig network the engineer that installed it tested speed from router at 984MB, speeds Im getting over cat6 "copper" come up between:

• 550MB on speedtest
• 1.2Gb on fast (netflix speed check)
• 770 on cloudfare speed test site

Gigabit over ethernet cables is indeed capped around 940mbps theoretical, give or take some mbps depending on a variety of factors. Speeds will vary wildly depending on a variety of factors, including but not limited to:

• the capabilities of the server / network providing the test / download (ie: anti-abuse limits)
• the exact route between you and the server (connections are not alway optimally routed)
• the capabilities of your PC (is your PC busy doing stuff? running background processes?)
• the download method (ie: is the download multi-part? does it require decompression?)

 

12 minutes ago, brucenewman981 said:

Downloads from steam and rockstar servers seem to hover around 60MB which is closer to the results from speedtest. Are there any settings in windows I should be aware of that could be impacting my download speed? Could it be a hardware issue on my end? Did I perhaps get a wack cable that doesnt meet the cat6 standards, I read online that majority of cables that are advertised as cat6 do not meet the standards since there is no official certification and its an honour based system. 
Lastly, what could be the potential cause of this disparity between different sites apart from different testing servers.

Most game launcher clients report in Megabytes per second instead of Megabits per second because they clearly give zero shits about end users wasting their ISP's support department time when they're "only getting 60MB/s and they pay for 1000MB/s!" <reasons> but in your case, 60MBps indeed converts to 480mbps, which is "close enough" to your Speedtest.net results. Why the disparity? Read what I wrote above the Reddit embed.

 

There's no guarantee of constant, consistent speeds between devices you control and those you don't. All you can do is ensure your own devices & local network are operating optimally. After that, connection routing is outside your control. To answer your ethernet cable questions, there indeed is a certification process for certain ethernet cable classifications; it's just that some manufacturers lie / mislabel their cables in hopes users won't notice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_6_cable

 

You can learn all about how the internet routes connections by reading Cloudflare's learning articles linked below.

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/network-layer/how-does-the-internet-work/

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-ca/learning/network-layer/what-is-routing/

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-ca/learning/performance/more/speed-up-the-web/

[brucenewman981]

Thank you, very thorough, although I've changed my dns settings to 1.1.1.1 and now speedtest comes up at 920Mb. I have noticed that when downloading games the speeds would go 100, 80, 60, 50, 20, 0 then start the cycle again from 100. I would assume this is an issue with the server that I am downloading from rather than my own connection, perhaps Im experiencing TCP congestion avoidance, then again it could either be my ISP or copper cables that arent pure copper.