Realistically, should I do 1gb ethernet or upgrade to 2.5 gig?

[AudaciX]

Recently fiber internet became available in my neighborhood!

It's far cheaper and faster than my old cable internet company and so far, it has been nice!

 

For most people on my network, the only thing they noticed was the better signal throughout the house, as I decided to do a rent-to-own for their Eero pro 6E mesh system. My computer is positioned right next to the router, making it easy to run an ethernet cable, which I have done. 

 

Below are the offered plans.

I have a 1.2gbps plan. 

 

My computer only has a gigabit ethernet port, so my speeds are only 

 

I even look at my task mana ger while this is going on and I'm completely maxed out on my ethernet port. An odd thing I had noticed was that whenever I load up my ethernet port, everything slows down a bit, even if I'm not using the full bandwidth. i have my CPU usage when this happens, and none of the cores are maxed.

 

I can verify that the router can go beyond a gigabit by doing a Wi-Fi speed test on my phone.

 

My question is do I get a 2.5gbps PCIe card and install it, or do I wait to do this until I decide to upgrade to the 2.4gbps plan?

If I did upgrade to the 2.4gb ethernet card, would it fix my weird slowing down issue?

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, AudaciX said:

Recently fiber internet became available in my neighborhood!

It's far cheaper and faster than my old cable internet company and so far, it has been nice!

 

For most people on my network, the only thing they noticed was the better signal throughout the house, as I decided to do a rent-to-own for their Eero pro 6E mesh system. My computer is positioned right next to the router, making it easy to run an ethernet cable, which I have done. 

 

Below are the offered plans.

 

I have a 1.2gbps plan. 

 

My computer only has a gigabit ethernet port, so my speeds are only 

 

I even look at my task mana ger while this is going on and I'm completely maxed out on my ethernet port. An odd thing I had noticed was that whenever I load up my ethernet port, everything slows down a bit, even if I'm not using the full bandwidth. i have my CPU usage when this happens, and none of the cores are maxed.

 

 

I can verify that the router can go beyond a gigabit by doing a Wi-Fi speed test on my phone.

 

 

My question is do I get a 2.5gbps PCIe card and install it, or do I wait to do this until I decide to upgrade to the 2.4gbps plan?

If I did upgrade to the 2.4gb ethernet card, would it fix my weird slowing down issue?

You don't mention an important detail, does the router even have a 2.5Gbit ethernet port?

If so then sure, its a cheap upgrade for a little more speed, otherwise there is no point.

[AudaciX]

yes it does thanks for the input!

[Alex Atkin UK]

50 minutes ago, AudaciX said:

yes it does thanks for the input!

Its probably not going to prevent the slowdown issue though, that may be simply due to contention as broadband is a shared service and if multiple users on the same node have the fastest package you can only share what's available of that capacity.

 

Example, my own fibre service is Gigabit but the node has 2.4Gbit capacity and is shared with up to 30 properties.  Later on this year they will sell 1.8Gbit over that same node, so I expect during peak hours I won't reach those speeds as that is close to the limit the node can handle.  Just as you can see Gigabit only reaches around 944Mbit for real-world traffic.  You pay for the speed limit, not a guarantee you can always reach that speed.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, AudaciX said:

 

My computer only has a gigabit ethernet port, so my speeds are only 

 

I even look at my task mana ger while this is going on and I'm completely maxed out on my ethernet port. An odd thing I had noticed was that whenever I load up my ethernet port, everything slows down a bit, even if I'm not using the full bandwidth. i have my CPU usage when this happens, and none of the cores are maxed.

 

Topping out at 850-950 is typical of a 1Gbit connection. Remember that MTU's are 1500 bytes (1518 including ethernet overhead) and that Realtek chips tend to be a little on the weaker side, while as Intel chips are a usually slightly better. You will NOT see 1000Mbps.

 

4 hours ago, AudaciX said:

My question is do I get a 2.5gbps PCIe card and install it, or do I wait to do this until I decide to upgrade to the 2.4gbps plan?

If I did upgrade to the 2.4gb ethernet card, would it fix my weird slowing down issue?

You need to make sure that you can actually get 2.5Gbps to a device, because it's entirely possible for the ISP to connect your living space with GPON, and then you need a SFP that goes in a router that has 10Gbit ports on it.

 

Basically you're stuck in a catch-22 position of buying the hardware and then potentially still not getting the bandwidth. You could fake-out testing the ethernet however by having three devices you know that can do near-gigabit speeds all try to do the speed test simultaneously and see if the bandwidth actually goes down. Because if you have 3 x 1GbE devices, and a 2.5G connection, they should saturate it and get about 800-820Mbit each. If you only have 1 device that needs 2.5G, then if the ISP has provisioned 2.5G, you should hit about 2300Mbits easily.

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

48 minutes ago, Kisai said:

You need to make sure that you can actually get 2.5Gbps to a device, because it's entirely possible for the ISP to connect your living space with GPON, and then you need a SFP that goes in a router that has 10Gbit ports on it.

As they pointed out, the router/gateway appears to be connected to the Internet service via a method that DOES offer 1.2Gbit, and the ISP also sells a 2.4Gbit and 5Gbit package.  This is why over WiFi they can get more than Gigabit, WiFi 6 at 2x2 IMO on a 160Mhz channel can reach up to 1.7Gbit, but often struggles go faster than Gigabit on most clients.

 

They also already confirmed that the router has at least one 2.5Gbit port.  So if all this is accurate, the only thing holding them back is the Gigabit NIC in the PC.

[seanondemand]

Is it cool to do the whole, vroom speedtest go fast thing? yes

Does it make a big practical difference for the average consumer? almost never. There will be the odd time where you're waiting on a big download (cough COD cough) that this would make a difference with, but 1gb is usually fast enough that the internet connection isn't necessarily the bottleneck for downloads, and it certainly won't make a difference with latency. So, for double the monthly price, is it worth it? Not for me

[Alex Atkin UK]

13 hours ago, seanondemand said:

Is it cool to do the whole, vroom speedtest go fast thing? yes

Does it make a big practical difference for the average consumer? almost never. There will be the odd time where you're waiting on a big download (cough COD cough) that this would make a difference with, but 1gb is usually fast enough that the internet connection isn't necessarily the bottleneck for downloads, and it certainly won't make a difference with latency. So, for double the monthly price, is it worth it? Not for me

 

Agreed that is may not be worth upgrading the package, but I do think its worth getting a 2.5Gbit NIC to allow the full speed of the current package.

[Needfuldoer]

Gigabit Internet is fine. Multi-gig LAN helps most when you're transferring files between devices on your network (like a PC and a NAS).

 

Cat6 cable is good up to 10 gigabit Ethernet in a residential setting. It's worth the minimal cost to buy it over Cat5e, because then you're set no matter what you use in the future.

[AudaciX]

Thank you to everyone who replied! I do plan to get a NAS in the near future, so having the faster connection will be helpful.

 

I’ve ordered a new 2.5gb card as well.

 

I’ll update to see if it corrects it as soon at it arrives!