Help me to achieve 10 GBit/s internet speed (troubleshooting)

[Falk]

Hi together,

 

I am a new joiner (and this because I believe in the high competency of linus´ forum and its users). So let me straight get to my problem: I struggle achieving 10 GBit/s internet speed even though all conditions are given to do so.

 

But from the beginning. I live in Zurich, Switzerland where a new internet provider offers 10 GBit/s. I booked the package and upgraded my entire rig (amongst other) in order to process the internet speed. I bought an ASRock Fatal1ty Z370 Professional Gaming i7 motherboard, which is one of the only motherboards that include a pre-build in 10 GBit/s Ethernet port (Aquantia AQC107). It also has two LAN RJ-45 ports (Intel® I211AT and Intel® I219V). My interface supports 10 GBit/s at all ends (10 GBit/s port, Cat. 7 LAN cable, router with dedicated 10 GBit/s port, no switches in between, 10 GBit/s internet provider).

 

When I first started the PC, after installing Windows 10 Pro and installing all necessary driver for the Aquantia AQC107, I had the weird issue that every time I connected a LAN cable (regardless of the port) I simply got a LAN symbol (so in the bottom right corner it appeared the LAN symbol) but was still in the Wifi in which I was before. You could easily tell by a) the name of the SSID and b) that if you disabled the wifi drivers or detached the wifi antenna the internet connection went to zero. Despite driver updates for Aquantia, BIOS updates and attempting a static IPv4 nothing changed.

 

After two days of doing nothing, the LAN (without my influence) is now properly recognized on all three ports. So that problem seems to be gone. Also, the SSID is apparently just the same as the SSID of the 5Ghz Wifi. Now, however, I come to the actual problem: the Internet connection has a bottle-neck somewhere, which is why I "only" get 1 GBit/s (see screenshot 1). Yesterday I managed to receive 2 GBit/s for a short time (see screenshot 2). At that time, my transfer rate had jumped to 2,5 GBit/s (for whatever reason).

I've already tried to set the link speed in Advanced Properties of the Aquantia AQC107 from "Auto Negotiation" to "5G" (the highest I can set in Windows 10 Pro). Nothing changed. On the homepage of the manufacturer of the Aquantia AQC107 I read that Cat. 6a LAN cables can be used. Does it make a difference if I use a Cat. 6a or 7? I thought that apart from shielding and frequency there are no differences, especially not in regards to compatibility issues - but maybe I am wrong?

 

I do not quite understand how it sporadically jumped to 2,5 GBit/s yesterday and giving me a hard time today. At worst, I'll try to install Windows again, as I'm still not sure if the drivers are all right. But maybe someone has any experience or ideas with my problem.

 

Thank you!

 

P.S. I know it is an absolute luxury problem. Currently, it's more about the achieving than really having a purpose for 10 GBit/s.

[Enderman]

Instead of installing the motherboard drivers on top of the windows drivers, clean install windows and only use the ones that are automatically installed through windows update.

See if that fixes the problem.

[beersykins]

Most speedtest servers struggle to dedicate 1 Gbps to you, let alone 10.  There are plenty of factors between you and the Speedtest server to influence what rate you get.  Also, just because a speedtest test says you get 2 that doesn't mean there's a local bottleneck and is not the end-all-be-all performance indicator of your connection.

 

What do you get for transfer rates on a large distributed platform like bittorrent?

What specific router are you using?

[Falk]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Instead of installing the motherboard drivers on top of the windows drivers, clean install windows and only use the ones that are automatically installed through windows update.

See if that fixes the problem.

Will definitely try that if there are no other recommendations first. If I remember correctly the port wasn't automatically recognized by Windows. But maybe I just gave it to less time.

[Falk]

5 minutes ago, beersykins said:

Most speedtest servers struggle to dedicate 1 Gbps to you, let alone 10.  There are plenty of factors between you and the Speedtest server to influence what rate you get.  Also, just because a speedtest test says you get 2 that doesn't mean there's a local bottleneck and is not the end-all-be-all performance indicator of your connection.

 

What do you get for transfer rates on a large distributed platform like bittorrent?

At least it recognized the 2 GBit/s after Windows told me (status of ethernet 3) that my transfer rate is now 2,5 GBit/s. I cannot tell what my transfer rates on bittorent are as I am not using any of those sites. Maybe someone has a recommendation for a speedtest website or program that can handle such speeds? 

[homeap5]

I have 700/700 "only" speed. In theory. At night it works pretty well, but in the middle of the day I have worse transfer rates.

Even with that "low" speed I was many problems to resolve. One of them was, for example, MAC address cloning on my router. Seems that this type of router slow down a little if I clone MAC address. After I used router's internal MAC - speeds improves (about 20%).

Also - that tests are only that good as tester's machine allows. Since you're not the only who testing and your provider probably have lot of customers in your area, it will be really difficult to achieve 5Gbits. Maybe at 3:00 in the night, but not in the middle of the day or evening.

So test your internet speed in the middle of the night and if you get higher internet speeds - you'll know where problem is.

Updating drivers can resolve some problems, reinstalling Windows - I doubt, not in this case.

 

There is also other factor - speedtest download and upload files. Even SSD SATA don't reach over 4 GBit (+/-) and downloading and/or uploading needs storage, unless you set your browser to use ramdisk. Or if you have really fast M.2 as your boot/system drive.

[Enderman]

26 minutes ago, Falk said:

Will definitely try that if there are no other recommendations first. If I remember correctly the port wasn't automatically recognized by Windows. But maybe I just gave it to less time.

When clean installing windows I always leave the computer idling about 30 mins after first boot to finish installing the stuff, then check for windows updates, install all of that, restart, leave it for another 30 mins, then check for updates again a second time because sometimes not everything is installed at once.

 

[Tabs]

Remember that Cat 7 isn't an official ethernet spec. My first thought - if Windows doesn't always show the link speed as being 10gbit/s - is that the cable is low quality. VERY few people actually push the limits of these things, so companies can "get away" with selling consumers sub standard cabling, since 99.9% of them will never know the difference.

 

This is especially likely since you randomly seem to get 2.5gbit/s from the cable. That means that interference is impacting it, and when interference is high, your link speed drops. I'm about 95% certain the primary issue is the ethernet cabling.

 

Buy a respected, high quality Cat 6A cable (Cat 6A is an actual official standard for 10Gbe, unlike Cat 7 which is an unofficial marketing term since 6A was ratified) from a brand you trust. Don't skimp on the cable, to get the full capacity of your equipment, the shielding has to be exceptional.

 

Everything else people said here is 100% accurate though. Even after you get all your devices at home connecting and communicating at 10gbit/s, don't expect 10gbit/s to anything except multi-homing tier 1 providers like CDN's. The best way to test this would be, after getting your link speed sorted with a proper cable, you'll need to test multiple servers at once. A good idea would be to monitor task manager whilst downloading from Steam, downloading some Linux images via bittorrent, and running a few speed tests. At 10gbit/s you're pushing the limits of what any one source can deliver.

 

TL;DR: @Falk  "Cat 7" cabling means it is better than Cat 6 (in theory), but doesn't officially support 10gbps speeds over copper, since then it would be Cat 6A. It hasn't actually been ratified for 10gbps speeds and you should buy a high quality Cat 6A cable as 10gbps is what it's designed and rated for.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Tabs
TL;DR

[Falk]

42 minutes ago, Tabs said:

Remember that Cat 7 isn't an official ethernet spec. My first thought - if Windows doesn't always show the link speed as being 10gbit/s - is that the cable is low quality. VERY few people actually push the limits of these things, so companies can "get away" with selling consumers sub standard cabling, since 99.9% of them will never know the difference.

 

This is especially likely since you randomly seem to get 2.5gbit/s from the cable. That means that interference is impacting it, and when interference is high, your link speed drops. I'm about 95% certain the primary issue is the ethernet cabling.

 

Buy a respected, high quality Cat 6A cable (Cat 6A is an actual official standard for 10Gbe, unlike Cat 7 which is an unofficial marketing term since 6A was ratified) from a brand you trust. Don't skimp on the cable, to get the full capacity of your equipment, the shielding has to be exceptional.

 

Everything else people said here is 100% accurate though. Even after you get all your devices at home connecting and communicating at 10gbit/s, don't expect 10gbit/s to anything except multi-homing tier 1 providers like CDN's. The best way to test this would be, after getting your link speed sorted with a proper cable, you'll need to test multiple servers at once. A good idea would be to monitor task manager whilst downloading from Steam, downloading some Linux images via bittorrent, and running a few speed tests. At 10gbit/s you're pushing the limits of what any one source can deliver.

 

TL;DR: @Falk  "Cat 7" cabling means it is better than Cat 6 (in theory), but doesn't officially support 10gbps speeds over copper, since then it would be Cat 6A. It hasn't actually been ratified for 10gbps speeds and you should buy a high quality Cat 6A cable as 10gbps is what it's designed and rated for.

This was it. So I had a good though if I have a Cat. 6a cable somewhere. I remembered that the router had to come with a cable that will support 10G. And I was right. In the package I found a Cat. 6a cable and quickly ran some tests (see screenshots). So yes, the Cat. 7 cable is fake/bad quality. The Ca. 6a cable pushed the possible transfer rate to 10 GBit/s (Theoretical_transfer_rate.png) even though I was fully aware that in a speed test I never will se a 10. I just wanted to see it at the transfer rate of the status of the ethernet 3. The actual transfer rate was somewhere between 2,8 and 4 GBit/s down.

 

So I guess the topic can be closed. Thanks for all the comments and ideas. I knew I can bet on you girls and guys.

[Tabs]

8 minutes ago, Falk said:

This was it. So I had a good though if I have a Cat. 6a cable somewhere. I remembered that the router had to come with a cable that will support 10G. And I was right. In the package I found a Cat. 6a cable and quickly ran some tests (see screenshots). So yes, the Cat. 7 cable is fake/bad quality. The Ca. 6a cable pushed the possible transfer rate to 10 GBit/s (Theoretical_transfer_rate.png) even though I was fully aware that in a speed test I never will se a 10. I just wanted to see it at the transfer rate of the status of the ethernet 3. The actual transfer rate was somewhere between 2,8 and 4 GBit/s down.

 

So I guess the topic can be closed. Thanks for all the comments and ideas. I knew I can bet on you girls and guys.

 

 

Glad you got that sorted. If you want to really push your connection, you could try running speedtest to multiple different geographic servers at the same time, and then amalgamate the total.

 

Edit: You can also set my post as the answer in case anyone else has a similar problem and searches the forums for the answer. I can imagine this being more and more of an issue in the future as connections like yours become more readily available.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Tabs

[Alex Atkin UK]

According to Wikipedia "The Category 7 cable standard has been ratified in 2002 to allow 10 Gigabit Ethernet over 100 m of copper cabling. " so hardly "unofficial".

 

Fact is any cable can have a manufacturing defect.  I have a CAT6 cable that doesn't work right at Gigabit, out of a batch where all the others are fine.

I suspect a big issue with CAT7 is if the grounding isn't working correct at both ends, the shield can actually boost interference rather than eliminating it.  So a bad cable is going to exhibit more issues than a lower rated one.

[Lurick]

37 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

According to Wikipedia "The Category 7 cable standard has been ratified in 2002 to allow 10 Gigabit Ethernet over 100 m of copper cabling. " so hardly "unofficial".

 

Fact is any cable can have a manufacturing defect.  I have a CAT6 cable that doesn't work right at Gigabit, out of a batch where all the others are fine.

I suspect a big issue with CAT7 is if the grounding isn't working correct at both ends, the shield can actually boost interference rather than eliminating it.  So a bad cable is going to exhibit more issues than a lower rated one.

Cat7 is not recognized as an official TIA/EIA standard, only an ISO standard

[Alex Atkin UK]

Ah okay, fair enough.