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Recently, I've decided to connect my laptop at home to my modem/router through Ethernet cables built into my apartment. As these built-in Ethernet cables are usable via plugs built into the walls (called powerline adapters), I use some additional cabling (STP CAT6 cables) from my laptop/router to the plugs. In addition, I don't know any technical details about these built-in cables (as they're not visible), only the maximal bandwidth (1 GBit => Cat6?) that they're supporting. The built-in cables are Cat. 5e Ethernet cables.
The problem is now that when I set up the connection, I cannot use the full bandwidth that my internet connection is actually offering (100 Mbit/s), only about 85 Mbit/s between 85 - 88 Mbit/s, despite the fact that all cables involved should support the maximal bandwidth. In addition, my network card only reports a connection speed of 100 Mbit/s. I know from other tests with one of the Ethernet cables in use that I can use almost 99 Mbit/s when I connect my laptop directly to the router/modem using only this one cable. In this test, my network card also reports a connection speed of 1 Gbit/s. In addition, it is very unlikely that the length of the resulting cable connection from my laptop to my router involving the built-in cables exceeds 100 m.
So, what possible reasons for this loss of bandwidth exist? And how I can fix this issue?
I hope this might help resolve the issue: The built-in cables appear to be Cat. 5e Ethernet cables. So, is there any problem when I connect Cat6 Ethernet cables directly to Cat5e Ethernet cables via the plugs?
Caspar
Posted 2012-12-17T15:37:52.217
Reputation: 13
What model are the powerline adapters? – Pier-Luc Gendreau – 2012-12-17T15:51:05.133
They're not powerline adapters. I've just checked some documents that that I got when I moved in here, and I found out that the built-in cables are Cat. 5e Ethernet cables. – Caspar – 2012-12-17T16:56:57.553
You can do gigabit over Cat5e so that's not your issue here. Is your laptop reporting the connection speed to be 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps? If it's 100 Mbps, then that explains your 80-ish Mbps speeds. – Pier-Luc Gendreau – 2012-12-17T17:26:25.100
Interesting. When I connect my laptop through the built-in cables, it reports a connection speed of only 100 MBit/s. When I connect it to the modem/router directly (as discribed above, not through the built-in cables), it reports a connection speed of 1 Gbit/s ... What's causing this? Can I fix it? – Caspar – 2012-12-17T17:38:09.333