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I have seen a lot of people complain online about their modems/internet speeds. I too have consistent problems with Comcast internet. However recently being involved with setting up new office internet rated at 100/100mbps from a different provider, I found out something which I hope people can shed more light on here.
With this other provider we experienced bad speeds as well. 10/50mbp vs the marketed 100/100mbp. However when we disconnected the Cisco/LinkSys router and connected directly to the modem we got the 100/100 speeds. We found that "duplex" speeds was the variable here. Using ethernet cable directly to the modem our networking settings showed full duplex. When we introduced the router back in it jumped back to auto negotiate for duplex. Even the other provider confirmed they hard set their lines for full duplex to provide consistent high speeds.
Last night I had what appeared to be a 2 hour outage. Restarting my modem (Ambit Microsystems Corp. u10c035) and router (D-Link DIR-615) over and over... in the end I was back up. At 10/10mbps. Louzy for Comcast Blast internet speeds right. So I connected directly to the modem and nearly fell off my seat. 110/10mbps. Wow! My router is auto negotiating duplex speeds as well. I assume this may also be related why I need to restart both devices at the same time and hope they "sync up" so I can have internet again. There has to be a better way?
So the questions are???
What is a better way? Get a router which I can set duplex mode to full vs auto negotiate?
What would that router be when most consumer routers are hard set to auto negotiate duplex?
Is this a common problem that no one has tackled on the consumer side with fast internet speeds requiring full duplex and most routers on the consumer market not providing for it? Even though their advertised speeds state 300mbps+?
We found that "duplex" speeds was the variable here
. What do you mean. If it is on auto neg. does it end up connecting as half duplex? What model linksys is used in your first problem. It could be it does not have the necessary WAN-speed for 100Mbps. – Rik – 2014-01-05T08:30:54.920@Rik yes that is correct. Used LinkSys EA6300 - Rated for 1200 Mbps & has 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Not a cheap router either. Yet has no capability to force duplex. Runs like a dog (15/50 Mbps) yet advertised like its the best thing since slice bread. – Ernest – 2014-01-05T08:40:26.110
When you connected the computer directly to the modem you say it connected full duplex. Was the setting in the network adapter also full duplex or auto.neg.? If it was full duplex could you try setting it at auto.neg. and see if it does connect full duplex? (or drops back to half, i.e. mismatch duplex) Even though the provides confirmed they set it at hard full duplex i wonder if that is really true. It would mess up a lot of systems and not
provide consistent high speeds
. Every router should have auto.neg. so would get a mismatch duplex. – Rik – 2014-01-05T10:24:40.917BTW for you D-Link DIR-615 you could use DD-WRT. It has the capability of setting the WAN-port to hard full duplex. You could try that router (with DD-WRT flashed) with the other internet connection to see if it helps. (if it helps in your own case of course)
– Rik – 2014-01-05T12:11:48.897Under ethernet it shows auto neg and duplex grayed out at full. Manually setting at full duplex I get = 120/22 mbps, half-duplex = 70/22 mbps, and back on wifi now getting = 9/9 mbps. What a massive difference! Could it be that Comcast Burst line is hard set at full-duplex? Anything else yields packet loses and a degraded performance. – Ernest – 2014-01-06T08:09:25.767
Yeah, since my last comment i did some reading up and saw quite a few instances where the provider sets the line to hard full duplex (screwing up the settings if the router is set to auto neg, and if it's the only setting in the router... well... oops :( ). I think there is an experimental DD-WRT version for the EA6300 but maybe you can first try it with the DD-WRT on your own DIR-615 (that one is definitely supported by DD-WRT). The 9/9 Mbps is another matter and can depend on many other factors (like surrounding interference, channel etc...) What is the link-speed on WiFi? – Rik – 2014-01-06T08:42:34.787