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So I was diagnosing my friend's internet issue, and their internet speed was way lower than what they are supposed to be getting according to speedtest. They just upgraded from a 10Mb plan to a 75Mb plan and were only getting about 15 Mb. So first thing I do is look at the cable modem's signal stats. Average SnR at 39dB, downstream power at -2dB, with upstream power at 35 dB. All the downstream channel show proper bonded mode and the SnR for each channel looked good. Next, I made sure that their WAN on their router was capable of 100Mb/s and it was. Reset the modem, router, and computer... no change in speed. Tinkered with the router to check to see if QoS is disabled and it was... Disabled firewall functionality and didn't change speeds at all... Called the cable company and asked if the channel bonding looked good on their end and they said yes, so that threw out the idea that only one channel is actually receiving data.

Then my non-techie friend asks if his router is just too old. Then I'm like "doh".... I flipped over the router to see the model number and manufacture date It's an ancient Linksys router from like 2004. The WAN port does say 10/100Mb but it's onboard processor is so slow that it can only handle up to 20-30 Mb of internet data overall. I remember reading throughput test data and actual speeds were in the range of 15Mb or so. Plugged the modem directly into my laptop and boom, full 75Mb speeds. Swapped the router with one of my spares and good full speeds.

So, yeah I just lost my techie card for not coming up with that idea before a non-techie. Orz...
And I left recommending an ASUS RT-N66 router.... a bit expensive but it's internet throughput speeds are rated at 700Mb+ so probably won't need to upgrade for a long time.
Anyone else have similar stories where a complete average Joe comes up with the idea before you did?

That's OK, given how fast 75Mbit is compared to what most people have, it's not a huge shock that you didn't think the home router would be a bottleneck.
Now if you lived in Kansas City and had Googlefiber, you'd really need to make sure the house is setup to handle all that bandwidth.

chuckula wrote:

That's OK, given how fast 75Mbit is compared to what most people have, it's not a huge shock that you didn't think the home router would be a bottleneck.
Now if you lived in Kansas City and had Googlefiber, you'd really need to make sure the house is setup to handle all that bandwidth.

Time warner and Comcast both say that gigabit is unnessasary pfft. If I had gigabit... There is so much I can do with that bandwidth. For that kind of speed, you need Google's special network box/router which has about 950Mb through put... I want that insane upload speed too!

CB5000 wrote:

...Anyone else have similar stories where a complete average Joe comes up with the idea before you did?

Yep... especially when it comes to finding and/or optimizing networks good in consumer bandwith and accessibility. Especially in wireless networks...

The average guy these days is far more aware of connectivity issues and all share ways of getting around them on community nets. So best practices and search for good suppliers has become widespread and commonplace. Figuring out actual wireless availability at a point or along a route is mostly a matter of local knowledge.