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I moved to a FTTH offer and now my local network is the bottleneck.

6 months ago, an electrician pulled a cable between the box and my office (less than 64 ft). On the cable it's written it's cat 6.

Sadly I don't have a fluke and I wanted to know if a badly wired cat6 cable or bad plugs can explain this loss in bandwidth?

In the first case, speedtest.net gives me 286mbps dl and 47 mbps ul: - fiber cable -> livebox (the isp box that has 4 1gbps port switch) -> small cat 5e cable -> macbook pro

In the second case, 94mbps dl and 47 mbps ul: - fiber cable -> livebox (the isp box that has 4 1gbps port switch) -> 64ft long cat. 6 cable from the livebox to the wall -> small cat 5e cable -> macbook pro

The only difference between the 2 case is the 64ft long cat 6 cable and its plugs (male rj45 plug on a side and a wall female plug on the other side)

I would like to know if a bad plugs, a cable or a bad wiring could explain this difference of bandwidth.

acemtp
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1 Answers1

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Since you get 47Mbps upload in both cases, it's unlikely that the cabling itself is causing corruption or framing errors. Gigabit Ethernet requires all eight pins in the plug to be terminated; if your electrician made a mistake and missed a pin, or a pin is not making good contact then you would negotiate the link at Fast Ethernet, which is what the second speed test seems to indicate. Get the cabling reterminated / tested for at least Cat5e results and full connectivity on all eight pins.

As an FYI, cabling that's certified to a Cat6 standard by the manufacturer can be installed such that you get less than Cat6 results. That seems to be the case in this situation.

Mike Pennington
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