[ NB.  I know this has nothing to do with Arcade games,
but there are alot of tech geeks on this board, so I'm hoping
someone can help me out... ]

Lately my Internet connection has been getting slower,
so I decided to run some tests.  ( ...  using   http://www.speedtest.net  )

It turns out my 6Mb high-speed cable link is only giving me 0.3-0.5 MB to the desktop !

I have a fully wired 100BT network ( no wireless ) using a LAN/WAN router
to split the Incoming link to several PCs/locations in the house.

If I plug my PC directly into the cable modem,
I get the expected 6MB throughput  ( 6.25MB actually ).

However, if I plug the PC into the LAN/WAN router,
I only get 2.1Mb-2.5MB throughput.

That's 55%-70% throughput loss !
Is that normal ?   I'm not doing anything fancy ( no NAT, DMZ, or firewalls )

Or is my router just crappy ?
( I have an SMC Barricade 7004VBR router. Very basic and cheap... )

Can anyone run similar tests if they have a similar setup ?
Any loss ?

But wait, it gets even better...

From the router, I plug into an 8-port 10/100 hub
(because I have 4 PCs in my home office),
and from the hub, the 2.5Mb link coming from the router,
drops to 0.5MB out of the hub to the PC.

This makes no sense. It's just a dumb repeater hub/switch.
It's rated at 100Mb per port. Surely it can switch traffic at a lowly 2.5Mb without loss... ?

Why am I losing throughput at every device ?

I'm using good CAT-5E cabling everywhere.

So again, is the loss in throughput due to crappy "home" devices
with high latency, or am I missing something ?

Anybody who knows what I'm talking about is welcome to share their thoughts...

Thanks,
Steph

upgrade the firmware on the barricade... if that doesn't work, buy something else

Quoted from Mrhide

upgrade the firmware on the barricade... if that doesn't work, buy something else

Firmware is the very latest revision
(...  I made sure of that awhile ago, ...and check it again recently... )

I think a new router is indeed in order...

Anyone got a wired router they don't need ?

LMK,
Steph

Try an alternative firmware like DD-WRT or Tomato.  WRT helped my crappy linksys go from a buggy router (that would randomly drop special routing tables) to something very stable.

I'd blame the hub - hub's to may knowledge are max 100 - i.e., its shared across the ports.   Get a switch instead - dell.ca has a 8-port trendnet gigabit on sale ($35 taxes & shipping included).

A buddy is using an old pc as his router now - with ipcop - and has noticed a huge improvement.   I believe it was a P3 or P4 PC with 128MB ram and a 20G disk.   I just bough a $80 used HP machine to try this out.

The neat part with ipcop is a lot of control and as your boys get older you can control the sites can get too very easily.

Here's the ipcop link ( http://www.ipcop.org/ ).   There's a few other distros (pfsense is one), but I'm sticking with ipcop for now as I can get free IT-support from my buddy.  

So far it looks fairly easy - just have to return the PCI cards I bought that don't have low-profile brackets.

Steph it sounds like you have at least two separate problems (router only and router+hub). I owned an SMC router (not sure if it was the same model) and it was crap - replaced with Netgear and had no trouble since.

Doug is right you should be using a switch rather than a hub for best performance. But if there is only one pc plugged into the hub for testing purposes it should not make much difference. I can offer a free Netgear FS108 8-port switch if you want it.

Also if anyone wants to try a PC router here's a great free machine already equipped with dual 10/100 NICs!

http://archive.maaca.org/s107351202.onlinehome.us/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?m-1266018173/

Quoted from Monkeybug

Try an alternative firmware like DD-WRT or Tomato.  WRT helped my crappy linksys go from a buggy router (that would randomly drop special routing tables) to something very stable.

I second this, Steph try this out first before replacing the router. I'd try DDWRT first.

Quoted from mark

I second this, Steph try this out first before replacing the router. I'd try DDWRT first.

I just checked the DDWRT supported device list,
and of course SMC/Barricade is not there....

I think a new router is in order.

TinyRodent, check your PM for the switch...

thanks,
Steph

It really depends on what you are doing.  If you are doing online gaming or some heavy downloading from your machines a hub isn't going to cut it.

Check the specs on your hub and see if it his 100 Full Duplex or 100 Half Duplex, you should be able to read on the tech specs of your hub online to see what it is capable off.  If it's half duplex which I suspect it is, it's really going to bog down your network.

The reason is hubs have no built in logic software to handle traffic, they are literally a device that just moves traffic around.  Problem is they way they handle traffic is a simple allow/deny logic.  Allow = The path is free and can be used so send your traffic threw.  Deny = Path is being used try again later.  So what happens is if you are doing multiple things on multiple machines they all end up waiting for each other as the hub Allows/Denys their traffic as opposed to say something like a switch where it will prioritize traffic and make sure it gets where it needs to go. What makes it even worse is if it's a half duplex hub.  Full duplex means it can send Allow and Deny requests at the same time, Half means it can only do one, so that means, you computer has to send the request, the hub has to look at it, and then decide to allow or deny it and then send it back.  All of that is what is really going to slow down your network at the hub.

As for the switch problem, again it really depends on what you are doing.  You are going to get your full 6MB connection when you plug in directly because there is nothing in the way.  Most Router/Switches have port blocking and firewalls and that kind of stuff that is going to slow the traffic down no matter what you do.  To speed things up make sure if you are doing anything other then just normal browsing that you have the correct ports opened on your router.  

The problem with the hub is, it's splitting your bandwidth by 8 whether you're using all the ports or not.  Like Adam said, hubs are useless, even as a bridge.  Always go with a switch if you're looking to split or bridge a connection.

Don't knock hubs, they have a special purpose in life, they are great for monitoring traffic.  

Just get a new wireless N router with the latest security and dont sweat it. Also of course the necessary adaptors for your computers.

Check your adapters setting for speed and duplex

More that likely it is set to autodetect and that should be fine but you could try 100/full when plugged into the router and 100/half on the hub

Autodetect will only work if both sides are set for auto. Hard code one side and the other side can only guess. That can lead to huge slowdowns. Since hubs tend to only support half duplex everything connected to them should be set at half.

I have seen this setting get an entire floor full of users ready to start throwing things! Just because one side was set to auto and the other hard coded

Good luck

[ Quick Update... ]

Well I fixed my problem(s)...

1- Replace Crappy router
===================
My SMC Barricade router was throttling 60%  the bandwidth....
6Mb/sec going in from the cable modem,  2.4Mb/s coming out .

I was not doing anything fancy ( no NAT'ing, no firewall, no DMZ, ..just plain Jane routing).
There was no setting to tweak, so I had to assume that the router was just simply lousy.

Bought an older Linksys router for $10 and solved that problem.


2- Replace Crappy switch  
===================
Yes, I did have a 10/100 SWITCH , (not a hub as previously mentionned),
but it was a  cheap no-name Chinese  knock-off, ...and you get what you pay for...
The switch had a maximum throughput of 1.5Mb/s,
even when doing a PC-to-PC file transfer .    That's a 98.5% reduction in advertized performance
(...and yes, everything was set to   100 / Full  )

Big thanks to TinyRodent (Brett) for providing me with with a "real" 8-port switch.
The improvement was immediately noticeable.


3- Replace Crappy patch cords
=======================
Although my entire house is fully wired with good Cat-5E wiring,
some of the patch cords I was using for my PC connections were "lab left-overs"  
in various state of reliability.
So I replaced my home-made Cat-5 hack cables with premium Cat-6 patch cords
and got an extra 20% performance boost.

--

So all told, I went from having a pitiful 0.35Mb/sec to my PC,
right up to 6.0+ Mb/s after I changed everything.

I even hit 9.1Mb/sec this morning, when network traffic was light.

Wow... what a difference.. !       (...almost 30-fold ! )

I'm just mad at myself for waiting 2+ years to make this realization...

So the bottom line is,  make sure that your hardware is up to snuff !  


Cheers,
Steph