Vodafone router fauly ethernet ports

[the_weegie]

Hi,

Posting on behalf of less technical elderly parents who signed up to the Vodafone 100mb but then got upgraded to 900mb.

Parents were complaining about slow internet speeds, I have their firestick and PC connected through Cat6E ethernet cable. I plugged my own laptop into the first ethernet port and got very low download speed (4mbps) but high upload speed (813mbps) (HomeSpeed1.jpg attached).

I rebooted the router and tried this again later in the evening with different cables in different ethernet ports and got similar results (HomeSpeed2.jpg and HomeSpeed3.jpg).

I’ve run a tracert to bbc.co.uk twice (HomeSpeed4.jpg) which doesn’t show any excessive latency, nor does a ping -t (HomeSpeed5.jpg).

I’ve tried choosing different servers on speedtest instead of the default Vodafone one but similar results (HomeSpeed6.jpg and HomeSpeed7.jpg).

I’ve been running a thinkbroadband quality monitor for a few days (HomeSpeed8.jpg) and it shows low latency and no dropped packets.

My final test was to connect to the wifi on the router instead of plugging in with an ethernet cable and low and behold I get much better speeds (HomeSpeed9.jpg). Not 900mbps but I’m willing to accept that’s more likely a limitation of the wireless adapter in my laptop which is a few years old. 

Given the broadband quality monitor, tracert, and ping -t all indicate no problems with the outside world, and the relatively high speeds of the wifi the only conclusion I can come to is there’s something wrong with the router, either the firmware or the ethernet ports themselves. I’ve used 3 different cables that I know to be good (tested them in my own home router) in 3 different ports on the Vodafone router and all give speeds approx. 5mbps.

My parents live in an old sandstone house where wifi propagation is pretty poor (thick stone walls, gravel under the floorboards for sound deadening etc) so ethernet really is the best way of getting an internet connection where it needs to go.

What’s the best way to go about getting this fixed?

[Cynric]

@the_weegie What speed is the router itself claiming? I'm intrigued about the LAN address change between 5.1 and 1.1

[the_weegie]

Hi, thanks for replying. I'll have to test from the router when I'm next there. Not sure why there's 5.1 and 1.1, the router hasn't been configured beyond enabling ICMP.

[Jayach]

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@Cynric wrote:

 I'm intrigued about the LAN address change between 5.1 and 1.1

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On the Vodafone routers (well the THG3000 at least) 1.1 means you are on the main Wi-Fi and 5.1means you are on the guest.

How you could possibly have both in the same tracert makes no sense.

[Ripshod]

Looks like dual NAT. You running two routers?

Also, the traceroute tells me you're on the Watford Gateway, and the latency to the gateway says it's either very far away or this problem is down to your internal network.

[the_weegie]

Hi, thanks for replying. They only have 1 router, the vodafone one that's sent and it's running the default config, no changes have been made other than to enable ICMP for the thinkbroadband quality monitor. We live in Glasgow which is a decent distance from Watford.

[Cynric]

@Jayach Odd, isn't it.

[Ripshod]

Agreed. 

@the_weegie  Aberdeen to Watford is just about the worst routing I've ever seen since joining vodafone, apart from my one routing to somewhere in africa. This routing means your data is travelling the length of the UK before it even connects to the internet spine. Between you and Watford it's vodafone's network, which still uses a lot of old technology cobbled together with what they adopted from Cable & Wireless to fill the gaps

This is far from an ideal situation with fast broadband, and needs to be sorted by vodafone. 

[the_weegie]

Thing is though, when connected through wifi, the speeds are fine, 400mbps down and up. It's only when connected through the ethernet cable that the download speed falls off a cliff, so I feel it has to be a router issue as a problem with the network would manifest no matter how I connect to the router?

[alpacanations]

I think I am experiencing the same issue. I've just switched from a 1Gig plan with Virgin to the 910 vodafone plan (openreach). On wifi, I'm consistently getting 910 megs; meanwhiule on ethernet, I'm only getting around 450-700. I know it's not the cable because I have been using it with the Virgin Media router and getting 1.1 gig at all times. My ethernet controller is capable of 2.5gbps. I think it could be something wrong with the router itself. I'm using the white PowerHub router. It's quite disappointing if it can't be fixed.