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?

[Jayach]

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@Ripshod wrote:
 This doesn't however preclude an internal fault with the router's electronics. 

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However, a fault in the electronics is likely to result in the port not working at all, a degradation in the speed is unlikely, (but not impossible)

[alpacanations]

The fact of the matter is that if I use the Vodafone router, my wired internet speed will be much lower than on wifi. This is regardless of the time of day. I've done hundreds of speed tests on multiple devices.  As soon as I switch to my router I get about 930 megs in every single speed test. I'm no networking expert so can't tell you exactly why that is but in case anyone else is having a similar issue, try using a different router and see if it makes a difference. The Voda router is locked down anyway and you barely have access to any features so you won't be missing out on much.