My son does a lot of internet conferencing and video downloading. He would like to speed things up. He has cable internet which is supposed to be fast. What can be the possible things that can limit his speed.
Badly configured MTU, ailing hardware ... ISP that promises X but gives X - 40% and fails during peak hours ... Many reasons ... Mrk
That depends on if you mistyped your question! If you did mean to say the speed "off" the Internet, then yes, a Gb network will greatly improve the speeds of your local networking - that is, communications (data transfer) between the nodes (computers, print servers, NAS, WAP, etc.) on your side of your router will improve greatly. But note that requires EVERY network device to be Gb capable - including the router and the network card in each computer you want connected at 1Gb. If you meant to say the speed "of" the Internet, then no. And that's because as soon as you hit your gateway (the device that connects you to the Internet, typically a DSL or Cable modem), you go out at the speeds provided by your ISP - typically considerably less than 10Mb.
It is recommended to use at least cat 5e ethernet cable, or cat 6, to obtain full 1 Gig speed between nodes. Not sure if it is really necessary though. I run cat 6 within my WAN with full 1 Gig through speeds. But as Bill_Bright stated this will still not help the original connection speed from the cable\DSL modem to the first device, router\switch\ PC if ICS is being used, in the WAN.
You can use 5e for 1Gb too as properly attached connectors and cable length have a greater impact. Still, I'm lazy. I say spend more for CAT6 now if running wires through walls, ceilings and floors so you don't have pull and run new cable again in couple years when more bandwidth might be needed. For example, if there is a slight chance you may want to stream audio or video throughout the house, you may need the added bandwidth CAT 6 provides.
Cat 6 = future proofing. The wired part of my WAN is contained all in one room. No pulling wires through walls. The longest run is about 25 feet. Just upgraded to Cat 6. It was not available when the network was first setup. Skipped over 5e to save a few $$
He's not on Time Warner. He is on Comcast cable. The speed he is looking for is off the cable ,thru the modem,the NIC and the computer.
Those are different speeds determined by different things. The modem speed is determined by your ISP connection. And through the computer is determined by the CPU, RAM and graphics solution. The NIC simply sends and receives data from the network and could care less about the Internet. So again, the only real advantage to 1Gb networks is if you move lots of data between computers on your network. A 1Gb network will not yield faster Internet performance over a properly working 10/100Mb. If he is looking at better overall performance, look at the computer first. How much RAM is installed? What graphics solution is used? What CPU? If the computer is blazingly fast at all other tasks, and comes to a crawl just to pull up www.google.com, then something is wrong with the network connection and needs to be fixed, not replaced by expensive and unneeded 1Gb stuff.
Go to speedtest.net and run speed tests at different times of day and write them down. You may not be getting advertised speeds or even close. Comcast may also be throttling your connection. Also check and see if they have set monthly bandwidth limits as it becoming more common. What type of video downloading is he doing? If it's file sharing of some type it may also be throttled.
