Additional Router advice - FTTP

[PaleMerk]

Hello, I have built a garden office. The wi-fi won't extend this far but I did put in a Cat 7 between the house and the garden room. The issue I have is that I have many devices in the garden office. I am currently using a Gigabit switch to split the network to all devices. The downside is that by using the switch when gaming, I lose bandwidth and get issues with data loss, vs connection the cable directly to the PC. 

Will replacing the switch with an additional router help with this? Would purchasing a gaming router be of benefit? 

Obviously the additional advantage is that this router will create a hot spot for the office and garden.

[countrypaul]

Are you sure that you are getting a gigabit connection between the switch and your router? What model of switch have you got? Does the switch support QoS and allow you to prioritise certain traffic?

Can you get any stats on the ethernet link between switch and router, Ethernet packet loss can often be overlooked if there is spare capacity as packets can be retransmitted, but as bandwidth is used up the loss can "suddenly" become visible as retransmits take up more and more bandwidth.

Why do you think another router rather than switch would help? 

[PaleMerk]

Thanks for your reply.

When I used the Openreach Speedtest with the switch, I am down between 100-200mbps. When connecting directly into the PC I am well over 600mbps. I am assuming the other loss is down to around 45m of Cat 7 cable between the office and the house. 

I am not sure weather a router will solve this, I suppose that's what I am trying to figure out. I bought the TP-LINK TL-SG105E. 

I will try to get stats when I get home later. 

[countrypaul]

If you are only getting 100-200 mb/s then I would bet you are getting just 100mb/s Ethernet (which will give you 100mb/s each direction simultaneously sometimes referred to as 200mb/s).  You will either get 100mb/s (maybe reported as 200mb/s) or 1gb/s anything else is not an ethernet limitation.

CAT7 is something of an anomaly and is effectively dead as a standard, however with suitable hardware it will support 10gb/s.

I suspect either the termination at one end or the other of the cat7 may be faulty which could mean less than all 8 wires are connecting properly resulting in the switch and router negotiating only 100tx speed (but could be the patch cables if used), or the switch and router can't negotiate 1gb/s and drop to 100tx standard. 

I suggest putting the switch close the router connected with a single short patch cable and test to see if that gives you 1gb/s in which case you will know the cat7 setup has a problem. If the single patch cable with the switch and router close together only gives you 100tx then it might be caused by the two not being able to negotiate the higher speed due to some sort of incompatibility.

PS. might be worth bearing in mind it is a Friday evening and I have had a little to drunk.

[yorkspark]

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@PaleMerkwrote:

Thanks for your reply.

When I used the Openreach Speedtest with the switch, I am down between 100-200mbps. When connecting directly into the PC I am well over 600mbps. I am assuming the other loss is down to around 45m of Cat 7 cable between the office and the house. The problem is not the cable, cat5e will do 1gb for nearly 95 metres and cat7 i think 10gb for similar distances.

I am not sure weather a router will solve this, I suppose that's what I am trying to figure out. I bought the TP-LINK TL-SG105E.  An additional router can only be used as a slave unit, effectively a glorified switch, i would suggest the problem is the mini switch installed if you can get 600meg to the pc

I will try to get stats when I get home later. 

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[licquorice]

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@yorkspark wrote:

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@PaleMerkwrote:

I am not sure weather a router will solve this, I suppose that's what I am trying to figure out. I bought the TP-LINK TL-SG105E.  An additional router can only be used as a slave unit, effectively a glorified switch, i would suggest the problem is the mini switch installed if you can get 600meg to the pc

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Err no, a second router can be installed as router with its own subnet if required by connecting the 2 LAN to WAN rather than LAN to LAN, however, it will introduce double nat and other problems and won't solve the OP's problem.

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