Does Three rate limit the 5G router speeds?

[fnanfne]

Hey peoples, I recently joined Three and got their 5G router. (NR5103E)

When I connect my 5G mobile phone to this router via Wi-Fi and do a speed test, I consistently get ~450Mb/s download.

However, when I connect my PC via a LAN cable and do a speed test, I consistently only get ~110Mb/s download. The NIC on the 5G router is at least 1Gigabit and the NIC on my PC is 5Gigabit (Marvell AQC111C). Why is there such a discrepancy between the different devices? Even though Three says it's unlimited with no restrictions, it kind of feels like the speed is limited.

I'm hoping I'm doing something wrong, or that there is a setting somewhere I missed.

Thoughts anyone?

[crypt0ninja]

Hi @fnanfne,

I have no such problem with my PC which has a Realtek 2.5GBE NIC running its latest driver.

I've connected my PC up to both ports on the NR5103E and link speeds are reported as they should be (2500/2500 from the top port and 1000/1000 from the bottom port) and my download/upload speeds do not differ between them.

Even over WIFI I get very similar speeds to Ethernet just slightly higher ping so fairly consistent all round for me.

Few things for you to check/confirm:

Can you confirm you have installed/updated to the latest driver for the Marvell AQC111C NIC?

What is the link speed reported as in the Windows network options? (assuming you are using Windows that is)

If you go into Device Manager and into the properties for the Marvell AQC111C NIC do you get advanced options etc?

Cheers 🙂

[fnanfne]

Hey crypt0ninja,

Unfortunately I don't see any NIC updates but at my previous address around a year ago, I had Hyperoptic as my broadband provider, and got 800-900Mb/s using this same PC and Marvell NIC.

The link speed reports as 1000Mb/s in Windows and I do see Advanced options in devmgmt.msc.

Thank you for the input that gives me hope!

[crypt0ninja]

Yeah I'm wondering if its something to do with that specific NIC chip/driver and the NR5103E firmware...

Do you have the ethernet cable (assuming cat6 or cat7?) plugged into the top port on the NR5103E as that's the 2.5gbE port? if so then this in theory should change your link speed in Windows to 2500/2500 (as mine does) as from what I see your adapter supports both the higher 2.5gbE and 5gbE link speed options so it should auto-detect the 2.5gbE link speed when plugged into the top port like mine does.

If its plugged into the top port on the NR5103E but not autodetecting the 2.5gbE link speed then I assume there's some sort of bug going on between the NR5103E firmware and that NIC chip/driver which may possibly be bugging the transfer speeds too.

Can you take a screenshot of the advanced options you have available under devmgmt for the network adapter? I know the options differ between adapters so don't want to give blind advice 😂

Just wondering if there's any options you can change and test from there to see if there's any difference, such as manually setting the link type and speed etc.

I see the latest driver for that NIC is version 3.1.7 is that the one you currently have installed? if not I can DM you a link to that one to try?

Cheers

[PeteG]

Hi, fnanfne.

Welcome to the Three Community. 

Looking over some of the other answers here, it looks like a lot has been covered already. If none of those ideas have worked, it might be worth checking the type cat type of ethernet cable your have to ensure it's up to scratch. The speed you're getting falls in line with a 100mbps cat 5 cable. It's pretty rare to have one of these lying around these days, but worth checking. 

If it's a CAT5e of higher, it might be worth testing the cable with another router or between two other local machines to see if those can reach higher than 100mbps speeds. Damage or deterioration can cause faster ethernet cables to be limited to lower speeds. 

Pete. 

[fnanfne]

Thanks a bunch for the lengthy replies, appreciate the effort! 

@crypt0ninja Cheers for the suggestions. Sorry I had a driver from 2020 installed, not sure why Windows was adamant I had the latest driver installed but thank you, I found the mega.nz link with the 2022 driver. I also had the cable plugged into the bottom NIC, once I plugged it into the top NIC, the link speed in Windows went from 1000/1000 to 2500/2500. However, even with this new driver and the NIC swap, it didn't help much at all. I can now barely get above 70Mb/s download at the moment of writing this, probably because it's peak time? But again testing with my phone, I get a respectable 430Mb/s. The Link Speed under the Advanced properties of the Marvell NIC was set to Auto Negotiation. I did try to flip between static/manual settings, to no avail. I have attached all the pics below... 

@PeteG Cheers for the suggestion, the cable I used before was unlabelled so not sure what category it was. However, I did have a brand new CAT 6 cable in my drawer which I was using for these latest tests which didn't help much. 

I also tested the speed on my PC using a built-in Wi-Fi adaptor (Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz) and I get the exact same speeds (almost to a Tee) of around 70Mb/s. The driver for the Wi-Fi card is 6 months old from 2022. 

Pics below..

Advanced properties of Marvell NIC:

Speed test from a mobile phone connected to the 5G router via Wi-Fi:

Speed test from a PC connected to the 5G router via Marvell AQC111C 5Gb Ethernet:

Marvell LAN NIC Properties in Windows:

Speed test from a PC connected to the 5G router via Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201:

Intel(R) Wi-Fi NIC Properties in Windows:

[mfarmilo]

When I first had the NR5103E, I was getting this and looking at the admin page it was seeing the ethernet connections as 100mbit instead of 1gbit. At first I thought it was the actual speed I was getting, then ran a test from my phone and it was about 500mbit. After a couple of days it suddenly corrected itself mysteriously without me changing anything. I was using cat5e cables at the time but have since replaced them with cat7 (only pennies difference from cat6) just in case.

[fnanfne]

Interesting @mfarmilo whereabouts in the admin page do you see this information?

[fnanfne]

On the router itself under Network Setting --> Broadband --> Cellular Band, there is a setting to change the "Preferred Access Technology" I tried to change this setting from "NR5G-SA/NR5G-NSA/4G (Auto Switch)" to "NR5G-SA" in the hopes of just forcing 5G, but the internet went down and remained off (red light on the router) until I flipped this setting back.

Are there any other settings I could try?

[fnanfne]

I just want to update this thread. After days of troubleshooting and spending time on the phone to Three, I finally got to the bottom of the slow speeds. It was the cabling between my PC and the router.

Last week when I was doing all the tests with the new CAT6 cable, I moved the router closer to my PC, as the CAT6 cable is only 10m long, and the distance is probably double that. So I finally decided to move my PC to the router instead, which is easier said than done, but it got done. When I then did some speed tests, I was surprised but also super glad to see even faster speeds than I saw on any my mobile phones. Up to 750Mb/s! I also found a server which gave me much higher metrics than any other; HighSpeed Office Limited.

Thanks to all who replied and provided assistance, very much appreciated!