If you, like me, are a Verizon FIOS customer, your setup and router can slow down your LAN speed significantly. So what do I mean by LAN speed? Well, there is internet speed and then LAN or LAN speed.
Your internet speed can be easily checked by visiting a site like SpeedTest.net and making sure the results match the speed you are subscribed to in FIOS. It is worth noting that you should only perform the speed test with a computer connected via an Ethernet cable, as this will be the fastest test.
I have 100/100 at home with FIOS and I can easily get this kind of internet speed on my computers. The problem was not my internet speed, I bought a local transfer rate on my home network. When trying to transfer some data between different computers on my network, the maximum speed reached 11.5 MB / s. These are megabytes per second.
For a network with a speed of 100 Mbps (i.e. megabits per second), 11.5 Mbps is a very good speed. However, all of my equipment was connected to gigabits, which means that the transfer rate should be close to 1000 Mbps. This means about 125 MB / s. As you can see, my current speed of 11.5 is less than one tenth of the maximum speed for Gigabit Ethernet.
Cause of slower speed
So what exactly is causing me to only get transfer rates of 100 Mbps? Two reasons: the coaxial cable in my house and the MoCA version. My house was pre-wired with coaxial cable instead of Ethernet cable and that makes a big difference. When using a coaxial cable, you will never get the maximum possible LAN speed, or even close to it.
However, even if you are stuck with coaxial cable, you can significantly increase your speed by making sure all of your devices are using MoCA 2.0 and not MoCA 1.0 or 1.1. MoCA 1.0 has a maximum speed of 12.5 MB / s and a 1.1 maximum speed is 21.875 MB / s. If this is confusing, be sure to read my previous post on network baud rates.
So while my router and computer had gigabit ports, the wiring in my house and the MoCA version on my router caused the top speed to go up to 12.5 MB / s. Verizon installs the Actiontec. MI424WR router by default for new customers, although it’s not the best router they have.
This router can be red or black and gray like the image above. Overall, this is a great router, delivering excellent internet speeds of up to 100 Mbps up and 100 Mbps down. The downside is that it only supports MoCA 1.1 and therefore provides a maximum speed of 21.875 MB / s on your local network.
So why does it matter? Well, if you have your own media server at home, streaming movies from your computer or NAS to your HDTV or game console will be a lot slower and will cause your videos to stop every couple of seconds. I also back up my computers to NAS, and the lower transfer speed increases the backup time by several hours, which is unacceptable for me.
Fix Slow LAN Speed
So how can you solve this problem? Well, the easiest way, if you are forced to use a coaxial cable, is to upgrade your router to the new Quantum Gateway offered by Verizon. You can rent it for $ 10 a month, or buy it straight away for $ 199.
The best way to get a Quantum Gateway router for free is to simply increase your internet speed with one tariff plan, and usually you will be given a router for free. I was at 75/75, upgraded to 100/100 and asked if they could add a router for free, which they did.
If they tell you that increasing this speed is not suitable for you, just ask for a higher speed and then slow down after upgrading your router. For example, if you have 25/25 and they say they cannot provide you with a new router if you upgrade to 50/50, just say you want to upgrade to 75/75. They’ll give you a new router for free, and then you just connect to the Internet and after two days slow down to 50/50. A Verizon rep told me about this trick!
If you can’t get a router that way, go to Amazon. and you can get one for $ 142.50, which will save you some money. You can also try on eBay and possibly win a better deal there. The one I got, and the one pictured above, is a G1100 router.
The router has several advantages over the Actiontec. router in terms of wireless functionality, but for me the biggest advantage was the MoCA 2.0 support. After installing this router, how to get MoCA 2.0 speed on your other devices?
Well, since my house is everywhere connected via coaxial cable, I had to buy MoCA 2.0 adapters. The one I bought was from Actiontec. This is a MoCA 2.0 Coax to Ethernet adapter and is quite expensive.
I plugged this adapter into a coaxial cable in the wall and plugged the ethernet into a switch that was connected to all my other devices like computers, etc. So what speed improvement did I notice? Well, basic MoCA 2.0 can give you speeds up to 400 Mbps, which equates to roughly 50 Mbps. In my own tests, the speed went up to about 54MB / s. It was almost five times faster than my previous speed!
There is also MoCA 2.0 Overspeed, which gives up to 800Mbps throughput, but it must be a coaxial connection. There is a bundled MoCA adapter like the one shown above from Actiontec., but the G1100 only supports MoCA 2.0, not the bundled MoCA 2.0, so you can’t get those higher speeds.
Even faster speeds?
So is it even possible to get even faster speeds than the 50 MB / s mentioned above? Yes, but it takes a lot more work. Basically, you need to switch your Verizon ONT from coax to Ethernet and then install multiple Ethernet ports in your home.
I am going to write a future post on how to do this since I am currently doing this in my own home and it is not as difficult as it might seem. Once you switch the ONT to Ethernet and install an Ethernet port near your devices, you can get transfer rates up to 90+ MB / s, which is about as close to the theoretical 125 MB / s as possible. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to comment. Enjoy!
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