I bought a Cat6 Ethernet cable for PSN and it's not gone well!

cooldawn · Dec 3, 2019

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR THE RESPONSES

So...

Fliesen said:
One crucial piece of information: PS4 game downloads are not a proper 'speed test'. Depending on game, time of day, Sony CDN load, any given game might load faster or slower, regardless of whether your actual PS4 has access to more bandwidth.

Yogi said:
I may have misunderstood but I would open the browser and do a speed test to make sure it's not just PSN. Otherwise, maybe it's still using the wifi connection on the ps4? Otherwise it sounds like PSN isn't playing nice.

For sure. I used Ookla on a WiFi laptop to run a speed test and it's suggesting about 15Mbps but my PS4 performance has gone down from about 4.5MBps/5MBps to 3.5MBps using Ethernet. Speed Test suggests at least 28Mbps which doesn't make any sense since I was getting about 5MB's on game downloads.

Timing might make some difference but going from WiFi to Ethernet should be a net positive, not negative, right?

However, I've just tried the speed test again and now I'm at 14.77Mbps. Titanfall 2 is downloading at about 4MB to 5MB. Slight increase from earlier that makes it the same rate as PS4 using WiFi now.

TheOne said:
With a 30Mbps transfer rate, you could have gone with an old CAT5 cable and it would still not change a damn thing.

CAT6 is certified for 10Gbps on close course. CAT5e is certified 1Gbps on a 100m course. CAT5 can do 1Gbps on much closer course, but really has been certified for 100Mbps.

Thera said:
Cat6 wasn't necessary for a 30Mbps connection manage by a 100 or 1000 router, you could have bought the worst ethernet cable, it would have been fine.

So everything is fine here.

I saw a Cat5 cable but a Cat6 was only a couple of quid more so, I guess, I'm future proof'd.

At least there's that!

Ready for PS5 and a new area.

Cor said:
Please take no offence at this very basic question, but... are you aware of the difference between MBps and Mbps?

but yes, it shouldnt happen. Unless theres some severe network issue, eth should be more reliable and faster.

You're right. The speed tests give me Mbps and PSN gives MB's. Experiences are relative to PSN though since I don't download large files online using computers i.e. relatively using a cable has slowed my connection speed for PS4. It's madness I tell thee.

Malkier said:
I had slow DL speeds till I got feed up and got a new modem from my ISP and it was magically fast after that. No idea why.

This is the third modem supplied by Sky.

We went though all sorts of different settings like modes (Auto and 54g), security (WPA2 PSK and AES) and Channels (0 through to 14). Nothing worked.

Teeth said:
Just a quick question: are PSN downloads showing 4Mbps or 4MBps?

4MBps. Sorry!

DeadJoshWalking said:
I would bet you'll find it gets a lot better when you get off Sky, I've always found big ISPs are terrible in the UK (assuming you are in the UK but realise now there's probably Sky ISPs all over), only way to get consistent results is to pick a smaller supplier and don't be afraid to jump around when the service starts slipping.

Use this website: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php

I'm on UNO personally, don't have a speed test to hand but I know any time I've checked it it's been exactly what I was paying for and PSN has maxed out my connection several times.

Sky has been really reliable. Hardly any outages. Enough is enough though becasue it's really slow.

I just thought an Ethernet would help improve speeds.

I'm off this week looking for an alternative provider so will be looking at a variety of providers.

komaruR said:
theres alot of fake cat6 out there. i bought a roll of cat6 thinking to rewired my house. it has cat6 written on them then i created a few cables, hook it up and notice somethings not right with my isp speed and i keep getting dc. went into my router and the router says the cable is 10mb or 100 forgot. i was like this isnt right, switch back to cat5e, it says 1000 or 10000mb, eitherway its higher than the cat6. i quickly made another cable from the spindle and still say the same.

reading a few amazon review, theres some post mentioning their cable speed is slower too.

so yea, watch out for fake cat6 that has worse speed than cat5e.

I bought the Cat6 cable from a national UK electrical retailer called Curry's.

I don't think it's fake.

Shambala said:
Lol man it's crazy. I seem to be the only one that downloads games in minutes on psn 🤷‍♂️. 20mins tops for 60gb+ games

So jealous.

Cleve said:
Every time PSN speeds get brought up I think it's worth mentioning that you should close all apps, even background ones like Spotify when attempting to download or the ps4 gives lower priority to the traffic. There was a reddit thread a few years back explaining the reasons with a ton of packet capture and analysis. Just close everything including system apps and see if it improves for you.

Does anyone have a link to that thread handy?

-edit-

Never mind, found the source:

https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2017-08-19-slow-ps4-downloads/

That said, there's no guarantee this is the root of your PSN issues, but it's worth giving it a shot.

Oh wow...

shark97 said:
30 mbps??! dang here in the states i get 400mb like nothing in rural area, and 1gigabit is common

I'm not in a fibre area.

The funny thing is Virgin Media have a 450MB+ grey box not 50 meters away but interal wiring isn't up to the task which is why I opted to try a Ethernet cable expecting a decent increase.

It's really frustrating. There's unlimited potential right outside but I can't use it!

Jolkien said:
If you wanna do a proper speed test go on fast.com (free Netflix HTML5 speed test) in your PS4 browser, a lot of CDN Sony use has throughput probnlem.

Just tried on PS4.

28Mbps. But I have been getting 5MB's downloads using WiFi!

Abstrusity said:
Try a different port on the modem, and also full power cycle the modem for like 5 minutes. Cat 6 also won't do anything if you modem is trash too, so see if your isp means to upgrade them, talk to th m about your issues. It's more likely that the servers you connect to are trash than any of the above though when it's reading at 27 mbps

Switch it off, changed port, had dinner and tried again.

No Dice.

ChryZ said:
Make sure to use the correct MTU.

MTU should be 1473.

Tried. Slower than MTU 1500 by about 1MBps.

No dice.

Box said:
I hope you kicked off.

Will be tomorrow.

Just waited to trouble-shoot this evening.

I think I'm doomed. I'll speak to Sky tomorrow and other providers as we go through the week.

Teeth · Dec 3, 2019

cooldawn said:
4MBps. Sorry!

4 MBps is ~32Mbps, which is approximately 30Mbps, so you are getting the correct speeds.

3.8MBps is 30.4Mbps. This is the ol' data rates by ISP are measured in Mbps and data rates by programs are measured in MBps problem.

Box · Dec 3, 2019

cooldawn said:
Will be tomorrow.

Just waited to trouble-shoot this evening.

I think I'm doomed. I'll speak to Sky tomorrow and other providers as we go through the week.

A 68% hike in service charge is absolutely ammo for a retentions call. Don't forget to moan about your speed. Think of something that needs a decent up or down and claim it affects your work. Good luck.

Franco_Tech · Dec 3, 2019

Cat 6 do not make a difference if you have just a regular router, that most of them did not even transfer the data speed that a Cat 6 support.

Nida · Dec 3, 2019

cooldawn said:
My Sky contract ended so they hiked the price by 68%. I'm paying for a 30Mbps line but I've never got anything like that in normal use on PSN over WiFi. I usually got at the most 5Mbps down which is horrid but I've managed it for 5 years.

I decided today, in an attempt to create value, to buy a 10m Cat6 Ethernet Cable and see how much my speed would be boosted and...well it's gone down.

My wired PS4 is telling me it can download up to 27.7Mbps and upload 3.7Mbps. I just tried to download Titanfall 2 and that average WiFi speed of 4Mbps to 5Mbps has gone down to about 3Mbps to 3.5Mbps using Ethernet. Worse still my WiFi laptop is stable at 15Mbps down and 8.5Mbps up (using Ookla Speed Test) from tests I ran about a year ago.

I decided to go Ethernet because I read people on this forum always say Ethernet is faster and more reliable than WiFi, so as you can imagine I'm at the end of my tether since my expectations of a standard increase in speed, going from WiFi to Ethernet, would in some part counter the hike in price and create value. I was expecting something like 10Mbps or even more.

So my question is, what am I doing wrong? Why is my real-life speed going down over Ethernet?

To make me feel better I'm going to play some Death Stranding but any helpful suggestions and recommendations will be used and tested.

Can you sign a new contract for a reduced rate?

I bought a Cat6 Ethernet cable for PSN and it's not gone well!

cooldawn

Teeth

Box

Franco_Tech

Nida