[Guide] What equipment to buy for Sonic 10 Gigabits Fiber

[johnhontran]

Purchased 10GBE NIC card for my PC tested with a CAT7 and CAT8. Connected directly from the ONT to my PC and I am only seeing 2500MBPS-3000MBPS. No where near the 8000MBPS.

The tech said he was required to test the line (ran 3 or 4 diff speed tests, all using the browser though, haha), but those speeds sound more of a driver problem with the NIC than the line itself.. I did buy this RJ45 PCIE NIC and got really good speeds on it too, in Linux, FWIW. My friends who do work on 10g+ gear for a living told me only buy Intel stuff and recommend the X540, so thats what I followed.

Are you using the desktop app, or a browser? Speedtest has a pretty good desktop app on Mac and Windows, but the SpeedTest I linked above works the best on Linux/Mac IMO.

That's good that your tech ran the test on the line. But the tech we got asked for a laptop. Which means he did not have the equipment to run the test. I will try the speed test app. Everything we ran router/10GBE NIC/Cat 6/7/8 all showing max 3000MBPS. I'm beginning to think that everything I try someone will say its an equipment problem.

[johnhontran]

Purchased 10GBE NIC card for my PC tested with a CAT7 and CAT8. Connected directly from the ONT to my PC and I am only seeing 2500MBPS-3000MBPS. No where near the 8000MBPS.

How are you testing the speed? At these fast speeds, the only accurate way to test is through a native desktop app like the Speedtest.net app. Anything web-based won't give an accurate result.

Also, test it with a high quality CAT6 cable from a good brand (Monoprice, Cable Matters, TrueCable, Tripp Lite, NavePoint, etc) rather than a generic brand CAT7 or CAT8 cable. CAT7 isn't really a thing - real CAT7 is a proprietary standard and uses TERA or GG45 connectors rather than 8P8C ("RJ45") connectors. Any CAT7 you've got that has RJ45 connectors is likely just CAT5e or CAT6 relabelled as "CAT7".

[quote="keithah42"][quote="laikitso"]
Interesting. It looks like taganaka's speedtest client is more optimized than the official one.

I will try the app. But i still dont believe the website would have a 5K difference.

We tried the cable provided by sonic flat Cat7, we tried Cat 6 and Cat 8. I highly doubt its the cable. Unless you are stating that Sonic provided a cable that's not high quality for the fiber.

[sabits]

I was getting ~ 3Gbps on one box, and I tried on different computer and got 7.5Gbps
curiously the 3Gbps box is the one acting as the NAT gateway for our network (haven't gotten around to setting up proper dedicated router)

my guess is browser couldn't keep up?

though I remember not getting too much more than 3gpbs to the various iperf servers I tried on that box either.

[daniel15]

though I remember not getting too much more than 3gpbs to the various iperf servers I tried on that box either.

A lot of the public iperf servers are only on 10Gbps connections themselves, so other people doing speed tests at the same time will affect your results. For example, Clouvider's American iperf servers are on a 10Gbps connection and allow up to 10 people to perform a test at the same time.

The only tests I know of that can get closer to 10Gbps are Sonic's and Comcast's speedtest.net servers. On Linux, I use their official CLI app: https://www.speedtest.net/apps/cli. Don't use the one called `speedtest-cli` that's available in Debian/Ubuntu/CentOS/etc repos, as it's an unofficial Python app that can't hit very fast speeds.

[platypus9000]

Hi,

I recently got 10 gig fiber installed in the downtown San Jose, CA area. I purchased an OWC 10 gigabit ethernet adapter to use with my MacBook pro. I have tried two different CAT6 cables connected directly to the ONT. I downloaded the Mac Speediest app. I attached a screenshot - I see around 920 down, 936 up. I did once see 1.1 gigabit downstream when testing with a web browser on fast.com. I am curious to hear anyone's suggestions about what I might do to get better speeds.

Thanks.

[starslip]

Hi,

I recently got 10 gig fiber installed in the downtown San Jose, CA area. I purchased an OWC 10 gigabit ethernet adapter to use with my MacBook pro. I have tried two different CAT6 cables connected directly to the ONT. I downloaded the Mac Speediest app. I attached a screenshot - I see around 920 down, 936 up. I did once see 1.1 gigabit downstream when testing with a web browser on fast.com. I am curious to hear anyone's suggestions about what I might do to get better speeds.

Thanks.

Given the speeds it almost sounds like it's negotiating a 1 gigabit link with the ONT rather than 10. Depending on your version of macOS you may be able to open the network utility app and verify the connection between the two is registering at 10 gigabits. This won't help resolve the issue but might help diagnose it.

[platypus9000]

Given the speeds it almost sounds like it's negotiating a 1 gigabit link with the ONT rather than 10. Depending on your version of macOS you may be able to open the network utility app and verify the connection between the two is registering at 10 gigabits. This won't help resolve the issue but might help diagnose it.

I checked the network settings for the adapter and it claimed to have negotiated at 10 gig. I'm going to try later on an Intel based Mac instead of an Apple Silicon one to see if that makes any difference.

[platypus9000]

Given the speeds it almost sounds like it's negotiating a 1 gigabit link with the ONT rather than 10. Depending on your version of macOS you may be able to open the network utility app and verify the connection between the two is registering at 10 gigabits. This won't help resolve the issue but might help diagnose it.

I checked the network settings for the adapter and it claimed to have negotiated at 10 gig. I'm going to try later on an Intel based Mac instead of an Apple Silicon one to see if that makes any difference.

I retried on an intel based MacBook pro as well as the apple silicon one that I had tried originally. Tried manually setting the network adapter to 10 gig with full duplex and 1500 byte frames (also tried enabling jumbo frames but that setting didn't stick). This resulted in similar speeds to the above, no improvement.

[platypus9000]

I retried on an intel based MacBook pro as well as the apple silicon one that I had tried originally. Tried manually setting the network adapter to 10 gig with full duplex and 1500 byte frames (also tried enabling jumbo frames but that setting didn't stick). This resulted in similar speeds to the above, no improvement.

I also tried this on a LG gram Windows laptop with the same adapter and saw slower speeds (in the low 800mbits) through fast.com and sonic's speed test.

[allsport2001]

Hi,

I recently got 10 gig fiber installed in the downtown San Jose, CA area. I purchased an OWC 10 gigabit ethernet adapter to use with my MacBook pro. I have tried two different CAT6 cables connected directly to the ONT. I downloaded the Mac Speediest app. I attached a screenshot - I see around 920 down, 936 up. I did once see 1.1 gigabit downstream when testing with a web browser on fast.com. I am curious to hear anyone's suggestions about what I might do to get better speeds.

Thanks.

Hey,

Just got installed about a week ago as well near the same area and having the same issues max connection speed I get is 920 to 940 down and 930s up tried just about everything to solve it including 2 different nic cards and replacing cables from the ONT to the router and from the router to the PC. then today purchased the UDM SE and 2 UACC-CM-RJ45-MG for the SFP ports, after setting it all up still getting same speeds as before. Out of ideas here

Edit: just did some internal lan testing with iperf in my network Im getting 8 gig a second between my pc and UDM SE so my pc and the UDM SE. even swapping cables and SFP ports for the WAN side with no difference in the speed im getting from the ONT.