Cat 5 and new carpet woe

[andygo]

I have just had a couple of new carpets fitted and the fitter has damaged my flat cat 5 cable that resides under the carpets next to the gripper rods.

He has damaged the cable, I didn't notice at first as my Mac had defaulted to Wifi instead of wired connection.

I have found the break and soldered the wires together and all works ok except my internet speed is down from 150mbs to 93mbs.

I have fibre to the home with BT and it's always been rock steady for he last 5 years.

Any ideas to sort?

[robbieduncan]

Lay new cable (ideally properly: not under carpets!)

[Evolved]

A slight drop in speed could be supplier related. A cable will either work or it won’t.

Lucky to get away with soldering it as cat 5 cables are fragile.

[Mr Pointy]

What's the speed like if you connect upstream of the damage? Can you prove it's the damage causing the issue? Did he maybe damage it elsewhere you haven't found?

[andygo]

Evolved said:

A slight drop in speed could be supplier related. A cable will either work or it won’t.

Lucky to get away with soldering it as cat 5 cables are fragile.

Cable has been good for 5 years, only got a chunk out of due to carpet fitter. I did tell him about the cable as well, annoyingly. Can't get under the floorboards to run properly, I have a wood floor on top of solid floor, so not that easy to do any other way, but I appreciate what you are saying!

I normally get 150 mbs download on my mac, my ipad has just got 130mbs download near the home hub.

I wonder if there is another nick in the cable

[robbieduncan]

andygo said:

Cable has been good for 5 years, only got a chunk out of due to carpet fitter. I did tell him about the cable as well, annoyingly. Can't get under the floorboards to run properly, I have a wood floor on top of solid floor, so not that easy to do any other way, but I appreciate what you are saying!

I normally get 150 mbs download on my mac, my ipad has just got 130mbs download near the home hub.

I wonder if there is another nick in the cable

Whilst 93 would be amazing can you check if your connection as dropped from 1000Mb to 100Mb? It may be one pair is still not working. iirc 100Mb does not use all 4 pairs, 1000 does.

[andygo]

My download speed has dropped from 150 to 93mbs. Ping is the usual and upload is normal speed.

[WinstonWolf]

Will the cable pull under the floor? If so use it to draw a new length of cable in. You can also use plastic trunking lid etc. to push under the carpet if that fails...

[robbieduncan]

andygo said:

My download speed has dropped from 150 to 93mbs. Ping is the usual and upload is normal speed.

As above. Is your connection from your machine to the router now 100Mb and was 1000Mb in the past. 93 would be amazingly good for 100Mb but this would explain what you are seeing

Edit: go Apple Menu->About This Mac->System Report
The click on Network.

Choose Ethernet from Active Services. You should see a load of text but this is the interesting bit:

Ethernet:
MAC Address: e0:d5:5e:28:0f:ab
Media Options: Full Duplex
Media Subtype: 1000baseT

Does yours say 1000baseT (as mine does above) or 100baseT?

Edited by robbieduncan on Friday 27th September 13:28

[Mr Pointy]

andygo said:

My download speed has dropped from 150 to 93mbs. Ping is the usual and upload is normal speed.

Is this when connected upstream of the damage though? As someone has said, is your Mac/PC connecting at 100Mb or Gigabit?

[andygo]

It's not too much of a problem (apart from time and money) to install new cabling, it would just involve ripping up about 35ft of fragile beading that disguises the gap between the decorative wooden flooring (not floorboards) in the hallway and the skirting boards. Just another wasted day of my life if you see what I mean!

[andygo]

robbieduncan said:

As above. Is your connection from your machine to the router now 100Mb and was 1000Mb in the past. 93 would be amazingly good for 100Mb but this would explain what you are seeing

Edit: go Apple Menu->About This Mac->System Report
The click on Network.

Choose Ethernet from Active Services. You should see a load of text but this is the interesting bit:

Ethernet:
MAC Address: e0:d5:5e:28:0f:ab
Media Options: Full Duplex
Media Subtype: 1000baseT

Does yours say 1000baseT (as mine does above) or 100baseT?

Edited by robbieduncan on Friday 27th September 13:28

Here is mine:

Ethernet:
MAC Address: 38:f9:d3:08:97:d2
Media Options: Full Duplex
Media Subtype: 100baseTX

[robbieduncan]

andygo said:

Here is mine:

Ethernet:
MAC Address: 38:f9:d3:08:97:d2
Media Options: Full Duplex
Media Subtype: 100baseTX

As they say, well there's your problem! You are only connected at 100Mb/s. In reality protocol overheads mean you will see less than this (93 as you are seeing is pretty fantastic for a 100Mb connection). Your cable is now not capable of support 1000Mb connection which you must have had before. Do you have a cable tester to hand? Most likely one of the twister pairs is no longer working. Or perhaps your soldered repair has introduced too much error on a pair

Edit: is there any slack in the cable? Can you snip out the break and crimp on a couple of RJ-45 ends and use a coupler? Or use something like this if there is space: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/CXSM315.html...

Edit: or even 8 of these: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/GPJC2C.html?...

Edited by robbieduncan on Friday 27th September 13:47

Edited by robbieduncan on Friday 27th September 13:51

[andygo]

robbieduncan said:

As they say, well there's your problem! You are only connected at 100Mb/s. In reality protocol overheads mean you will see less than this (93 as you are seeing is pretty fantastic for a 100Mb connection). Your cable is now not capable of support 1000Mb connection which you must have had before. Do you have a cable tester to hand? Most likely one of the twister pairs is no longer working. Or perhaps your soldered repair has introduced too much error on a pair

Edit: is there any slack in the cable? Can you snip out the break and crimp on a couple of RJ-45 ends and use a coupler? Or use something like this if there is space: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/CXSM315.html...

Edited by robbieduncan on Friday 27th September 13:47

I was thinking the connection must be limited as I noticed on the speedtest net (speedometer' that the sacle only went up to 100mbs. Previosuly it used to showup to 150mbs capability.

I suspect there may be another break in a wire downstream rather than a poor connection. No idea how to ttest for that though other than ripping up more carpet... grrr.

[robbieduncan]

andygo said:

I was thinking the connection must be limited as I noticed on the speedtest net (speedometer' that the sacle only went up to 100mbs. Previosuly it used to showup to 150mbs capability.

I suspect there may be another break in a wire downstream rather than a poor connection. No idea how to ttest for that though other than ripping up more carpet... grrr.

A cheap cable tester like this: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/GPJC2C.html?... will tell you if there is one of the 8 conductors not connected. But it won't give you any clue as to where. You need to spend way more to get that capability!

[TonyRPH]

andygo said:

<snip>
I have found the break and soldered the wires together and all works ok except my internet speed is down from 150mbs to 93mbs.
<snip>

The cable has been compromised, so it probably won't work (reliably) at GB speeds any more.

I guess you've lost the twisted pairs for a short length?

What is the total length of the cable?

[andygo]

robbieduncan said:

A cheap cable tester like this: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/GPJC2C.html?... will tell you if there is one of the 8 conductors not connected. But it won't give you any clue as to where. You need to spend way more to get that capability!

The linky is for a jelly connector block - pretty sure that won't do the trick, lol.

If one of the 8 wires was broken upstream towards the router, would that restrict the speed to 100mbs then or is it just the fact the cable has been repaired?

[robbieduncan]

andygo said:

robbieduncan said:

A cheap cable tester like this: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/GPJC2C.html?... will tell you if there is one of the 8 conductors not connected. But it won't give you any clue as to where. You need to spend way more to get that capability!

The linky is for a jelly connector block - pretty sure that won't do the trick, lol.

If one of the 8 wires was broken upstream towards the router, would that restrict the speed to 100mbs then or is it just the fact the cable has been repaired?

Oops! I keep swapping between Mac and a remote Windows connection and forget to switch Ctrl-C/Command-C. This is the correct link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/CSL-Ethernet-Broadband-Co...

Either could be the issue. A single broken conductor is guaranteed to prevent 1000Mb. However 1000Mb connections are more cable sensitive than 100Mb so any untwisted section could result in errors that limit to 100Mb. There are cable checkers that can test all this but they are many hundreds if not thousands of pounds.

[andygo]

I think I'm going to have to put a new cable in which is a right PITA, but I could bugger about for ages bodging this repair and then finding out there is another break as well.

Thanks for all your help everyone, Pistonheads working as expected again!
Cheers.

[Mr Pointy]

andygo said:

If one of the 8 wires was broken upstream towards the router, would that restrict the speed to 100mbs then or is it just the fact the cable has been repaired?

100Mb uses the orange & green pairs (pins 1,2,3 & 6) Gigabit uses all four pairs so it's possible you still have an issue with a core in the blue & brown pairs.

It's difficult to say if it's not working just because you've repaired it but I'd say if you've kept the repair neat then you have a chance of it being ok. You really need to check the continuity which means buying a cheap tester. Amazon have loads of them:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Splinktech-Networking-Bro...