Download & Upload Speed

silentotter

I work remotely from home and I need to upload documents and images to customer platforms for my work and sometimes there can be quite a few images. For this purpose I got a 1gig fibre optic connection with Virgin. They guarantee a minimum download speed of 550mb and an upload speed of 50mb, does the slow upload speed reduce the download speed? Despite connecting via an Ethernet cable I never get the 550mb speed and only seem to manage 450mb, once connected to a VPN this reduces to 350mb. If I’m only receiving 350mb I’m wondering if I actually need the 1gig connection and should reduce my package, the upload speeds are slower for the other packages though and everything I’ve read says the upload speed is more important then the upload.

Any advice would be appreciated.

400ixl

The upload speed won't affect the download speed in most circumstances unless you are trying to upload big (or lots) of documents at the same time as trying to download.

What does the router say your sync'd speeds are with the Virgin network? This will give you the capacity to the router and should be in the region of the 1Gbps down and 50Mbps up if that is what you have contracted for.

What are you using to measure the download speeds, and is it showing 550Mb down and 50Mb up? If from a single device it could be the limitation is on the network card (as your are physically cabled) and actually multiple network cards / devices will give more bandwidth. So maybe test from multiple devices at the same time to see if you can get more than the 550Mbps when doing concurrent tests.

As for the VPN, what sort of VPN is it? A point to point VPN from your network to a customer network end point, or are you using a VPN service of your own? Also, are you connecting to the VPN at a device level, or at the router? Typically you can expect up to 10% overhead on a VPN, but also there may be a capacity limit with the VPN provider connection.

silentotter

When I changed my package with Virgin the sales person said they would only guarantee 550mb download wired. If you look on Virgin Media’s website for the 1gig it gives you the download and upload speeds for the package and it states there 50mb upload.  I connect via the Cisco VPN provided by my employer on the IT equipment they have provided me with to work.

400ixl

What does the connection speed say on the Virgin Router itself if you log onto it?

The 450Mbps may well be the limit of the network card in the device you are using. How are you measuring it?

silentotter

The Virgin hub doesn’t say on it what the connection speed is, it’s a hub 4. I’ve never thought about what the network limit on my device is how would I find that out? The hub isn’t actually working at the moment and I’m using a much slower copper network back up connection while I’m waiting for the engineer.

I use the recommended speed tester by Virgin to test my speed. Could it be that the speed I experience whilst connected to my employers systems is limited to the speed that their network servers are working at?

wongataa

silentotter said:

I use the recommended speed tester by Virgin to test my speed. Could it be that the speed I experience whilst connected to my employers systems is limited to the speed that their network servers are working at?

Yes.  If testing speed over a VPN you are basically testing the speed the endpoint of the VPN can run at, not your connection.  Obviously if your internet connection speed is lower than the speed at the endpoint of the VPN the speed you get will be your connection speed but in the OP's situation this isn't the case.

silentotter

Ah right now I understand which explains the difference in speed when logged into VPN and not. Having looked into this further the Hub 4 is only a 2.4 MHz and uses Wifi5 and realistically can only reach a speed of 433mb despite what Virgin say they will guarantee wired by Ethernet. In order to get a higher speed you will need the 5 MHz hub 5 which uses wifi6 but even then would only give you 600mb.

Thanks for all your help now I understand 

littleboo

It does also depend on how your organisation configures it's VPN. a split tunnel VPN will still route internet traffic locally, and only use the VPN for corporate traffic. If the VPN is routing all traffic towards the corporate network, as well as limitations on the VPN, you could also be limited by your employers internet break out, ie capacity, traffic shaping etc when performing a speed test.

wongataa

silentotter said:

Ah right now I understand which explains the difference in speed when logged into VPN and not. Having looked into this further the Hub 4 is only a 2.4 MHz and uses Wifi5 and realistically can only reach a speed of 433mb despite what Virgin say they will guarantee wired by Ethernet. In order to get a higher speed you will need the 5 MHz hub 5 which uses wifi6 but even then would only give you 600mb.

Wi-Fi speeds have nothing to do with wired networking speeds.  The Hub 4 has gigabit Ethernet ports so should be capable of 1000Mbps over a wired connection as long as the connected devices have gigabit Ethernet ports. 5GHz Wi Fi networks are capable of gigabit networking speeds in principle as long as the conditions are suitable and the connected devices are capable.

If your hub can't provide gigabit speeds over a wire then something is wrong with it, it is poor hardware, or there is something amiss with your network.