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Problem:1 cable modem 150/20 mbps & 1 fiber line 5/5mbps how to distribute best

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40hz:
As above theory suggested, this says jumbo packet size definition mismatch to me ... That sound about right to you too 40hz?
-Stoic Joker (May 21, 2014, 07:53 AM)
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Yup! That was my first thought. Which is why I wanted to see the equipment list in order to get an idea if that might be the case, and more importantly, if it was fixable without needing other hardware.

But Shades raised another interesting point. If the ISP supplied router is capping them on the WAN side that's another possibility. Kinda like business grade DSL service around where I am. Most circuits can provide the full bore. But the ISP sets the rate in their locked-down router so you only get what you're paying for. Which is why upgrading to the next level "asymetric" usually requires nothing more than a phone call and maybe a credit check. One hour later and presto you now have a faster pipeline courtesy of the tribbles over at central office who went in, changed a setting, and bounced your router.

The giveaway would be whether or not the client has admin access to the router. If they don't - and I'm guessing they don't - there's a real chance The ISP is capping them. And the fact it got "fixed" so easily tells me it was a local router setting that was misconfigured. (Some providers set you up initially at the next highest rate to give you a taste of what the deluxe service level feels like. It usually reverts to what you've contracted for after a week or two if you don't take advantage of the "special offer" upgrade. Maybe, in this case, they forgot to drop it back down?

So anyway yeah...frame mismatch or capping in effect. Those would be my two best guesses.

Regarding Untangle NG:

I think Shades made an excellent recommendation. :Thmbsup: I like Untangle too. I have a few small SOHO clients plus my two sister's houses (one with a home-based business) running off Untangle. And it's a dream to set-up and administer. What's really nice is you can see into everything it's doing - so if you ever need to troubleshoot, everything from your WAN port inward is visible and configurable. And it supports web caching and bandwidth control - so that should help with web access. Plus there's built-in WAN balancing and failover - so if they do end up keeping two ISPs, those features can provide some interesting possibilities.

40hz:
:huh: ...WAN port on a switch? :huh:
-Stoic Joker (May 21, 2014, 11:38 AM)
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Yeah. That's why I wanted the equipment list. There may be some nomenclature issues (i.e. switch/router/combo) we'll need to get straightened out too.  ;)

BTW - I had a chuckle and an eye-roll (Oh puh-leez!!!) over that managed vs unmanaged switch "explanation" too. I guess that's another one of those "little known facts" you hear about. ;D

Shades:
There are several switches here (1x Netgear, 5x 3com, 1x Zyxel and 3x no-names) and all, except one have a WAN port in them. None of them mention that they are a router/switch combo. But I have never tried them either, so I couldn't tell. They came with a pile of other stuff, bought at the US embassy auction years ago. IMSM that stuff (2 complete servers, 2 incomplete IBM PC's, modems, cables, NICs, software, UPSes etc.) didn't cost much more than a 1.000.000Gs (around 150 USD in those days) and one of those servers was a PII Proliant.

Anyway, most of the switches are around 15 years old by now, 10/100MBit and come with a coax connector as well. Come to think of it, were those (incorrectly labeled) WAN ports not used to string multiple switches together back in those old days? With cross-cables? Sorry, too lazy to look it up myself.

Ah well, it's easy to make a mess of a network and keeping it as simple as possible will save your sanity and makes it much more manageable and has usually a longer up-time as well. Inheriting a network from some companies could be considered damn near capital punishment.   :P

Stoic Joker:
Come to think of it, were those (incorrectly labeled) WAN ports not used to string multiple switches together back in those old days? With cross-cables?-Shades (May 21, 2014, 09:24 PM)
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That's really quite bizarre ... AFAIK those have always been called uplink ports. Translation issue? Admin being funny? *Shrug* If you can post a model number I'll look it up to see what it are.

40hz:

Anyway, most of the switches are around 15 years old by now, 10/100MBit and come with a coax connector as well
-Shades (May 21, 2014, 09:24 PM)
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Some old 3COMs used to have special matrix-type ports and cables to link the backbones of multiple hubs and switches together. That gave them better throughput between the switches than running a standard crossover cable because the network ports were mostly just 10Mbs on the boxes that had that feature. We're talking late 80s/ early 90s vintage on those. I don't recall seeing any with coax connectors though.

Problem:1 cable modem 150/20 mbps & 1 fiber line 5/5mbps how to distribute best    

I'm guessing that was probably for twinax cables - which are shielded twisted pair although they look very similar to coax. IBM was big on that type of wiring for their ARCNET network topology. Their 52xx series terminals (usually connected to a System36 or System38 minicomputer) all used twinax cables. Early Ethernet did too IIRC.
 
Here's a '36' - sometimes called "the world's littlest dinosaur." It was about the size of a two drawer filing cabinet. It's preferred language was RPG-II - although you could also license COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC for it. Love that 8" floppy drive!

Problem:1 cable modem 150/20 mbps & 1 fiber line 5/5mbps how to distribute best   Problem:1 cable modem 150/20 mbps & 1 fiber line 5/5mbps how to distribute best

Ah...those were the days! (NOT!!!) ;D

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