Do I need to replace the optical modem when telecom broadband is upgraded from 300M to Gigabit? After upgrading my home, I measured the speed to 330 Mbps. I took out three things and found out where the jam was.

At the end of last year, the optical modem at home was damaged by lightning. When I was replacing it with a new one, the installer asked casually.: Your broadband is 300M, right? Can you upgrade it to Gigabit? Add ten dollars. I heard it was ten yuan, or so. The chef said that the package would be effective on the same day. I thought that when I go back in the evening, I can download a movie ten times faster.

As a result, I took my mobile phone and tested it at night, and it was 330 MB. The same as before. My first reaction was that I had been cheated, and I was ready to call number 10,000. After digging around for three nights, I discovered that, The broadband has really been upgraded to Gigabit, and the lag is caused by three of my own things. ： The port where the optical modem is plugged in, the router, and a network cable left by the decorator ten years ago. This article clearly explains what should be checked before and after upgrading to gigabit, and in what order. If you follow it, it will save you two or three nights of fussing.

Identify the device first: Is your cat capable of receiving Gigabit?

Before upgrading to Gigabit, the first thing to do is not to make a phone call, but to watch the cat. The optical modems delivered by China Telecom are divided into several generations, and their ability to connect to Gigabit is far behind. The most direct view is to look at the silk screen next to the row of mesh ports on the back of the cat.: What is written as GE is a Gigabit port, and what is written as FE is a 100M port. GE stands for Gigabit Ethernet, and FE stands for Fast Ethernet. The names are quite bluffing. When translated into adult language, they are "Gigabit Ethernet" and "100 Mbit Port". The broadband is Gigabit, and the cable is plugged into the FE port. When I get home, it is cut to 100 Mbit/s. , no matter how awesome the router behind it is, it’s useless.

Silk screen printing is the fastest, but it is not entirely accurate - some machines have all four ports printed with GE. In fact, only network port 1 is a true Gigabit, and the rest are 100 Mbit/s. If you want to know how many megabytes each port has, go to the backstage and take a look.: Open browser 192.168.2.1 , use the ordinary account on the sticker to enter, you can see the negotiated speed of each LAN port on the "Status" or "Network" page. When the device is plugged in, it shows that the 100M port is 100M. Which generation of cats, how many Gigabit ports, how to confirm in the background, I am Difference between optical modem Gigabit port and 100M port I wrote the complete three recognition method in that article, so I won’t repeat it here.

There is another level that I want to talk about separately.: If your home is an old 3.0 batch of cats (mostly models such as HS8145V5 and F601), the PON port itself starts at Gigabit, which is fine, but the CPU forwarding capability is weak. When there are more devices in the evening peak, the Gigabit package can be forwarded by it to five or six hundred. Batch 4.0 (TEWA, F7015T new models, etc.) are machines that are equipped with gigabit broadband. What are the differences between two generations of machines? How do you identify which generation your family belongs to? Comparison between Tianyi Gateway 3.0 and 4.0 That article is broken down in detail. To upgrade the 3.0 modem to Gigabit, you can directly ask the master to "replace 4.0 equipment" in the work order. In most provinces, it is free of charge - don't worry about buying the modem yourself. The operator's modem registration and binding process will kill people if you do it yourself. The specific pitfalls I have stepped on are Plug the optical modem into another operator In that article.

second pass: Router, eight people are stuck here

The optical modem confirmed that there is no problem, and then checked the router. That's what got me stuck that night. The router at home is an AX1800 bought in 2021. It looks quite new and supports WiFi6, but Its WAN port is 100Mbps ——In order to keep costs down, many of the low-priced WiFi6 machines of that generation were designed for Gigabit wireless and 100M for wired ones. The Gigabit that came out of the optical modem was pinched as soon as it entered. It was not noticeable at 300M, but it immediately showed its original shape the same day it was upgraded to Gigabit.

Recognition is very simple: Search your model on JD.com or the official website, and look at the "WAN/LAN port speed" line on the parameter page. The one that says 1000M is a Gigabit port. Don’t just look at the product title. Machines with the title “Gigabit Router” have a lot of 100M WAN ports. “Gigabit” refers to the wireless speed. If it’s troublesome to check the parameters, just look at the router’s background status page.: If the WAN port in the system status shows 100M full-duplex and your broadband is Gigabit, that is it. I later changed to a machine with a 2.5G port, and easily changed the WAN port speed from "auto-negotiation" to 1000M full-duplex - some machines will automatically negotiate to 100M, and need to be manually nailed to ensure stability. I remember how to change it Gigabit port 100M port In the supplementary comment of that article, the operation is only three steps.

After making the changes and testing again, I reached 940 Mbit/s - which is basically the full speed of Gigabit broadband. Gigabit is 1000Mbps. After deducting the protocol overhead, it can actually run between 920 and 940. Don’t pursue full numbers. If it's over 900, consider it full. . If you still only have 300 or 400 megabits at this point, continue to look down at the third level.

The third pass: That forgotten network cable

I only took out the network cable on the third night. The wire from the weak current box to the study room was buried during the renovation ten years ago. I took apart the panel and saw that the crystal head was the old type 5 method, and there were two pairs of wire cores left that were not fully loaded. Category 5e is theoretically sufficient for Gigabit operation, but the old Category 5 cable core is thick and the crystal head is oxidized, so the negotiation will drop back to 100M. , there are a lot of these threads in old houses. Acting very shady: Some devices can reach Gigabit and some can only reach 100M. The performance of different ports plugged into the same router will be different.

Verify zero cost: Take a determined short network cable (just buy the Category 6 short cable that comes with the router), plug it directly into the computer's optical modem network port 1, and measure the speed. It can cost up to 900 if plugged directly, but only a few hundred if it goes through the wall. The pot is on the wire in the wall. If you find it troublesome to break the wall when changing lines, there are two ways: Use an open wire trough (ugly but cheap), or simply use a power modem/mesh relay to bypass this wire. Which one is suitable depends on your demand for speed and the difficulty of routing the wall. It depends on whether you choose Mesh or open wire at the beginning. It is an algorithm. You can refer to it. How to choose a whole-house networking solution Decision table for that article. The actual measurement of cutting three cables to compare the differences between Category 5e and Category 6 has been written specifically before. The unexplored details of the network cable are all in that article.

By the way: There is no need to be superstitious about Category 6 and Category 7 when it comes to network cables. For Gigabit broadband, Category 5e is enough. Replacing the whole house with Category 6 is to leave a margin for 10G. Ordinary families are over-invested. Don’t be led by the decoration team.

Make sure you have the right posture before taking the speed test, otherwise the test will be in vain

If you have passed the above three hurdles and are still not satisfied with the test, don’t be too quick to doubt your life. 90% of the time it’s because your speed test posture is wrong. Just a few rules: The computer is plugged into the network cable for testing, and the WiFi cannot measure Gigabit (WiFi6 negotiates 2800, and the actual measurement is 800 or 900, which is very high, and it is also strongly related to the distance) ； Before testing, turn off background downloads and network disk synchronization. ； Choose a working time after 10pm or during the day to avoid the evening rush hour ； Speedtest selects telecom nodes in this province and takes the middle value after three consecutive tests. The cable cap of 940 is the normal value. If it cannot reach this number, please check again. I have written an article about the complete speed test posture How to measure broadband speed accurately , if you follow this, you can avoid many detours.

One more thing to mention: The mobile phone speed test is 300 to 400, so don’t rush to change devices. The negotiated upper limit of mobile phone WiFi5 is 866, and the actual test is 400 to 500 which is its full health. ； If you want to use your mobile phone to access Gigabit WiFi 6, you will most likely have to stand in front of the router. This is the physical account of the mobile network card, not that the broadband is slow. The Gigabit speed test is only over 200 Mbit/s The list of stolen Internet speeds in that article lists all these mistakes.

Before upgrading to gigabit, think through these four things before spending money

After this round of tossing, I think back and realized that I should settle the accounts first before taking action on upgrading to gigabit. Let me list four things for you that I figured out after the fact.:

The fourth one is the most heartbreaking but the most true. Compared with 300M, Gigabit has almost no difference in the daily experience of watching videos, playing games, and video conferencing. There are only a few scenarios where Gigabit can be used up.: Going from the NAS to the intranet does not count (that is a matter of the intranet and has nothing to do with broadband). The only things that really consume the broadband are large file downloads, watching 4K on multiple devices at the same time, and live streaming by someone at home. If you are a family of three and each uses their own mobile phone at night, 300M is really enough. The money you save by buying a better router will actually improve your physical experience even more. How many trillions are enough to use the complete algorithm of this account? How many megabits does broadband install? That article is very detailed, so read it before spending any money.

In addition, two reminders for those who are preparing to upgrade. First, before upgrading the Fusion package to Gigabit, I need to ask clearly about the changes in the contract period. My ten dollars is tied to the two years of contract renewal. How can I change the package in a cost-effective way? How to change broadband package That article describes the whole process of my reduction from 169 to 129. You can read it first and then talk about it. Second, after Gigabit, many places will promote FTTR whole-house optical fiber. What that thing solves is room WiFi coverage, not speed. Upgrading to Gigabit is two different things. Think about it first. Do you want to join FTTR? Then pick up what the master said.

ending: Memorize a sequence

If you are not satisfied with the gigabit speed test, the troubleshooting order is always: Optical mode port→Router→Network cable→Speed ​​measurement posture , arranged layer by layer from the entrance to the outside, which layer is stuck should be repaired. I suffered from silk screen deception at the optical modem layer (all-printed GE is actually Gigabit), stepped on the 100M WAN thunder at the router layer, and was tricked by Category 5 for the third night at the network cable layer - passing through the three passes one by one, 90% of people don't need to make a repair call. The rest is really about light failure and circuit layer problems, which is another set of troubleshooting methods. The article about the decline of light Or go to the master directly.

By the way, don’t throw away the old optical modem you replaced. Not plugging in fiber optics and converting APs into switches, and adding cables to the desktop in the study, can squeeze out the value of gigabit broadband. I have gone through three pitfalls in renovation and recorded them all in the article about reusing old optical modem. Happy upgrading.