I need some help with a new router and network card

[wtfnub]

Hi, I’ve just been contacted by my ISP and they’ve told me that I’m being forced to upgrade from 900mbit down and 100mbit up, to 2 gig down and 2 gig up.

They are going to give me an eeromax 7 and an eero pro 6e for free, now thats all cool, but my pc only has gigabit ports, I did plan on building a new pc in the summer, I’m just recouping as xmas bankrupted me, anyway, the problem I face is that I now need a new network card that will support the new speed and I don’t know where to start with network cards as the last time I had to buy one was 20+ years ago.

So my question to the knowledgeable masses out there is in two parts, what would be a good network card that would handle these speeds, but remembering my pc is only pcie x3. Can someone point me to a good reliable network card and it has to be a good reliable one as I get triggered if my internet craps out which it basically never does, but my entire life is built around my network and any problems would stroke me out so does anyone have any good suggestions ? and my second question is below.

The eeromax 7 and the eero pro6e, I’ve never heard of them before and I have no idea if they are good or not, does anyone have experience with them and if so are they any good ?

I already have an Asus mesh setup of an Asus GT-AX 11000 ROG Rapture and a RT AC86U, they work perfect and I’ve never had a problem with them, but since it only has a 1gig wan port it’s not enough to keep and use with the new speeds, the GT AX11000 does have a 2.5 port, but it!s sadly not a wan port.

So can anyone answer those two questions, name a good 2gig+ network card as I’m getting upgraded next Friday and I need to get something before then and is the free routers they are giving me any good ?

Thanks for reading

 

[ColinTaylor]

They are going to give me an eeromax 7 and an eero pro 6e for free, now thats all cool, but my pc only has gigabit ports, I did plan on building a new pc in the summer, I’m just recouping as xmas bankrupted me, anyway, the problem I face is that I now need a new network card that will support the new speed and I don’t know where to start with network cards as the last time I had to buy one was 20+ years ago.

You don't need a new network card. The ports on the eero's are backward compatible with gigabit ethernet. Sure, you'll "only" be able to download at 1Gb to your PC but it'll still work.

The 2.5GbE port on the GT-AX11000 can be assigned to the LAN or the WAN, but you'll probably not need that if you use the eero's instead.

 

[wtfnub]

You don't need a new network card. The ports on the eero's are backward compatible with gigabit ethernet. Sure, you'll "only" be able to download at 1Gb to your PC but it'll still work.

Hi, thanks for replying.

Yes, I know the ethernet ports are backwards compatible, it’s just that I would like to take advantage of the new speeds and the only way I can do that is to get a new nic or wait until I can buy parts for a new pc and I don’t have the free cash to do that just now, sadly

I’m rocking a barely used, maybe 200 hour max built in 2015 i7 6700K with an m.2 ssd and some sata ssd’s and an rtx 3070ti that was bought a few years ago when they first came out and which has had like 5 hours of use.

My nuc gets more use than the pc, a completely silent intel i7 8559u with not one, not two but 18 hard drives connected to it just to see how stupid I could be, all powered via powered usb hubs or their own power supply. I use my phone or ipad to control it and ok the nuc is old now, but it’s a little beast of a thing and it never goes above 40oC which amazes me since it has no fan after I stuck it in to an akasa turin case.

Since you mentioned the eero, do you know if they are any good ? As I have no clue about that brand at all.

Thanks

 

[degrub]

if you decide to add a 2.5 or 10Gbit nic to the 6700k, make sure it comes with win7 drivers or linux drivers.. W10 drivers should not be an issue.
i run the same chip and have a hard time saturating a 1 gbit link except during testing with iperf.

 

[degrub]

Hi, thanks for replying.

Yes, I know the ethernet ports are backwards compatible, it’s just that I would like to take advantage of the new speeds and the only way I can do that is to get a new nic or wait until I can buy parts for a new pc and I don’t have the free cash to do that just now, sadly

I’m rocking a barely used, maybe 200 hour max built in 2015 i7 6700K with an m.2 ssd and some sata ssd’s and an rtx 3070ti that was bought a few years ago when they first came out and which has had like 5 hours of use.

My nuc gets more use than the pc, a completely silent intel i7 8559u with not one, not two but 18 hard drives connected to it just to see how stupid I could be, all powered via powered usb hubs or their own power supply. I use my phone or ipad to control it and ok the nuc is old now, but it’s a little beast of a thing and it never goes above 40oC which amazes me since it has no fan after I stuck it in to an akasa turin case.

Since you mentioned the eero, do you know if they are any good ? As I have no clue about that brand at all.

Thanks

Eeros are fine. They are intended for minimal config for consumers - e.g. they either work as is or don't .

Anything above 1 Gbit/s link is either required by local LAN connection usage ( video editing for example ) or for G.A.S. reasons. The usage described would not get close to saturating a 1 Gb/s link. And having higher LAN speeds won't affect your internet experience significantly. Most internet servers limit bandwidth to a client in the range of 100 Mbit/s anyway. So no point.

 

[wtfnub]

Eeros are fine. They are intended for minimal config for consumers - e.g. they either work as is or don't .

Anything above 1 Gbit/s link is either required by local LAN connection usage ( video editing for example ) or for G.A.S. reasons. The usage described would not get close to saturating a 1 Gb/s link. And having higher LAN speeds won't affect your internet experience significantly. Most internet servers limit bandwidth to a client in the range of 100 Mbit/s anyway. So no point.

Yeah the usage for that pc wouldn’t be nowhere near saturating the 1 gig link, but my real usage is done on my nuc, hence the 18 hard drives, ok most are smaller 2 gig ssd’s, but theres a good few 8 - 16TB hdd’s in there as I like usenet and I already hit just over a solid stable 115MBs down on my 1 gig line and thats more or less a maxed out 1g line with just a few more megabytes, and some things are over 80 gig in size, so the faster the better if you know what I mean.

Yeah its not often that I have come across a website that actually has the bandwidth that can more or less max out my line speed, it does happen but not that often that I can remember about it.

I think I will just get new pc parts, so that it’s 2+ gig all the way, as it was going to happen at some point and bandwidth is just getting higher and higher due to everything that a normal house has connected to the internet nowadays and I needed a new pc as even though it’s old but basically brand new since it was barely used, it does need updating.

It’s good to know that the eeros are ok though, as I really have no idea about them. Cheers

 

[wtfnub]

You don't need a new network card. The ports on the eero's are backward compatible with gigabit ethernet. Sure, you'll "only" be able to download at 1Gb to your PC but it'll still work.

The 2.5GbE port on the GT-AX11000 can be assigned to the LAN or the WAN, but you'll probably not need that if you use the eero's instead.

The later editions can assign the 2.5g port to wan or lan, mine is the first model of it which I think only allows it to be used as a lan port as everytime I tried sticking the ethernet cable coming from the fibre modem in to that port, I could never ever get an internet connection, but if I could it would be great as I would then not need to break up my asus mesh which works like magic and I really cannot afford that to fail and the eeros to be crap, as my security system runs off my mesh and that is crucial.

If you know where it says or instructions on how to get it to work in 2.5g mode as a wan port, please let me know as that would be great.

Thanks

 

[ColinTaylor]

If you know where it says or instructions on how to get it to work in 2.5g mode as a wan port, please let me know as that would be great.

On my RT-AX86U I would go to WAN - Dual WAN and set Primary WAN = 2.5G WAN. (N.B. Do not enable Dual WAN.)

 

[wtfnub]

On my RT-AX86U I would go to WAN - Dual WAN and set Primary WAN = 2.5G WAN. (N.B. Do not enable Dual WAN.)

Bro, what a star you are, I just looked in my ax 11000 rapture as the 86U is wifi only and is too far to run an ethernet cable to, I didn’t even bother to look in there as I presumed it was just for failover and needed an external dual rj45 socket that both lines plugged in to and then it plugged in to the single wan socket. And then when one line goes down the external adapter detects it and the other line starts working automatically, but only through the one wan port.

Cheers dude, much appreciated, lets just hope it works, as I’m not sure if i tried this before, dont think i did but lets see, I will try later today as I’m not physically there, I remoted in, so I will try later tonight

 

[Digilog]

I didn’t even bother to look in there as I presumed it was just for failover and needed an external dual rj45 socket that both lines plugged in to and then it plugged in to the single wan socket.

even with both ports configured,when you just plug into the secondary only, it works, failover just puts them in an order of trying which one first. The fallback option box just enables switching back to the primary. I did look at the manual and it does have this dual wan feature on your 11000AX

 

[wtfnub]

Yeah it has the options to do this, I was going to see if I could get it working last night but couldn’t be bothered once I got home, but I’m going to do it today instead, so all I need to do is set primary wan to 2.5g but do not enable dual wan, as that brings up different option, so i just need to set 2.5g as primary wan whilst leaving the dual wan switched disabled.

I also bought a 10gbe ethernet card, so when the eeros arrive which has 10g ethernet ports that will help as I’m on fibre 1g line down and 115Mbps up, with BT Openreach system, but that fibre is not likely to get any faster, however, the new fibre I’m getting is 10g capable, but they don’t sell the 10g packages to homes, only to businesses, so at least as time goes on that 2g up and down, it will eventually become 10g

 

[Digilog]

I also bought a 10gbe ethernet card, so when the eeros arrive which has 10g ethernet ports that will help as I’m on fibre 1g line down and 115Mbps up, with BT Openreach system, but that fibre is not likely to get any faster, however, the new fibre I’m getting is 10g capable, but they don’t sell the 10g packages to homes, only to businesses, so at least as time goes on that 2g up and down, it will eventually become 10g

It seems the computer market has been milking all the sub 10G technology for quite a while. I been waiting for the past decade on updating my access point because my cheap wifi-4 access point still does the job even though its a 1Gb. The US in a lot of areas should have 10Gb service, just that some like in my area built up the network, then sell off the corporation then this 10Gb system gets sold to commercial only provider.

10Gb network is nice if you do a lot of file transfers or run an active directory. With internet service,the ping value being low is much more valuable than large bandwidth and there is trade offs between these two in networking. So when I look at internet speed,I kind of ignore its bandwidth and focus on what results I get in ping.

 

[wtfnub]

It seems the computer market has been milking all the sub 10G technology for quite a while. I been waiting for the past decade on updating my access point because my cheap wifi-4 access point still does the job even though its a 1Gb. The US in a lot of areas should have 10Gb service, just that some like in my area built up the network, then sell off the corporation then this 10Gb system gets sold to commercial only provider.

10Gb network is nice if you do a lot of file transfers or run an active directory. With internet service,the ping value being low is much more valuable than large bandwidth and there is trade offs between these two in networking. So when I look at internet speed,I kind of ignore its bandwidth and focus on what results I get in ping.

Yeah, 10g has been in my area for years, I have 10g line right outside my garden, which is going to be dug up, but no residential isp has offered it yet, it will happen though, it’s just a matter of time, I could of got 2g up and down a while back, but at that time they were charging installation fees, selling the router and modem and wanted a load of cash each month, but I already had the 1g down and 115mbps up, so there was no incentive, but now it’s all free and I’m paying exactly the same as I pay for this fibre connection, so why not take it if they are forcing it on me.

Pretty crap that both of us can’t get 10g for the same reason though, as its being kept for businesses.

I used to game a lot back in the day and low ping was like gold, buy my buddies were in america and playing americas army or battlefield 2 or 3, I always got ping of 110-120 or 300 lol because of distance and the fact it was adsl vdsl etc.

I don’t game now, so ping isn’t top of my list now, but as long as it is below 30 and stable I’m happy. My main goal now is throughput and the faster the better as I do a lot of downloading and uploading, I have a plex server and also a file server which is open to my buddies, so the upgrade in up speeds will be a great boost as I have 115Mbps up now and next week it will be 2000mbps up and down.

The 10g card I bought is just for future proofing really, the nic cards are what they are, as long as you have an internet connection they are completely forgotten about.

Cheers