Hawaiian Tele Gigabit Fiber

[AinaAKai]

So I signed up for Hawaiin Telecom and paid for the gigabit fiber. However, I was only able to download at a max 660MB. I spoke to the technician, and he said the island just isn't capable of supporting gigabit speeds. Is anyone paying for gigabit fiber from Hawaii Telecom and actually gettiing the full speed? I downgraded to the 750MB plan, but still only get 660MB downloads and speed tests. My house is pre-wired with Cat 5E. I am also connected with a desktop PC with gigabit network adapter plugged directly into my router - so no wifi involved.

[kalakoa]

Sometimes you have to be happy it works that well at all. Seriously, island in the middle of the Pacific and all that.

[terracore]

I had their gigabit speed when they first offered it during their cheap trial period. I did get gigabit speeds but I had to upgrade my ethernet cable. I upgraded to Cat 7 because that was the best available at the time.

Is it possible your house is wired with Cat 5 instead of Cat 5E?

FWIW, most of the websites I connected to weren't any faster on gigabit than they are on 300. I have some downloaders that could open up 6 or more separate connections and pull stuff in really fast but the average web sites aren't any faster. Average users would need a lot of users in the house for it not to be a waste of money.

[AaronS]

25% of the Mainland to Hawaii bandwidth lands up in Kawaihae via South Cross Cables. This is the same landing area for
various inter-island submarine fiber-optic cables. In short, I don't know where that tech got his information from?

The maximum speed available on the gigabit service is 940Mbps by the way.

My brother upgraded to the gigabit service tier. He couldn't get gigabit speeds, but it turned out there was faulty line cards
at the OLT. He downgraded to a slower speed because they couldn't get this issue resolved in a timely manner.

[terracore]

I forgot to mention, the max run of a 5E cable for gigabit speeds is 328 feet. It's possible your cable run might exceed that as you said the house was "wired" with it. You should try a high quality cable with the shortest distance to the router as possible.

['elepaio]

As aways Mr. Terracore.

Salamat for real world useful advice.
aloha,
'e

[kalakoa]

GigE will negotiate down to 100M (and then 10M) if the wiring is bad enough. No fractional speeds like 600M.

Any reasonable deice will be able to report the link speed.

[leilanidude]

What is the router brand and model? Does it even support gigabit speeds?

Other than that, why do you think that speed is needed? I have had the 500x500 plan for the last couple of years. Nothing is ever "slow" even with about a dozen cameras around the property sending data up to the cloud, constantly. I think they no longer offer the 500x500 and now it is 500x300 for new signups, which is still plenty.

Also, does your laptop/desktop even support gigabit speeds?

[AinaAKai]

I forgot to mention, the max run of a 5E cable for gigabit speeds is 328 feet.  It's possible your cable run might exceed that as you said the house was "wired" with it.  You should try a high quality cable with the shortest distance to the router as possible.

Well... It actually is brand new CAT 6 on the long run from the fiber modem (which is in my garage) to the patch panel under my house. It goes kind of deep underground through conduit.

The house is then wired with 5E to all the phone jacks. Then, the patch cable is CAT 6 again.

I suppose there could be some translation issue between the CAT 6 and 5E. I can't remember the exact length of the total run, but it should be well under 100M. 

The speed I get is a very consistent 660MB + or - 15MB or so on speedtest.net.

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What is the router brand and model? Does it even support gigabit speeds?

Other than that, why do you think that speed is needed? I have had the 500x500 plan for the last couple of years. Nothing is ever "slow" even with about a dozen cameras around the property sending data up to the cloud, constantly. I think they no longer offer the 500x500 and now it is 500x300 for new signups, which is still plenty.

Also, does your laptop/desktop even support gigabit speeds?

Yes. The motherboard has two gigabit ports 2.5GB Realtec and 1GB Intel) and my router is a Deco X20 which has a gigabit port and it connects on either NIC at full 1000Mbps. No speed difference on either. I would rather get the gigabit because with that I get a full 300Mbps uplink, but I don't want to pay more (than the 750 package) when the fastest downlink I can get is in the mid-high 600's.

I realize that I won't really see that big of a difference in most things but the cost is so minimal between the two options that I would prefer the best offering. Plus it is frustrating that there is something wrong causing me to have a slower speed.

For the past 10 years I was using a 4G-LTE router and getting like 40-60Mbps and 70ms pings and then, within 3 months, both TMobile home Internet and Hawaiian Tele GB were both available.  The TMobile was a big upgrade from 4G-LTE by the way if you can get it. All my downloads were in the 160Mbps range where I live. As soon as fiber was available I jumped on it. It probably added $50k value to my house.

[kalakoa]

GB link speed doesn't imply the ability to forward packets at a 1GB rate. I note that TP-Link doesn't make any claims as to packet forwarding throughput. UBNT EdgeRouter4 can pass 4G/s (if you can find one).

Telcom will probably tell you that your router isn't fast enough; if you connect directly to the fiber, they'll claim that you won't see full throughput unless you have a "four-processor system", but at least it's closer to a real measurement.

Inter-building links are best run with fiber. Amazon has all the pieces. Duplex mini-LC will pass a 3/4 conduit.