, 2 min read

Surfing the internet with 1 GBit/s

Original post is here eklausmeier.goip.de/blog/2020/03-04-surfing-the-internet-with-1-gbit-s.


Adding 30 Cents to my monthly bills bought me Gigabit internet access. I now pay 39.99 EUR per month. Previously I had 100 MBit/s. From user's experience I do not feel any significant difference. Of course, for all my mobile devices, like smartphones, laptop, there is and will be no difference as Wi-Fi does not really offer high transmission rates, unless you are very close to the emitting antennas.

Speed measured by speedtest.unitymedia.de.

I get similar results using [`speedtest`](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/speedtest-cli/).
$ speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Unitymedia (84.118.51.115)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by 31173 Services AB (Frankfurt) [16.81 km]: 23.853 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 861.51 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 52.37 Mbit/s
$ speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Unitymedia (84.118.51.115)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Gemnet LLC (Frankfurt) [16.81 km]: 22.342 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 744.24 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 52.00 Mbit/s

I assume that the contacted servers itself or the routes to these servers have bandwidth restrictions. Google also provides a speedtest: google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=speedtest. Results are as below:

Measuring downstream channels as given by cable modem:

Channel Channel	MHz     Modul-	dBmV/dBµV	SNR/MER Lock
Id      Type	     	ation	        	dB    	Status
0       OFDM	0~0     ---     0.0/60.0	 0.0    NO
32      OFDM	775~860 256QAM  2.5/62.5	35.0	YES
1       SC-QAM	546     256QAM	7.0/67.0	39.0	YES
2       SC-QAM	554     256QAM	7.1/67.1	38.6	YES
3       SC-QAM	562     256QAM	7.2/67.2	39.0	YES
4       SC-QAM	570     256QAM	7.3/67.3	38.6	YES
5       SC-QAM	578     256QAM	7.3/67.3	38.6	YES
6       SC-QAM	586     256QAM	7.3/67.3	39.0	YES
7       SC-QAM	594     256QAM	7.2/67.2	39.0	YES
8       SC-QAM	602     256QAM	7.4/67.4	39.0	YES
9       SC-QAM	618     256QAM	7.2/67.2	38.6	YES
10      SC-QAM	626     256QAM	7.4/67.4	38.6	YES
11      SC-QAM	634     256QAM	7.4/67.4	39.0	YES
12      SC-QAM	642     256QAM	7.5/67.5	39.0	YES
13      SC-QAM	650     256QAM	7.3/67.3	39.0	YES
14      SC-QAM	658     256QAM	6.7/66.7	38.6	YES
15      SC-QAM	666     256QAM	6.3/66.3	38.6	YES
16      SC-QAM	674     256QAM	5.7/65.7	37.6	YES
17      SC-QAM	682     256QAM	5.2/65.2	37.6	YES
18      SC-QAM	690     256QAM	5.6/65.6	37.6	YES
19      SC-QAM	698     256QAM	5.6/65.6	37.6	YES
20      SC-QAM	706     256QAM	5.8/65.8	37.6	YES
21      SC-QAM	746     256QAM	6.1/66.1	37.6	YES
22      SC-QAM	754     256QAM	6.2/66.2	37.6	YES
23      SC-QAM	762     256QAM	5.9/65.9	37.6	YES
24      SC-QAM	770     256QAM	6.0/66.0	37.4	YES

Measuring upstream channels:

Ch	Chan	MHz	Modul-	dBmV/dBµV	Ranging
Id	Type		ation	       		Status
32	SC-QAM	37	8QAM	45.0/105.0	SUCCESS
35	SC-QAM	58	8QAM	45.3/105.3	SUCCESS
34	SC-QAM	52	8QAM	44.3/104.3	SUCCESS
33	SC-QAM	45	8QAM	43.5/103.5	SUCCESS
31	SC-QAM	31	8QAM	44.3/104.3	SUCCESS

Previously I used an Odroid as a central IP router. This is no longer a good option as the Odroid with USB-Ethernet interface can get 200 MBit/s at best. So I connect my LAN cable based PCs directly to the cable modem.

The subjective feeling that "the whole internet" is not faster than before, is exemplified by the usual pacman -Syu, i.e., the regular update. So many servers I contact do not provide the speed which I could handle.

 icu-65.1-3-x86_64                  10.3 MiB  12.1 MiB/s 00:01 [#######################################] 100%
 libseccomp-2.4.2-1-x86_64          99.5 KiB  24.3 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 man-db-2.9.1-1-x86_64            1018.1 KiB  11.6 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 pciutils-3.6.4-1-x86_64            97.4 KiB  23.8 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 freetype2-2.10.1-2-x86_64         490.3 KiB  8.55 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 xcb-proto-1.14-1-any              108.9 KiB  26.6 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 libxcb-1.14-1-x86_64              999.8 KiB  8.14 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 imagemagick-7.0.9.27-1-x86_64       2.5 MiB  8.55 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 cups-filters-1.27.2-1-x86_64      865.9 KiB  9.00 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 gtk-doc-1.32+37+gefc3644-1-any    294.9 KiB  12.5 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 wayland-protocols-1.20-1-any       61.9 KiB  20.2 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 libnotify-0.7.9-1-x86_64           50.1 KiB  0.00   B/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 libgdata-0.17.12-1-x86_64         853.2 KiB  9.26 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 libgphoto2-2.5.24-1-x86_64       1297.3 KiB  8.86 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%
 libreoffice-fresh-6.4.1-1-x86_64  127.5 MiB  4.27 MiB/s 00:30 [#######################################] 100%
 libreoffice-fresh-de-6.4.1-1-any    3.2 MiB  3.05 MiB/s 00:01 [#######################################] 100%
 meson-0.53.2-1-any                976.7 KiB  2.45 MiB/s 00:00 [#######################################] 100%