Preface: I already trawled through the FAQ, and I didn't find anything that could help me. I've already tried to do my own research, and it has not been fruitful. I am not a home network enthusiast, I just need my PC to make use of the full plan we are paying for.
Background:
My internet plan is meant to provide 1000Mbps. It is fibre optic.
My area has had some pretty bad power outages recently, my PC and my brother's PC were caught a few times. I noticed that my indicator lights on my PC would go to yellow blinking and solid orange, indicating that the connection is slow, but just re-plugging the cable PC side seemed to restore speeds. However, the situation evolved. Now no matter how many driver reinstalls, network and dns flushes, and re-plugging, Windows is still reporting a speed of 100Mbps. Tested with Ookla (sorry I don't have actual gear but again I'm not a home network enthusiast), tested under load, tried the Cloudflare speed tester. I even replaced my cable, and still the same results. Went into device manager, set it to duplex/1 Gigabit, and still nothing. Strange thing, my brother's PC is receiving the max speed of our actual internet plan.
I thought my PC was cooked, and then I took it to the shop to make use of my motherboard's warranty. They plugged in their ethernet cable… and I was reporting 200Mbps. Indicator lights were green. Research tells me that for anything above 100Mbps I need to have an 8 pair connection, so my very new Cat6e cable should be okay for a Gigabit connection.
Am open to answering questions best I can, but I genuinely don't know much. Is the problem my PC, my ISP, or my router? Can an ISP individually control what speeds come out of what port? If it helps, our router has 4 ethernet ports, and no matter where I plug my cable in I get 100Mbps, and no matter where my brother plugs his cable in he pulls our max speed.
Thanks!
Source: r/HomeNetworking · by /u/thesecretsquiggler