Ready for GIG Speed Internet? Here are some tips for the best experience.

High speed internet is probably the most important utility in a household today. In fact, it has become the de facto reason when considering a premise to move in. Some people are even considering places where they can get 1 Gbps internet. Having the fast speed is one thing, but maximizing the experience is another. Allow me to share some tips here as I just had a friend who was clueless about his 1 Gbps internet.

Ensure fibre cables are not bent

Fibre cables transmit light through it to provide signals from one end to the other. Hence, it becomes a rule of thumb that these cables are not bent or folded at any part of the fibre optic because this will heavily jeopardize the outcome of the experience. When a fibre optic is bent even at a single point, it will create heavy refraction effects, bouncing the signal in all directions and creating the effect of a “clogged artery”. This subsequently results in significant drop in speed. If you think that your connection speed might be affected by something like this, you should give your ISP a call for advice.

Use a Gigabit Ethernet capable router

If you are using 1 Gbps internet, the router becomes more essential than ever. Just having 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard on your router does not solve the problem. That would only improve the local Wi-Fi interconnection woes. To ensure your 1 Gbps internet is not hindered, make sure the WAN feature on your router specifies 10/100/1000 BaseT or at least mentions “Gigabit Ethernet WAN”. If it only shows 10/100, it is NOT a Gigabit Ethernet router. This is the most basic feature that you can lookout for in a router.

If you want our guaranteed excellent experience, invest in what I call the “mother of all routers”, the ASUS RT-AC5300 because this is the router that we ourselves use, is tried and tested. Invest one time in a very good router and you will not regret it, especially if you are using 1 Gbps.

Use a CAT 5e RJ45 LAN cable or better

This is the most unknown factor among most home networks. The LAN cable that you are using does have different ratings. If you are using 100 Mbps internet, CAT 5 should be just fine for you, but at 1 Gbps, this will affect the experience drastically. There are plenty of factors involved including attenuation, resistance, composition (24AWG vs 23AWG) and POE factor, but we are not going to dive into it in detail here.

What you need is at least a CAT 5e rating cable, or, CAT 6 which is even better. You can find the rating imprinted on the cable itself for easy identification. If you are given an option between Copper Clad Aluminium (CCA) or Bare Copper (often called PCC or Pure Copper Cable), go with the Bare Copper as it has lesser attenuation resulting in better performance. In fact, CCA cables violate the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards for CAT 5e and CAT 6 cables, so you should avoid them altogether.

Cut away and manage any additional data blocking layers

Unless you really have to, avoid using VPN or Proxy servers to ensure the best 1 Gbps experience. VPN tunneling and Proxy servers add another dependency layer in between your internet and the host. Because the packet data travel distance increases, the internet speed will be affected too.

If you really have to use VPN or Proxy Servers for managed access and authentication, you should then manage your firewall rules as accurately as possible and ensure that the packet data flow is uninterrupted. Otherwise, avoid using them altogether.

Some anti-viruses also add a layer of traffic monitoring in between your PC and the connection. As these anti-viruses vet every data packet that passes through your PC, it becomes impossible to deliver maximum speed. Consider studying your anti-virus software and only use reliable ones.

Use 5GHz over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band

Last year, we wrote about the history of the IEEE 802.11 and the advantages and disadvantages of the 5 GHz network band. While we weren’t able to stretch our internet at that time due to the limitations of the WAN, at 1 Gbps, this becomes ever more relevant.

In theory, under the most ideal conditions, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi supports up to 450 Mbps – 600 Mbps while 5 GHz Wi-Fi supports up to 1300 Mbps throughput (considering an 802.11ac router since we are talking about nothing less than that at 1 Gbps). When your local band can’t even support 1 Gbps natively, it will bottleneck the outcome of the internet speed. If your router does not have dual band wireless network, you are using the wrong router already.

On top of that, you can use applications like Wi-Fi Analyzer to identify which channel is being used by other neighboring Wi-Fi signals, and opt to use a different one instead for reduced interference and improved 1Gbps overall speed.

Kudos to TIME for bringing 1 Gbps in Malaysia

A little shout out to our friends at TIME Internet on their recent launch of GIG speed internet. Yes, a 1 Gbps home broadband plan has finally landed in Malaysia and you can get your hands on it for only RM199 per month. If you want something easier on your pocket, TIME also delivers the best value 100 Mbps plan in the market – RM99 per month. Fancy something in between? You can opt for the 500 Mbps plan for RM139 per month. Sign up online at www.time.com.my. Not only is the process quick and easy, you get RM100 off your first bill on top of the already great prices.