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Forum Discussion
Slow Ethernet Connection between RBR 850, Mac, and Xfinity Gateway
I’m having an issue with a wired ethernet connection. Here’s the background… I have a Mac Mini M1 with a 1 Gbps ethernet port, a Netgear Orbi RBR850 router, and an Xfinity XB8 gateway with (3) 1Gbps...
I hope I didn't confuse you but the ethernet port in my Mac is indeed 1 gig. The 10 gig option came out quite a bit later.
I mentioned in my (admittedly long) note that I did connect the Mac directly to the 2.5 gig port in the gateway and got a 1 Gbps connection. That's understandable because of the limit of the port on the Mac.
The Orbi speed test generally comes back around 1350 Mbps down and 250 up.
Yeah, I've seen multiple reports of similar issues but everyone is pretty much scratching their heads like me. Thanks...
MontereyFred wrote:
I hope I didn't confuse you but the ethernet port in my Mac is indeed 1 gig. The 10 gig option came out quite a bit later.
Thanks. "My Bad" for searching the internet for Mac Mini M1 specs and believing what showed up.
I am totally confused by these reports about the 2.5G Ethernet port having "issues". For at least a decade, consumer routers have had a four-port Ethernet module. These modules are essentially Ethernet switches which learn which MAC addresses can be reached on each port. (Even inexpensive switches have the ability to remember thousands of MAC addresses.) So, when a packet arrives at one port and is addressed to a specific MAC address, the packet never leaves the switch module. It comes in one port and goes out another port. (This is one reason it is impossible to prevent devices connected to the same unmanaged switch from communicating with each other.) I have a suspicion that the way Netgear merged a 2.5G Ethernet port with three 1G Ethernet ports is not "entirely right".
What is actually going on is a total mystery.
My setup is a little different but this seems very similar to a problem I've been trying to sort out...