Why am I not reaching the maximum speed of my subscription in the speed tests?

Fiber7 has a nominal speed of respectively 1, 10 and 25 Gbit/s (gigabits per second). This does not necessarily mean 1000, 10000 and 25000 Mbit/sec (megabits per second), however. Under ideal conditions, the maximum possible speed is 940, 9400 and 23500 Mbit/sec (the Ethernet throughput limit).

    Equipment / Hardware

  • Required standards for Ethernet cables:
    1 Gbit/s: at least Cat 5e
    10 Gbit/s: at least Cat 6
    25 Gbit/s: at least Cat 8
  • Use weak routers or a switch as a router.
  • The firewall rules of the router/firewall block the speed.
  • Windows has firewall software activated by default, which slows things down massively.

    WLAN instead of LAN

  • The maximum speed cannot be reached via WLAN.
  • WLAN connection is often slower and more unstable than a LAN connection (cable).
  • Obstacles, distance to the router or interference (e.g. from neighbours) can greatly reduce performance.

    Utilisation in the home network

  • Other devices in the network (streaming, downloads, cloud backups) can consume bandwidth. These can also load unnoticed in the background.
  • ‘Intelligent’ devices such as smart TVs or voice assistants also consume bandwidth.

    Test server or daytime

  • In the evening (prime time), the network can be more heavily utilised - both by the provider (streaming service, gaming server, etc.) and the test server.
  • Speed tests depend on the selected test server. In this regard, we recommend that you select our speed test server (at Ookla) or run Iperf3 tests.

    Hybrid7 XGS-PON (P2MP)

  • With our Hybrid7 XGS-PON connection, a speed of 10Gbit/s cannot be guaranteed, as this line is shared with up to 32 subscribers by the network operator. For more information read our blog.