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Why we cannot get the bandwidth speed our ISP says we have?

Our company just got a bandwidth increase to 500mg.  Whenever we run a speed test, we can only get up to 200 mg up or down.  Now we are using  SG350X - 48 port Managed Cisco switches and a Cisco router, both support up to 1000mg.  We put both devices on auto-negotiate and ran a speed test, still got 200 up and down.  We set both to manual - 1000mg / full got the same speeds.  We plugged a laptop directly into the router and got the same speed.  If we plug the laptop directly into the dmarc, put the laptop in safe mode and run the speed test, we get at least 400 up and down, so our ISP says they are good.  We can't work like that as a company.  Does anyone have any idea, why we are unable to get the speeds.  Also we tested the laptop connected to the switch in safe mode with no success.

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Salonge
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65td
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Is  the 500 peak through put or guaranteed?
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Salonge

ASKER

You know that is a good question.  Let me check.  I tend to think it is guaranteed.  We have several sites across our state using the same ISP but with much lower speeds and when we increased those and ran the speed test the same way, we got those speeds right out of the gate, no running in safe mode, etc.
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Andrew Porter
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You should find out if the bandwidth is "shared" or "dedicated". Chances are this is a limitation of the ISP, not your setup.
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Salonge

ASKER

Just found out it was peak and not guaranteed.
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Salonge

ASKER

This is dedicated.  We are using fiber.
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Andrew Porter
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I'm a little confused. If it's dedicated, then peak should not apply (at least to the degree of degradation you are seeing).
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Timothy Estes
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What Cisco router are you using? The ISR 43xx and 44xx series have software limits that reduce throughput, artificially unless you purchase a higher license.
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Andrew Porter
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Keep in mind that your firewall can really limit your bandwidth as well, depending on what "services" are running on it. A quick test would be to plug directly into the ISP MUX and see what speeds you're getting there.
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Salonge

ASKER

We are using a Cisco 892 and when we plug into the MUX, we get speeds of at least 400 up and down.  
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Andrew Porter
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Yikes. You typically see 20 - 30 percent decrease in speeds through the firewall, so yours is very excessive.
Try disabling VFR and see what your throughput is.
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David Favor
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Only way to test is using an Ethernet cable to incoming modem... otherwise... you're only testing your internal WiFi speed + WiFi chip on computer running the test.
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Salonge

ASKER

We will disable the VFR and see if that changes anything.
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Craig Beck
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Cisco 892 won't get you anywhere near 500Mbps. 200Mbps is actually very good for that box.
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noci
mg?..  what kind of units is that?  besides a unit of weight (milli grams = 1/1000 par of a gram).
mb = millibit,  1/1000 of a bit...
Mb = Megabit
MB = Megabyte (8 times a Mb).
Then the difference is  between Peak or Sustained.. both can be guaranteed or best effort, or shared with N oversubscription.

Technology  is another  factor to consider, is the line DSL based, FIbre, other technology involved?
I see Fibre was used. That should be stable and be capable to provide the right speeds.

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Andrew Porter
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Disabling VFR should improve the speed substantially, but you're still not going to see anywhere near 500.
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Salonge

ASKER

I was mistaken, we use a Cisco 892FSP 
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Andrew Porter
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Same scenario still applies with disabling VFR.
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Salonge

ASKER

We are disabling VFR in the morning and we will see.  Thanks so much for all you help.  I will let you know if this works.
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Robert Retzer
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I do see you are using fiber, but is the firber on the demarc side? Or is it part of the infrastructure? if you are using cat 5e cables to connect to the desktops or have cat 5e jacks in the wall or if the infrastructure is using cat 5e cabling... then you will see a significant drop in speeds. 
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Craig Beck
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Cat5E supports gigabit. This isn't the issue.
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David Johnson, CD
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David Favor
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Visit https://speedtest.net + attach the image file produced.

This may give clues.

https://www.speedtest.net/result/11973990286 will be what you can post... which is the "results" link generated by each test.
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Salonge

ASKER

Thank you.  We are going to replace the router.
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