Topic: Problem with Nintendo Switch 2 internet connections on Gigabit plan

Good evening. Hi everyone, first post here. I am having a problem with my internet in general and we are troubleshooting some devices and slow speed. I am having issues with my Switch 2 on wireless and wired. I have a WiFi 7 Gigabit plan. My provider is Spectrum and they have been working on vabirous issues for over a month. This is to address the Switch 2. They tested the ethernet cable coming into the Switch 2 and it is sending over 1 GBPS of signal. The cable is new and the information is definitely coming. However my Ethernet connection has never tested over 300 Mbps. My PC wired on the same router gets about 930Mbps. I am connected via 5G WiFi and have never achieved over 250 Mbps even in the same room as the router. The router is capableI have seen numbers online for wired and wireless much higher, from the 400s into the 800s. I asjusted MTU, IPV6, etc. according to what I have read. I also realize that I don't necessarily NEED much higher speeds but if I am capable of it we are trying to find out why. I spoke with Nintendo and since they outsourced their customer service in the past few months they are no help and they could not understand what I was asking. I even wanted to rule out a hardware problem so I was able to hook a different Switch 2 system up to my setup and got the same numbers. Spectrum said they had no suggestions but if anyone on here could help I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

@figureguy
That's normal. Switch tapped out around 35-50 Mbps. Switch 2 is about 10x that. But you're never going to see the same speeds as if running a test on your PC or phone.

My NSW2 has internet with same speed as yours, ethernet connected, and caps around the same as yours.

Thanks for replying. I usally got about 33 or so on my Switch 1. I had a couple of screenshots I wanted to add of higher speeds I found online for the Switch 2 and a reddit post that referenced higher numbers but I don't see where I can add a link. I tried to find my answers myself but were stumped when I saw the information I found.

I do wonder whether the speed test on the Switch 2 is the best measure of actual bandwidth. Because when I look at bandwidth usage on my Switch 2 while downloading stuff I can see it's using ~540Mbps (I'm on a 500Mbps plan). But I'm pretty sure I don't see those speeds on their speedtest

Edit: At home and tested it. So yeah, the network tester I get 190Mbps on gigabit ethernet wired direct to the router. But actually downloading games I get 540Mbps. I wouldn't worry about it, the test isn't a proper reflection of actual performance

@skywake Thank you for responding. Just curious, how do you see what you are using for bandwidth to see while downloading?

@figureguy
My router (Ubiquiti UGC Ultra) allows me to monitor which devices and applications are using bandwidth. Amongst the list of other fun dials and gizmos. Entirely unnecessary but useful for stuff like this I guess

That's weird, I have a similar setup (ethernet cable connected to the router) and I did the Switch 2 internal test a couple of days ago, and the result was around 580Mbps, which seems valid since we have 600Mbps internet plan. IIRC the Switch 1's internal test always showed the download numbers to be much lower than our actual plan, but with the Switch 2 it seems to be accurate.

It's still a puzzle for me. I am working with the local Spectrum field supervisor but we have found no issues with the speed we can address. On the Gig plan I got 300 wired yesterday again which seems to be about the average of the highest.

Your Cables from ISP to your Router/Switch has to be gigbit cable verified and your wiring must support gigabit lines to verify all is going gigabit. So what kinda of ISP do you have? Only way is Fiber that can support Gigabit but then the hardware and cables must support Gigabit transfer to insure everything is playing on the same page.

@larausjarod thanks for responding. I did have Spectrum over here looking at the lines. They actually took the cord from the back of the switch 2 and put that into one of their readers. It is 1 GB coming through the ethernet line to the switch 2. I also have the same type of cable coming from the same router to my desktop and the 1 GB cable produces a speed averaging 930 Mbps. So we know the lines themselves are transferring the speed but something gets lost when I plug the cord into the switch 2.

If you're on a WiFi7 then unless your router has a 2.5gb (The switch 2 doesn't though) Ethernet then the wireless will be faster than the wired unless you're miles away from it and need the wired? You will be better off (as everyone should) reserving the IP address for your Switch 2 and putting that IP in the DMZ.

I'm assuming your Broadband is both up and down 1000/1000mbps? and not 500/500mbps?
While the wired connection is less susceptible to interference you might find that with some decent MTU tweaking and even SSID isolation you might find your experience better overall especially with the Nintendo Switch cap. Also by setting up the WiFi reserved IP and DMZ correctly on the occasions you remove it from the dock your connection isn't interrupted or changed going from wired to wireless change of IP.

@StarLord87 I am on Wifi7 and the router is a 1 gb. The S2 speeds from one room away are about 300 wired and 200 wifi. Yes up down 1000. I do never remove the system from the dock as I only play on the TV. I am not at all familiar with reserving IPs or how the DMZ works. My technical knowledge for internet is not that deep, unfortuntaly. We did have Spectrum here yesterday and they again confirmed the eternet going into the S2 is at 1000 with their meters but once we plug it into the dock's lan port it drops. Thank you for responding.

@figureguy happy to look up the settings for you but I'm UK based so our routers are slightly different so I can show you a generic one that should guide you through it.

My thinking is that even though you're on wifi7 the ssid is broadcasting with all frequency forcing one ssid to 5ghz mode. I have three vlan ssid's and one of them just does the gaming network and doesn't broadcast in anything other than 5ghz for maximum speed but the range is massively reduced.

With some tinkering we can drastically improve things.

Woof. My internet plan is 150mbps lol

Not sure what else to say, that's what I measure. My setup is a Cat6 cable through the walls into a 2.5Gbps network switch which then connects to a Gigabit network port on my router. Then a ~550/50Mbps internet connection. When I run the internal speedtest on the Switch 2 it regularly gives me ~200Mbps but if I actually download a game I can see it's running at the full speed. Which I can verify by looking at the bandwidth the Switch 2 is taking in my UniFi dashboard while it's downloading.... but also because, naturally, games take less time to download than they should if it was only going at ~200Mbps

Also testing just now on my Switch OLED since I haven't actually downloaded anything on it since I got upgraded to a 500Mbps connection. The download test on the Switch OLED is ~45Mbps but an actual download is ~150Mbps. Again, this is also wired in the same way as the Switch 2 was, just a different port in the network switch. Obviously an improvement on both counts, but in both cases the internet speed tester is not a good measure of actual performance

In any case, what OP is seeing seems to be pretty normal and doesn't really mean much. Because the actual game downloads are much faster than the speed test

I think we can be pretty confident that the OP is using cables that can handle a Gigabit connection. Gigabit requires 4 pairs of Cat5 for 100m, Fast Ethernet requires two pairs of Cat5 for the same. Note, Cat5 not Cat5e. Cat4 is for phones, not networking, so no. So really the only way a cable will drop down to 100Mbps is if some of the pairs aren't connected or if one of the components in the chain can only do 100Mbps

And in any case, OP is talking about getting results in the 200-300Mbps range. Which is, obviously, more than 100Mbps. Physical network speed for standard network cables go 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps, 10Gbps. Given the Switch 2 dock has a 1Gbps adapter really the only physical link speeds you can expect are 100Mbps if the cable is physically damaged or 1Gbps if it's operating normally. Those are your options

edit: Pro-tip, if anyone is selling you "fast network cables" for your internet and your internet connection is anything less than..... 5Gbps. They're conning you. By all means, buy nice network cables if you want them to look nice out of the walls or more durable. Buy Cat6 for your walls if you think some day you might want 10Gbps. But don't waste your money on network cables in an effort to "improve speed". Assuming it's not physically damaged the one that comes in the box is perfectly fine

@StarLord87 I would really appreciate any help I can get with this. Thank you for offering to see if we can make it better.

@skywake I am actually using Cat 8 that can transfer 40 Gbps. I have a 50 ft. cable but I have also tested it using a 2 foot cable from the router that I usually have th desktop on that gets 930 mbps. Plus thanks to Spectrum we know the cables are carrying the 1 gig through to the S2 when the cable went into their meter but something gets lost in the connection once it gets put into the dock.

@figureguy
Find a game in your collection, figure out how big it is, delete the game. Get out a timer and time how long it takes to redownload it (download, the first step, not install). If it's actually downloading at ~250Mbps Mario Kart World would take 11mins to download. I expect it will be done quicker

You're welcome

edit: oh, no, no, no.... anything more than Cat6 is a waste of money unless you really know you need it. And if you're asking you most definitely don't need it. Cat8 was for 40GBASE-T and 25GBASE-T, both were experimental and I'm not sure it was ever actually produced. The industry adopted fibre for those speeds

Short computer nerd network infrastructure lesson:
10Mbps -> obsolete, fallback, will never happen unless something's really wrong
100Mbps -> Cat5 with half of the pairs missing
1Gbps -> Cat5 for lengths upto 100m (can push further, but the standard defines a minimum length)
2.5 & 5Gbps -> Cat5e for lengths up to 100m
10Gbps -> Cat6 upto 55m, Cat6A upto 100m
25Gbps+ -> Fibre or Direct Attach copper, nobody uses twisted pair

Basically, if you're just patching stuff short distances basically any cable will do. If you're running through the walls for perminant stuff go with Cat6 if the runs are less than 55m (i.e. most houses) or Cat6A if you're in a more commercial space. If you're going more than 100m or want more than 10Gbps, you'd go with fibre, but if you didn't already know this you almost certainly don't need it. In any case, rest assured, it's not your cable

@skywake Thank you.

This is the cable I got.

https://www.cablesandkits.com/mc/ethernet/cat8-shielded-boote...

To go from the router to the basement, through the house and up to the TV this was just about what I needed. I went over the specs and figured if I needed a 50 ft. go with the fast one with bandwidth.

I'll have to see what the largest game I have I can download. If something is available physically at launch the same time as digital I always buy physical. Once I finish a game I sell it as I do not collect games and don't keep them. I think Marvel Cosmic Invasion is the largest game download I have on the system but have to double check.

The next physical is Reanimal on Feb. 13th I'm picking up so I can check that ahead if need be how large it would be of a download.

What router are you using and is it firmware updated?