Two routers

Hi all !!

here goes my first one.

I have two routers -
the first is a modem router by Netgear model VVG2000 which the main one. it gives me internet access, 4 cable ports and N wifi.
the second is D-Link Xtream N Gigabit router model DIR-655. it has 4 cable ports and wifi too.
my house has a ground floor and a basement. thing is there is no wifi reception down so i thought using the D-link router down in the basement.
i made a CAT-5 cable which is about 6 meters long from the netgear router down to the basement.
i made the 6m lan cable connectors (RJ-45) 1:1 on both sides and connected the routers one to another.
i also connected one pc to the dlink router and made some configurations on both routers - bottom line is that i have internet on all computers connected to both routers plus the home network works ok.
so far so good.
the only issue i have is that if i try transferring files from computers in the basement to computers in the upper floor, i get a 1MB/Sec top of transfer rate. while if i transfer between computers in the same floor i get around 10MB/sec...

is it possible that i need a crossed cable between the two routers ?

what am i missing here ?

Thanks for any help !!

Nope, not a cable crossover issue, although the CAT 5 is limited to 100mbps when used on long runs. Did you use a 568A or B pattern for the RJ45 connectors on the cable? If you used some other pattern, that could also cause slow transfers. Also be sure not to untwist too much wire when attaching the connectors.

The VVG2000 only has 10/100 mbps LAN ports, while the DLink has gigabit ports, so your network transfers downstairs will be faster. I would expect the downstairs transfers to be a lot faster than 10MB/s if all the machines have gigabit Ethernet ports to match the router and all the cables are good quality. My results from LAN Speed Test on my gigabit wired network from SSD to SSD gives consistent reads of 830Mbps (103.7MB/s). Of course HDDs can also be the slow point in transfer speeds, but I use the SSDs since they have rates well above what the network components will do.

I should ask if any of the machines are running Linux, as some Realtek adapters only run at 10mbps because the Linux drivers fail to autonegotiate properly.

I always test my cables with a cable tester, but you probably don't make as many as I do and like normal people you probably don't have one to test it. Occasionally I do get one bad connection for one wire that looks properly connected and crimped, that can bring down the cable to one working pair and drop it to 10mbps, which is what you are getting. If you have an extra length of cable you could make another cable to test that possibility, or you could just try reattaching the connectors and re-crimping (I assume that you have a cable crimping tool). Either that or buy a 20 foot pre-made CAT 5e cable.

I usually snip the shielding off but that should not be an issue. The issue that you are having is the reason that I always test cables, a manufacturing defect or just someone bending it too tight before boxing it up can damage one or the wires or one of the attached jacks could have a small undetectable defect.

You can attach a new jack to one end and see if that does it, if not redo the other jack, if that fails use a new length of cable.