What I did on my new connection was to use a Laptop with 1Ghz NIC, Cat5e Ethernet cable, from laptop to the ONT, PPPoE connection, too many problems to use my iPad..

Used fast.com, as well as TBB & Ookla.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Whitehall11:

Will give this a go - I'm connected using a USB-C to Ethernet adaptor, so not sure if that's maybe a reason for some loss? It's a Macbook Air 2020 i think with the new M1 chip i think.

Depends whom made the USB-C to Ethernet, as the C connector can use Thunderbolt or USB 2 or 3 or 3.1 and achieve different speeds. Looking at the make of adaptor is important. If its Apple's it should be good for gigabit.

I now use a Thunderbolt 3 docking station; that delivers power and 10GBaseT over the one cable, together with video out to external monitor, and has the gubbins for more USB3 and SD cards etc on the dock.

Still carry the original Apple USB-C Ethernet dongle, its just a white coloured version of the Belkin F2CU040 which is definitely good for gigabit connection.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I now use a Thunderbolt 3 docking station; that delivers power and 10GBaseT over the one cable, together with video out to external monitor, and has the gubbins for more USB3 and SD cards etc on the dock.

I'm pretty much in the Windows/Linux hardware world, but my corporate laptop just pre-dates USB-C and has a propriatory dock with RJ45 gigabit ethernet, and my home PC desktop is gigabit. I'm testing an M1 MacMini but this also has RJ45 gigabit. No need for my iPad to be on ethernet as WiFi 6 is faster than my WAN.

My parents have an ancient MacBook Air which has USB 3 and the original Thunderbolt port, and using the original Air's USB-A to Ethernet adaptor was USB 2.0, and so using an old Thunderbolt 1 to Ethernet solved the problem.

This "new fangled" USB-C world means people don't always see the difference between a USB device and a Thunderbolt device as the port is the same.... catch-22 !

Apple were actually offering a 10GbaseT upgrade on the Mini's ethernet interface, which wasn't silly money. Probably no need for that until more AltNets start offering > Gbps packages and folks who are shifting lots of heavy media rich files about on the LAN.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Apple were actually offering a 10GbaseT upgrade on the Mini's ethernet interface, which wasn't silly money. Probably no need for that until more AltNets start offering > Gbps packages and folks who are shifting lots of heavy media rich files about on the LAN.

I saw that, but given we only have VM coax or slow VDSL, I've not even bothered investigating 2.5 Gbps nevermind anything faster. Home working is not as fun as it was in the data centre when we had 10Gb connections and 40Gb backbone.