WiFi Speed

[Jembo]

... and, don’t forget the servers you’re accessing.

You can have the fastest mbs access on the planet, yet if the site you’re accessing is in high demand / not a high performer, forget all the hype about micro services scaling & load balancing... it’ll still be slow.

I downgraded from Vodafone’s 72 to 36mbs & the difference in speed is marginal on Friday’s & weekends, during the week is just fine

[Tinker15]

In the U.K. I’m on Virgin’s M100 cable service which if connected by Ethernet cable to the router gives me just over 100mbps. Here in France I live in the country and use WiMAX which uses a box on the house to connect to a base station in the nearest town about 11km away. At best I get about 8mbps. For normal surfing on my iPad it makes little difference. Downloading large files is another matter!

[Crazy Harry]

Mine tested at 6mbps in rural Norfolk in the early evening - pants compared to the larger urban conurbations but still better than some of the villages around here who still only have 'dial up'.

[Tinker15]

Mine tested at 6mbps in rural Norfolk in the early evening - pants compared to the larger urban conurbations but still better than some of the villages around here who still only have 'dial up'.

It’s a similar problem here in the Correze. The surface area is 5,857 km2 but the population is only 249,684. We are all supposed to be getting high speed Internet by 2020 but it ‘ain’t going to happen.

[ihadablackdog]

Funny timing....my wifi coverage has been really flaky recently and I think my router might be on its way out (less than a year old but I can't find any emails or anything saying where I got it from! Tried all my usual accounts like Amazon etc)...however, I keep it in a small cupboard in the hall so last night took it out and put it on top and will monitor. Speed is about 28 down and 6 up (FTTC). When we first had it, it was about 33 down and 9 up, but that was when they were still rolling it out and I was in the first batch in my green cab.

When we were on ADSL I just about managed to get 2 down!!!!

[Quijibo Jones]

16 gig is 16 gig. No speed booster can magic that faster. What it can do is spread the load of the connected devices. The routers that are provided by bt, sky, virgin are the cheapest s**t money can buy. A good WiFi router costs well in excess of £100.

It could be that your router is saturated with devices connected on WiFi. This is certainly the case in my house with phones, iPads, tv’s, sky q etc. When this happens you’ll get drop outs and less speed. You can combat this by wiring in devices such as tv, game consoles. Or you can buy a high end router.

Sorry to say though, 16 g is never going to go far. We run a hundred gig with virgin media. If you can get that in the area it’s simply the best for consistent speed.

[Smartbear]

I live in a rural area & BT claimed 2mbps speeds, I’ve gone with a 4g huawei cube which seems to work well (apart from the spying of course)
Just tested at this which lets me watch utube with no buffering, I have seen up to 40mbps but it’s not common.

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Rob

[ronk]

On reflection, my 16mbps isn’t that bad after all - I think stability seems to be the key?

[mmm-five]

Sorry to put the boot in, but my home Virgin provides a decent speed of 220/21mbps, and that’s despite me downgrading twice when their ‘free’ speed doubling offer came through.

My phone on EE 4G Max phone gives about 80mbps too, so I occasionally use it as a back up when there’s engineering works on the Virgin line.

Most devices are WiFi connected (smart TVs, tablets, visitor phones, alarm, etc.) but the Xbox is hard wired via 500mbps rated power line adapters.

[ihadablackdog]

It could be that your router is saturated with devices connected on WiFi. This is certainly the case in my house with phones, iPads, tv’s, sky q etc. When this happens you’ll get drop outs and less speed. You can combat this by wiring in devices such as tv, game consoles. Or you can buy a high end router.

Can SkyQ be hard-wired instead of wifi? For some weird reason my main Sky Q box wont pick up wifi in the corner of the room it is placed (yet my AppleTV which sits on top of it gets wifi with no problem!). So I've put a wifi powerline jobbie in the main power socket behind the tv and it works ok, so wifi is working on the box.

However, I'm thinking if it will work wired, then I could disable wifi on that powerline plug and reduce a bit of congestion.

Also, if the mini box is also hard wired, can I get rid of the sky booster box I needed for the signal to reach both of them (I think this creates its own wifi network). (I am with BT, so dont get the mini box to be an access point).

[Quijibo Jones]

yes yes and yes but the problem is likely that the apple tv is on top of it and they are on the same or similar waveband. We plug it in with a wire running in the middle of the room when we want to download a UHD film! I havent got around to wiring it in!

[nick_l]

Modem placement plays a massive part in connection speeds.

I’m an ex virgin media networks engineer and one of the most common faults was the modem location. People like to hide them behind stuff. Behind TVs behind fish tanks, in cupboards. All of this stuff seriously restricts the WiFi signal. Also the frequency you’re connected to will also affect the speed.

Most modems broadcast 2 networks (sometimes hidden as one) 2.4g and 5g . People assume the 5g is better because the number is bigger. 5g is the faster of the two, but isn’t good for distance as the signal delays quicker. Channel selection also plays a big role. Most modems now days are smart and will auto switch between congested channels. If yours don’t then I’d recommend playing around with different channels and seeing if that helps.

This is what I’m getting wireless

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[ihadablackdog]

Yeah, will try turning Apple TV off as a test.

Would like to relocate my router but SHMBO gets twitchy about it being on show. It’s on the top off cabinet now for testing but I know it can’t stay there!

[ihadablackdog]

What do you think of those mesh systems like the BT whole home?

(sorry for hijacking the thread)...

[srhutch]

I’d always use a LAN cable where possible. I’ve recently buried an armoured cable in the garden to connect to the garage. Faster and less problematic than WiFi. All game and media devices under tv also hard wired.