Wireless Laptop speeds -Survey

[Fred Claus]

I would check the router you are connected to. My speeds are 48 down and 10 up. When was the last time the router was cycled off and on?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

So you have a Ubiquiti AP uplinked to your Comcast gateway via ethernet, correct?
I'd check the cable going to that Ubiq AP.
And do a site survey....seeing what other wireless is nearby.
Running an online speed test via ethernet cable shows the issue is not Comcasts nor the Comcast gateway problem.

 

[coffee]

Ok this is clear as mud. If I follow you on this. Both your laptop and the clients laptop have poor WiFi downloads from her router? Replace her router. If you have done that and nothing has changed and wired is still working better than WiFi then you have a source of interference disrupting the signal. Time to get out the WiFi analyser and find channel with less noice.

No, Your not following correctly - But thats ok. Ill explain it again.

Neighbors wireless laptop gets 4MB/s download speed - on speed test on her comcast modem/wireless/router.

My modem is owned by me. I do not use a comcast modem. I do have their service. My laptop (rather old Dell Inspiron) does the same as per download speeds - 4MB/s download - on my modem.

There is nothing wrong with my wired speeds. I get 158 down. The neighbors wired speed is undetermined as she only has a wireless laptop and is somewhat disabled. Her Modem is in the basement.

I found it odd that we both get about 4MB/s down on our wireless connections.

I do not use a "Hardware Router" in the true sense. My server does that and does it quite well.

I really do not care because I have very few wireless devices. Im mostly wired. Just my cell phone and the old dell laptop use wireless. My girlfriend uses wireless for her laptop but does not seem to have an issue.

Im thinking 4MB/s for the wireless is what it is. Its probably some other aspect that is causing the neighbors poor connections to the internet thru her wireless laptop. She refuses to pay for my help so Im reluctant to pursue it as I have a lot of paying people to take care of instead. Yet she bugs me about.

I just wanted to know what others get for speed tests from their wireless devices connected to broadband.

 

[phaZed]

Here's from my Galaxy S8

On FiOS, Ubiquiti USG, Ubiquiti 24 switch and AP-Pro (not ac).

 

[nlinecomputers]

If both you and the neighbor are getting a bad signal then you have a shared source of interference that is drowning out the signal. I live in an apartment complex and the 2.4GHz bands are so saturated as to be useless here. 5ghz does fine.

 

[NJW]

Signal strength is excellent on my Ubiquity wireless AP.

Signal strength is no indicator of signal quality. Under the right (wrong?) conditions, environmental noise, whether from competing Wi-Fi networks or other spectrum noise, can make the signal strength higher, while destroying the quality.

I concur with the others who pointed to Wi-Fi analysis, but you may have to go to more general RF noise measurement.

Afterthought: do you have WMM disabled (router Wi-Fi settings)? If it's off, 802.11ac devices will fall back to g speeds.

 

[fencepost]

Bear in mind that a lot of things like cordless phones also work in the 2.4 band, and particularly older ones may cause a lot of issues. My old cordless phone system actually noted this with a specific range of channels in the manual.

 

[brandonkick]

One thing you never seemed to have answered is if your using the 2.4ghz channel or the 5.0ghz channel. If you haven't already, go ahead and try the 5.0ghz channel to see how that works.

From everything I've read in this thread, I agree that you both seem to share some very extreme outside interference. Very coincidental that you both get the same speeds. It's either shared interference, or shared configurations causing this.

You claim a speed of 158Mbps when hard wired, and a speed of 4 MB/s (which lets confirm this is what you meant... that's 32 Mbps.

I've noticed what I felt were "limitations" at first in wireless of 72 Mbps capping out on my wireless. Just turns out that this is the max speed of an 802.11n connection with a 20mhz channel width. You may have something similar going on, some settings causing this 4MB/s being your theoretical limit. The more I think about it, the more I think it's configuration related.

 

[coffee]

One thing you never seemed to have answered is if your using the 2.4ghz channel or the 5.0ghz channel. If you haven't already, go ahead and try the 5.0ghz channel to see how that works.

Both Channels - 4MB/s

From everything I've read in this thread, I agree that you both seem to share some very extreme outside interference. Very coincidental that you both get the same speeds. It's either shared interference, or shared configurations causing this.

You claim a speed of 158Mbps when hard wired, and a speed of 4 MB/s (which lets confirm this is what you meant... that's 32 Mbps.

Correct - 158Mb/s down hard wired, 4MB/s down with wireless

I've noticed what I felt were "limitations" at first in wireless of 72 Mbps capping out on my wireless. Just turns out that this is the max speed of an 802.11n connection with a 20mhz channel width. You may have something similar going on, some settings causing this 4MB/s being your theoretical limit. The more I think about it, the more I think it's configuration related.

I think the confusion is coming from the conversion of MBytes to Mbites perhaps. The problem isnt so much a speed issue. It is somewhere else in my neighbors connection. My wireless connection that tests 4MB/s does not suffer other problems that my neighbor has. Things like losing connections to web pages, Flash sites complaining of lost connections or slow ect...

I think the actual problem on my neighbors end is not related to the down/up speed but some other factor. I just have not had time to really look into this and I do not think I will in the near future. Iam just too busy this weekend and first half of next week.

 

[brandonkick]

It's hard to say, but perhaps it has to do with the comcast gateway being on a different floor (in the basement)? Do they have any better luck if they are in the basement by the gateway?

For what it's worth, my comcast wireless is crappy. Drops a lot, acts up a lot... the only thing that seems to work remotely well is the desktop in the same room (which is connected via WiFi). It almost never has hiccups. I guess the thing just can't really handle distance all that well... claiming "decent" signal strength but I guess signal quality may be a different story.

 

[coffee]

@brandonkick

My biggest problem is that my neighbor who is constantly bugging me about this lives in quite bad conditions in her home. In fact, I dread even stepping foot in the house as she owns several dogs and does not clean up after them. The house in my opinion is a health hazard. So, I do not want to go over and work on this problem.

I think the 4MB/s download speed on my modem is normal but she has different issues as you have said.

 

[Altster]

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Home "wired" network speedtest.

I just did a quick test on my Samsung Note-2 cell phone (using speedtest.net) and got 5.36 Down and 61.? up. and I'm sitting right next to my wireless / u-verse modem (now on fibre.)

We have several devices on WiFi but all computers (and printer) is on the internal wired network!

 

[brandonkick]

@brandonkick

My biggest problem is that my neighbor who is constantly bugging me about this lives in quite bad conditions in her home. In fact, I dread even stepping foot in the house as she owns several dogs and does not clean up after them. The house in my opinion is a health hazard. So, I do not want to go over and work on this problem.

I think the 4MB/s download speed on my modem is normal but she has different issues as you have said.

Yikes, yeah I can understand that.... "Try rebooting the modem" yelling as I run down the street. "Gotta go, bye!"