topic Re: Low Mbs wifi in Broadband

Low Mbs wifi

Kerro123 — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 11:37:26 GMT

I have Ultrafast 1 broadband, and the speed to the hub is typically measured at around 150 Mbs. However I routinely suffer from low wifi speeds, typically in the low to mid 50 Mbs range. I have carried out hard and soft reboots of the hub, and speed checked 2 laptops and 2 tablets whilst sat next to the hub. Connecting the laptops to the hub by cable gives me 100+ Mbs. Any ideas?

My wifi settings show:

2.4GHz:

Desired Channel - Auto

Bandwidth - 20Mhz

Mode - Auto

5GHz:

Desired Channel - 80 MHz ch. 36

Mode - Auto

2.4 and 5 GHz settings synchronise

Security - WPA2-PSK (AES)

Re: Low Mbs wifi

jamesn123 — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 11:53:49 GMT

@Kerro123

WiFi is not a perfect technology so there will always be some sort of loss, whether thats 10-20mbps or 100mbps like you are seeing. 50mbps over WiFi is not 'slow'. Sky's aim is 25mbps in each room so if your achieving that then they wont be interested in doing anything further. Additionally unless you are doing large downloads over WiFi, anything over 25mbps isnt really useful in day to day usage.

Re: Low Mbs wifi

Kerro123 — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 13:54:34 GMT

I know wifi limitations. I see typical speeds of 50, that's not to say it doesn't go both lower and higher. This house contains gamers. When I was trying to download a 45gb file it gave an estimated time of 5 1/2 hours, and I was only seeing in the low 20s. That's a significant drop from the expected number. I certainly wouldn't expect to see 50s sat half a metre from the hub when the input (according to Sky at the time of my test) was 152.

Re: Low Mbs wifi

TimmyBGood — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 13:57:38 GMT

@Kerro123 wrote:

I certainly wouldn't expect to see 50s sat half a metre from the hub when the input (according to Sky at the time of my test) was 152.

My previous phone routinely tested our 500Mbs FTTP (from BT) as around 40Mbs in the same room: the current one says c240Mbs, so over a 50% drop. WiFi is weird.

Re: Low Mbs wifi

jamesn123 — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 14:41:18 GMT

@Kerro123 wrote:

I know wifi limitations. I see typical speeds of 50, that's not to say it doesn't go both lower and higher. This house contains gamers. When I was trying to download a 45gb file it gave an estimated time of 5 1/2 hours, and I was only seeing in the low 20s. That's a significant drop from the expected number. I certainly wouldn't expect to see 50s sat half a metre from the hub when the input (according to Sky at the time of my test) was 152.

As I said, its WiFi limitations, clearly with that hardware in the WiFi airspace of your particular address the speed isnt the best. You could solve this by using ethernet, powerline or purchasing higher end WiFi hardware to use.