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Wireless network slow

fletch to 99
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On 2/9/2016 at 1:29 PM, Razor512 said:

For reflectors , they can be done client side or router side (recommended). If you are not the only one using the WiFi in the house, then I do not recommend doing that to the router.

 

Other than that, getting a higher PHY rate on the 2.4GHz band will also help you greatly.

 

For your current WiFi antenna for your PC, are they dipole antennas, or are they flat PCB trace antennas?

 

If they are flat, are both horizontally polarized or vertically polarized?

(If you have one of those 2 in one panel antennas where 1 antenna is horizontally polarized and another is vertically polarized, then it may be worth also re-positioning the antennas for the router so that 1is horizontal.

 

If you have a second router that is at least N900 and supports a wireless bridge mode, you could also use that to make a wireless bridge.

 

Unlike many WiFi client devices where their transmit power will be in the 100mw range, a wireless bridge between 2 routers can essentially have both sides of the bridge transmitting at close to 1000mw

 

An example of how well this works, is about 2 blocks down, is a diner style place that has "free" wifi, I have a line of sight and thus my client devices can see their AP but none of them can connect to them, but if I set my netgear R7000 as a wireless bridge to it, it can connect with no problem (though it is not useful without getting a temporary captive portal password from them :) ).

 

When there is ample transmit power for both the client and and AP, for get a much stronger connection. Routers also have better transceivers (better receiver sensitivity).

I ended up wiring my PC. Got a 150ft cat6 patch cable and just ran it down the stairs and under the door ways. Much better now, I get the 100 down no problem.

So recently my room mates and I decided to upgrade our internet package to 100/10 (which has been confirmed working via a wired connection using a laptop). Unfortunately in my room I'm only receiving 60/10 and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

Some information about our wireless setup... We've got an  Asus N66U on our main floor in the living room. My room is upstairs and the access point is approximately 15-20 feet away (direct). We've already optimized our 2.4GHz network to run on a channel separate from our neighbors, and we're using N only mode. As for the wireless adapter on my desktop, I'm using the on that came with the Maximus VII formula which supports wireless a/b/g/n/ac.

 

Here's the issue I'm running into:

 

7c4b17cb46efd57face5d6a60cbeddac.thumb.p

 

I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations? I would love to get the 100 down on my desktop, I thought I would have been fine since the supposed speed to the router is 144 Mbps.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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What is the speed when you connect via Ethernet?

 

ALSO:

 

That is a Dual-Band router, it operates on both 2.4GHz (Slow but good for distance) and 5GHz (faster, but not great distance). 

 

Make sure you are connecting to the 5GHz network. 2.4 will likely not give much faster than 60-70Mbps. 

 

 

D3SL91 | Ethan | Gaming+Work System | NAS System | Photo: Nikon D750 + D5200

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I still don't really see that kind of speed. The 5GHz has a much weaker signal strength and still shows a 162Mbps connection speed to the router but speed tests are again slow, although it was 10mbps faster than the 2.4g network.

 

Snap-2016-02-08_00-55-09.thumb.png.4a74c

 

 

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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5GHZ is going to be faster but much weaker as it has a harder time penetrating walls etc. As for your speeds, you probably won't be getting more that what you have without a wired connection, have you tried connecting via ethernet?

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6 hours ago, KraftDinner said:

5GHZ is going to be faster but much weaker as it has a harder time penetrating walls etc. As for your speeds, you probably won't be getting more that what you have without a wired connection, have you tried connecting via ethernet?

I'm too far for Ethernet in my room. The place is really old so there's no Ethernet jacks in any of the rooms.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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10 hours ago, fletch to 99 said:

I still don't really see that kind of speed. The 5GHz has a much weaker signal strength and still shows a 162Mbps connection speed to the router but speed tests are again slow, although it was 10mbps faster than the 2.4g network.

Well, that's progress. 

 

I'd still reccomend a super long ethernet cable, or set up near the modem just for now to see how well that works (both try with the modem only, and then also with the router). That will help you/us understand if it IS the wireless that is causing the problem, or the router, or possibly a slow hard drive in your system. Because these speed tests do store files on your hard drive, your drive speed is directly related to how well these tests run. With most physical disks topping out around 100Mbps, well, your speed tests will suffer because of that, potentially. 

 

 

 

 

D3SL91 | Ethan | Gaming+Work System | NAS System | Photo: Nikon D750 + D5200

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31 minutes ago, d3sl91 said:

Well, that's progress. 

 

I'd still reccomend a super long ethernet cable, or set up near the modem just for now to see how well that works (both try with the modem only, and then also with the router). That will help you/us understand if it IS the wireless that is causing the problem, or the router, or possibly a slow hard drive in your system. Because these speed tests do store files on your hard drive, your drive speed is directly related to how well these tests run. With most physical disks topping out around 100Mbps, well, your speed tests will suffer because of that, potentially. 

 

 

 

 

A super long Ethernet cable won't work, unfortunately. I'd have to run it through 3 door ways and up a set of stairs and across the living room. Just not feasible in my situation. I also don't think it's the disk speed, since I'm using an SSD as my boot drive so my browser (chrome) would cache there. It's also not the router at close range since my laptop gets 100 down. I think it's just due to the distance from the router. I wonder if upgrading the antenna's would help?

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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28 minutes ago, fletch to 99 said:

A super long Ethernet cable won't work, unfortunately. I'd have to run it through 3 door ways and up a set of stairs and across the living room. Just not feasible in my situation. I also don't think it's the disk speed, since I'm using an SSD as my boot drive so my browser (chrome) would cache there. It's also not the router at close range since my laptop gets 100 down. I think it's just due to the distance from the router. I wonder if upgrading the antenna's would help?

I mean more for a test, not permanent. 

D3SL91 | Ethan | Gaming+Work System | NAS System | Photo: Nikon D750 + D5200

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Keep in mind that for WiFi, real world throughput will only be around 50% of the PHY rate which is listed in the WiFi status.

 

Depending on the environment (congestion) you may end up only around 40% or less of the PHY rate speeds due to retransmission and congestion avoidance which many do automatically in order to lower the nosie floor when multiple access points are close by.

 

PS, most newer routers default to 20MHz channel width on the 2.4GHz band, if you need better performance, you can manually set it to 40MHz channel width; almost all routers offer it on their stock firmware except linksys routers. If you get a chance, set your router to use 40MHz channels on the 2.4GHz band (it ill be on 20/40 by default, meaning it will revert to 20 if it sees any other WiFi network in range), on a 2 stream WiFI adapter, that will bring the PHY rate to 300Mbps, which will give around 100-120Mbps real world throughput)

 

I also wanted to add, if you are in a WiFi environment where all of the channels have multiple access points available (thus no free non overlapping channel), then you will need to manually try and benchmark channels 1, 6, and 11 to see which actually offers the best performance. 

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10 hours ago, Razor512 said:

Keep in mind that for WiFi, real world throughput will only be around 50% of the PHY rate which is listed in the WiFi status.

 

Depending on the environment (congestion) you may end up only around 40% or less of the PHY rate speeds due to retransmission and congestion avoidance which many do automatically in order to lower the nosie floor when multiple access points are close by.

 

PS, most newer routers default to 20MHz channel width on the 2.4GHz band, if you need better performance, you can manually set it to 40MHz channel width; almost all routers offer it on their stock firmware except linksys routers. If you get a chance, set your router to use 40MHz channels on the 2.4GHz band (it ill be on 20/40 by default, meaning it will revert to 20 if it sees any other WiFi network in range), on a 2 stream WiFI adapter, that will bring the PHY rate to 300Mbps, which will give around 100-120Mbps real world throughput)

 

I also wanted to add, if you are in a WiFi environment where all of the channels have multiple access points available (thus no free non overlapping channel), then you will need to manually try and benchmark channels 1, 6, and 11 to see which actually offers the best performance. 

We're running Merlin on our router. I set it to 40MHz but I isn't see any improvement. I also tested on channels 1,6,11 and none of them improved the signal (1, 11 both slowed it down). The channel was originally set to "Auto" which was auto selecting 6. The best part is my room mate's room, which is about 5 feet away, gets full signal and 100 down. It's like my room is a faraday cage.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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if possible, also check if your WiFi adapter had 20/40 MHz coexist enabled in device manager. Some have it there also as for the newer WiFi alliance requirements  (mainly to reduce interference by making WiFi routers and clients avoid 40MHz by default when 40MHz will lead to overlap of another AP.

 

3YRfCiP.jpg

 

Other than that, it may also be worth testing another WiFi device to see if it experiences the same issue.

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24 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

if possible, also check if your WiFi adapter had 20/40 MHz coexist enabled in device manager. Some have it there also as for the newer WiFi alliance requirements  (mainly to reduce interference by making WiFi routers and clients avoid 40MHz by default when 40MHz will lead to overlap of another AP.

 

3YRfCiP.jpg

 

Other than that, it may also be worth testing another WiFi device to see if it experiences the same issue.

My macbook pro (on the 5GHz network) in the exact same location gets 90 down and 50 on the 2.4GHz network.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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36 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

-snip-

Snap-2016-02-09_01-22-28.thumb.png.17ab4

 

This is from the latest test. The connection speed is 150mbps yet I'm getting 1/3 that speed. I wonder if it's the antenna that came with the wireless card for the Maximus VII formula. Perhaps it isn't powerful enough. A wired connection to the router confirms I get the 100/10.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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For the PHY rate, ~50% is the maximum of what you will get, but it can be lower. As you move from the router and the SNR drops, the PHY rate will not drop little by little, instead, it may stay at 1 speed while the actual throughput drops more and more before the PHY rate drops to its next step size.

 

I will try to test a similar setup using an AC1200 WiFi adapter and a 3 stream WiFi router with 40 MHz used on both ends and with a client utilizing 20/40 coexistence

 

qmnS7fB.jpg

 

 

As we can see from the 40MHz test, we start off high, but the driver scaled back when there it too much re-transmission of packets, but the speeds ultimately remain higher. when using the tomato firmware, it will show a slightly lower connection quality as the noise floor is higher when 40MHz channel width is used, but there is more bandwidth to work with and thus speeds are improved.

 

hPN0pox.jpg

 

Overall, if you can get the WiFi adapter to hit N300 speeds at least, then you will stand a better chance at hitting your full connection speeds

 

The Wi-Fi status screenshots were from the client system, while the host system is a 3rd PC (this benchmark requires 3 computers for more accurate results so that the result info has a separate path other than the network being measured.

 

(test control system is running windows 7, client is running windows 10)

 

 

Edit: I also wanted to add,for the 5GHz band, you can boost the signal by getting a biquad antenna, or building a parabolic reflector such as one of these http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

 

If both systems are in a fixed location, then directional antennas will work well.

 

 

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9 hours ago, Razor512 said:

For the PHY rate, ~50% is the maximum of what you will get, but it can be lower. As you move from the router and the SNR drops, the PHY rate will not drop little by little, instead, it may stay at 1 speed while the actual throughput drops more and more before the PHY rate drops to its next step size.

 

I will try to test a similar setup using an AC1200 WiFi adapter and a 3 stream WiFi router with 40 MHz used on both ends and with a client utilizing 20/40 coexistence

 

qmnS7fB.jpg

 

 

As we can see from the 40MHz test, we start off high, but the driver scaled back when there it too much re-transmission of packets, but the speeds ultimately remain higher. when using the tomato firmware, it will show a slightly lower connection quality as the noise floor is higher when 40MHz channel width is used, but there is more bandwidth to work with and thus speeds are improved.

 

hPN0pox.jpg

 

Overall, if you can get the WiFi adapter to hit N300 speeds at least, then you will stand a better chance at hitting your full connection speeds

 

The Wi-Fi status screenshots were from the client system, while the host system is a 3rd PC (this benchmark requires 3 computers for more accurate results so that the result info has a separate path other than the network being measured.

 

(test control system is running windows 7, client is running windows 10)

 

 

Edit: I also wanted to add,for the 5GHz band, you can boost the signal by getting a biquad antenna, or building a parabolic reflector such as one of these http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

 

If both systems are in a fixed location, then directional antennas will work well.

 

 

Cool I will try that! Hopefully it works. Will each of the three antennas on the router need this or can I build one for all 3?

I'm assuming the latter won't work since the focalpoint won't be correct...

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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For reflectors , they can be done client side or router side (recommended). If you are not the only one using the WiFi in the house, then I do not recommend doing that to the router.

 

Other than that, getting a higher PHY rate on the 2.4GHz band will also help you greatly.

 

For your current WiFi antenna for your PC, are they dipole antennas, or are they flat PCB trace antennas?

 

If they are flat, are both horizontally polarized or vertically polarized?

(If you have one of those 2 in one panel antennas where 1 antenna is horizontally polarized and another is vertically polarized, then it may be worth also re-positioning the antennas for the router so that 1is horizontal.

 

If you have a second router that is at least N900 and supports a wireless bridge mode, you could also use that to make a wireless bridge.

 

Unlike many WiFi client devices where their transmit power will be in the 100mw range, a wireless bridge between 2 routers can essentially have both sides of the bridge transmitting at close to 1000mw

 

An example of how well this works, is about 2 blocks down, is a diner style place that has "free" wifi, I have a line of sight and thus my client devices can see their AP but none of them can connect to them, but if I set my netgear R7000 as a wireless bridge to it, it can connect with no problem (though it is not useful without getting a temporary captive portal password from them :) ).

 

When there is ample transmit power for both the client and and AP, for get a much stronger connection. Routers also have better transceivers (better receiver sensitivity).

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 2/9/2016 at 1:29 PM, Razor512 said:

For reflectors , they can be done client side or router side (recommended). If you are not the only one using the WiFi in the house, then I do not recommend doing that to the router.

 

Other than that, getting a higher PHY rate on the 2.4GHz band will also help you greatly.

 

For your current WiFi antenna for your PC, are they dipole antennas, or are they flat PCB trace antennas?

 

If they are flat, are both horizontally polarized or vertically polarized?

(If you have one of those 2 in one panel antennas where 1 antenna is horizontally polarized and another is vertically polarized, then it may be worth also re-positioning the antennas for the router so that 1is horizontal.

 

If you have a second router that is at least N900 and supports a wireless bridge mode, you could also use that to make a wireless bridge.

 

Unlike many WiFi client devices where their transmit power will be in the 100mw range, a wireless bridge between 2 routers can essentially have both sides of the bridge transmitting at close to 1000mw

 

An example of how well this works, is about 2 blocks down, is a diner style place that has "free" wifi, I have a line of sight and thus my client devices can see their AP but none of them can connect to them, but if I set my netgear R7000 as a wireless bridge to it, it can connect with no problem (though it is not useful without getting a temporary captive portal password from them :) ).

 

When there is ample transmit power for both the client and and AP, for get a much stronger connection. Routers also have better transceivers (better receiver sensitivity).

I ended up wiring my PC. Got a 150ft cat6 patch cable and just ran it down the stairs and under the door ways. Much better now, I get the 100 down no problem.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read hexadecimal and F the rest.

~Fletch

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