Ethernet Slower than Wireless, and Other Problems

[Gileotine]

Evening folks, it's.. it's me again! I am Grey, nice to meet you.

 

So, I moved into a house out here in LA. I finally have grounded outlets, a decent landlord, and my computer is back up and running. Things are great-- but...

 

The wifi in my house. It's kind of awful. It's from AT&T through DirectTV, I think. It's only 2.5ghz too.

 

The thing is that I understand that wireless can be finicky sometimes. I get around 10mbs down, 4 up. I get lag spikes in most live video games. This sucks badly, but it is not unplayable. The problem is that the connection often seems finicky. I'm only a room over from the router, but at times it will show no bars (with internet) on my desktop. When I disconnect, the bars go up to full. What gives! I don't get straight drops, though.

 

The other problem is that my router appears to also be the DVR or something from DirectTV. Puzzlingly, when I connect an ethernet to this and run it to my computer, I get less than 1mbs across up and down, and don't even think about playing games on that.

 

I guess I'm wondering what my options might be here. I dont think I'll be able to convince my landlord to replace his DVR with a 3rd-party router, and the other router in the house (which is my landlord's private one, upstairs, 5ghz), seems to drop in and out of signal from my computer as well (it doesn't show up for me sometimes). Do I just ask him to call the ISP down here, and pay the difference? I'm so lost! I thought ethernet solved all of my problems!

 

 

Obviously this is a big, incoherent question, but if you can give advice on any one of these things I'd be super grateful.

 

 

Much love and lots of lag,

 

Grey

[Donut417]

43 minutes ago, Gileotine said:

Evening folks, it's.. it's me again! I am Grey, nice to meet you.

 

So, I moved into a house out here in LA. I finally have grounded outlets, a decent landlord, and my computer is back up and running. Things are great-- but...

 

The wifi in my house. It's kind of awful. It's from AT&T through DirectTV, I think. It's only 2.5ghz too.

 

The thing is that I understand that wireless can be finicky sometimes. I get around 10mbs down, 4 up. I get lag spikes in most live video games. This sucks badly, but it is not unplayable. The problem is that the connection often seems finicky. I'm only a room over from the router, but at times it will show no bars (with internet) on my desktop. When I disconnect, the bars go up to full. What gives! I don't get straight drops, though.

 

The other problem is that my router appears to also be the DVR or something from DirectTV. Puzzlingly, when I connect an ethernet to this and run it to my computer, I get less than 1mbs across up and down, and don't even think about playing games on that.

 

I guess I'm wondering what my options might be here. I dont think I'll be able to convince my landlord to replace his DVR with a 3rd-party router, and the other router in the house (which is my landlord's private one, upstairs, 5ghz), seems to drop in and out of signal from my computer as well (it doesn't show up for me sometimes). Do I just ask him to call the ISP down here, and pay the difference? I'm so lost! I thought ethernet solved all of my problems!

 

 

Obviously this is a big, incoherent question, but if you can give advice on any one of these things I'd be super grateful.

 

 

Much love and lots of lag,

 

Grey

First of all AT&T is DSL service. DirecTV is satellite TV service that AT&T owns. Not sure about AT&T equipment but I can tell you from experience that most ISP supplied devices are crap. DSL its self can be slow, aDSL is the slowest form, VDSL in some cases can reach speeds up to 100 Mbps, but you practically have to live next to the remote box in the neighborhood or live next to the AT&T CO in your area to get those speeds. 

 

Heres the other issue. Unless you live in a profitable area, AT&T doesn't care about you. DSL is a dead technology. Some areas can get Uverse (VDSL) service and its decent. Other areas have the luxury of AT&T Fiber. But if you live in a not so profitable area then AT&T might not really doing much. Also, for many phone companies the copper on the poles is getting to the point of needing replacement, also some of the equipment used to do DSL in many cases is decades old and can fail. Lets just say they are not replacing the stuff. Mainly because without Fiber they cant compete with the cable companies. Comcast D3.1 service is 1 Gbps down and 35 Mbps up, across much of their foot print. I have Comcast's 150 Mbps down 10 Mbps up service. AT&T doesnt serve my address, but my friend who lives in the same city only could get 18 Mbps down from AT&T. DSL cant compete with that. So AT&T focuses on upgrading areas with Fiber or will hope that 5G will allow them to compete with faster speeds in areas where they refuse to run fiber. 

 

You could bitch to AT&T and see if they will replace what I assume is a gateway (Modem/Router). If the WiFi is still bad put the AT&T box in bridge mode and use your own router, or use a wireless AP instead. The best option would be to see if you can get Internet service via a Cable company or Fiber. But that might not be an option. 

 

 

Also when it comes to WiFI, 2.4 Ghz has lot of shit that can interference and can cause issues, even if you have perfect signal. 5Ghz while better, has limited range and penetration power. Depending on what the house is made out of, might be the reason your landlords 5Ghz signal does not reach your machine. As far as Ethernet is concerned, not sure what the issue was. Could be related to the gateway or it could be an issue with the service itself. 

[Gileotine]

Thanks for being so detailed! And.. damn, that is unfortunate. I'm gonna go work up the stones to ask my landlord if there is anything we can do for an upgrade that I'll pay for. Barring that.. errrgh.

[Gileotine]

As it turns out! My landlord has several routers in the house, about three of them. They all connect to different things than he thinks/is willing to tell me. Now I'm both stumped and hopeless since I'm not coherent enough to explain the problem to get him to call the ISP / give me a working router. EGH!

[Donut417]

9 minutes ago, Gileotine said:

As it turns out! My landlord has several routers in the house, about three of them. They all connect to different things than he thinks/is willing to tell me. Now I'm both stumped and hopeless since I'm not coherent enough to explain the problem to get him to call the ISP / give me a working router. EGH!

Connecting multiple routers together is not a good idea. Most people do it because they dont know how to do research and that Wireless Access points are a thing. 

[Gileotine]

12 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Connecting multiple routers together is not a good idea. Most people do it because they dont know how to do research and that Wireless Access points are a thing. 

So! My problem appears to be a little more complicated than I first believed.

 

I am getting internet from a direct TV receiver called a Genie 1. I know this because after plugging in my ethernet cable, it showed me the name of the same network that I connect to with wireless. Not sure if this is a coincidence, but you know.

My landlord let me hit the WPS button the router he has upstairs-- it was a Netgear. I didn't take a good look at it. However, after fumbling through the default admin stuff, and being strangely unable to connect to the internet via the WPS on this router, it appears the modem is not connected to this router. 

 

So either my landlord (likely) has no clue what he's doing, and we're all using the crappy internet off of the receiver.. or something is seriously messed up.

[Gileotine]

At this point I'm gonna ask him again to call the ISP and figure this out, because like. C'mon. 

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Gileotine said:

irect TV receiver called a Genie 1.

Most likely this is hooked up to the network for on demand content, if I had to guess. But I myself have never seen an AT&T direcTV setup. My friend who had AT&T had Uverse TV. Which is a different animal. But yeah, someone with some sense needs to look at that setup. Figure out what is what. Most people have no fucking clue when it comes to networking. I learned because Im the techie in the family. I have many devices connected to my home network. 

 

4 streaming sticks. 2 desktops, several tablets and phones, A plex server, a NAS,  a HD Homerun. So I had to learn how this shit worked. But a proper setup should be Modem > Router > Devices. Thats a standard setup. If you have a more robust network then you might have something different. Most people have an ISP supplied gateway which is a modem and router in one box. Because those are terrible most go out and buy a router and figure you can just plug that in. While it will work, your double NATed which cause issues if you need to port forward and some more advanced features. 

 

The first step is to understand how your network is setup. What Network devices you are using and in what configuration, mind you many routers can be setup as Access points, basically just a wireless radio. What devices are connected to your network. 

[Gileotine]

I will do some research first and get back to you on this thread. Thanks for uh, pointing me in the right direction.

 

[Gileotine]

What's a NAT if you dont mind me asking?

 

[Donut417]

5 minutes ago, Gileotine said:

What's a NAT if you dont mind me asking?

 

Network Address Translation. Basically its how you share the 1 IPv4 address AT&T gives you between multiple devices. Devices on your network get Private IP address, which are used to move traffic on you home network. Any time traffic needs to go out to the internet the Router replaces the private IP of the device in question with the IP address AT&T gives you. Once the  data comes back, the IP address is changed back to the one that devices was using. 

[Gileotine]

20 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Network Address Translation. Basically its how you share the 1 IPv4 address AT&T gives you between multiple devices. Devices on your network get Private IP address, which are used to move traffic on you home network. Any time traffic needs to go out to the internet the Router replaces the private IP of the device in question with the IP address AT&T gives you. Once the  data comes back, the IP address is changed back to the one that devices was using. 

Jesus okay I either need to learn how to do all this or call someone in.

 

Discovery: it appears that when other people use the internet, I get packet loss. When nobody is in the house, I don't get packet loss, and I don't get rubber-banding in games. This is awful.

[Donut417]

Just now, Gileotine said:

Jesus okay I either need to learn how to do all this or call someone in.

 

Discovery: it appears that when other people use the internet, I get packet loss. When nobody is in the house, I don't get packet loss, and I don't get rubber-banding in games. This is awful.

Thats normal for low end DSL. When you cram a lot of traffic on to a slow connection you get these issues. You dont have enough bandwidth to go around I would imagine. My friend who had 18 Mbps DSL had shit loads of issues with streaming, having his 2 kids, his niece, is mom and his wife all living under one roof was the issue. They were all trying to stream at one time. You need like 5 Mbps for each HD stream, 25 Mbps is you wont to do 4K. Add in streaming multiple things and trying to game. Yeah that kills the connection quick. 

 

The best bet for solving this issue is using QoS, but even then that doesn't always solve the issue. Not all routers have QoS options or implement them well. What I think you need is SQM, which helps in these cases, but not all QoS options support this. So its kinda a mixed bag. I almost guarantee the AT&T gateway wont support these advanced features. 

 

At this point I think your best course would be to see if the land lord will get a better ISP. BUT this might not be an option. Rural areas especially dont get cable service, so DSL is the only options. On top of that, the speeds you get might be the fastest you can on that line. One option is 4G LTE, but this is going to be limited, speeds might be good, but data usage is either limited or data is throttled or deprioritized during peak usage. Most 4G providers have a cap at about 22 to 50 Gigs before they start the throttling / depriortization. 

 

https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/ while this is not 100% correct it should give you an idea of what ISP's are in your area. Thats the first step, see what your options are. After that you can decide what the best option for you is. Because to be honest fixing the networking mistakes made by the land lord, might not fix the issue. You might be running in to an issue with too many people on a 10 Mbps connection. Not much can be done besides upgrading speeds or ISP's. 

[Gileotine]

We've got charter with a 400 download and 20 upload, and AT&T with a 75 down and  20 up. in my area, according to that map Charter is cable, AT&T is ADSL. There's almost no chance for me getting my landlord to change ISP's, as he enjoys his directTV way too much.

 

1. Ask if we can bring someone in to properly set up the current WiFi that is in the house.

2. Afterwards if the internet is still ass (I just want to game, I don't care too much about streaming), I'll ask if I can pay for an upgrade. Barring that, I'll just eat it.