WiFi Speeds much slower than expected... Any ideas on what needs to be done?

[Austroknot]

Hey guys,

 

So I recently switched internet providers and upgraded my WiFi service plan to Frontier’s FibreOptic Gig Service which is supposed to deliver ~940Mbps download and ~880Mbps upload. However when I run speed tests on my phone I’m hitting maybe around a third to half of what I should be expecting. The tech who installed the fibre optics box inside my home told me not to use the provided ISP router because it’ll bottleneck the speeds I’m paying for so I bought a new one but I’m still not seeing the speeds I was hoping to achieve. My new router that I bought a few days ago is the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 802.11ax Tri-band Gaming Router cause from what I’ve seen it should be more than sufficient for my needs.

 

Besides the very basics I know pretty much nothing about WiFi or what could be bottlenecking my connection to where I’m not receiving the fastest speeds possible. Please help.

 

Some information I don’t understand but may be useful/significant:

- Location is Southern California and we have fibre pretty easily available for the most part in my area.

- The tech who installed the frontier box said that my neighborhood has “GPON” and he wished we had “XPON” cause I assume it’s better in some way (idk what it does).

- The frontier box that was installed (think it’s called an “ONT”) is connected like this: ONT>Ethernet>Coaxial>Ethernet>Router. Don’t know if this is significant in any way but the signal is going through a lot of different kinds of wires so I figured I’d include it.

 

I did three different speed tests with mixed results on my iPhone 12, all taken back to back within 5 feet of my router. I’ve attached screenshots of the result. None of them is anywhere near where I had hoped they’d be. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Thank you!

 

[The_russian]

That sounds about right for wifi, have you tested the speed with a computer or laptop when using a cable?

[Austroknot]

8 minutes ago, The_russian said:

That sounds about right for wifi, have you tested the speed with a computer or laptop when using a cable?

I haven’t tested it with an Ethernet cable. I just have laptop doesn’t have an Ethernet port so I was mainly looking at it from a WiFi perspective until I can build my computer. I do have a different computer I could run a cable to and test the speed.

[Haraikomono]

from my perspective: Id rather use the isp provided Router, and in the case of me getting poor performance Id call em up 3x a week to annoy them in giving me a huge voucher or give me a discount on my bills every month Its a beggar trick, but works like a charm. Since reputation is what gets the company money

[Elvis841]

7 minutes ago, Austosaur said:

I haven’t tested it with an Ethernet cable. I just have laptop doesn’t have an Ethernet port so I was mainly looking at it from a WiFi perspective until I can build my computer. I do have a different computer I could run a cable to and test the speed.

I ran into the same issue you have until I bought an ethernet cord. I got Cat6 and ended up getting my entire speeds right out of the box.

[Austroknot]

14 minutes ago, Elvis841 said:

I ran into the same issue you have until I bought an ethernet cord. I got Cat6 and ended up getting my entire speeds right out of the box.

Hmm okay. So were you ever able to troubleshoot the WiFi speeds or was it just a lost cause and you completely switched over to Ethernet for your devices?

[Donut417]

40 minutes ago, Austosaur said:

I did three different speed tests with mixed results on my iPhone 12, all taken back to back within 5 feet of my router. I’ve attached screenshots of the result. None of them is anywhere near where I had hoped they’d be. Any help would be much appreciated.

Keep in mind that Apple is probably not using the most top tier WiFi adapter in the phone. Generally where you will see WIFi shine a little better are desktop computers, MAYBE laptops. But phones are generally going to be a bit limited. I think the iPhone XR for example I read topped out at about 300 to maybe 400 Mbps. So that could defiantly be the issue there. 

 

At the end of the day. It comes down to the WiFi adapter in the device and the chipset used in the router. While WiFi is a "Standard", you need to keep in mind that there are a few Chipset makers and while they will all connect to each other for the most part, performance will vary. Intel is considered the better WiFi chipset btw. 

 

One of the big things too is 2.4 vs 5 Ghz. 2.4 Ghz has range but it generally has much lower speeds. On top of the fact because its used for other things like Bluetooth, Cordless phones, etc, other devices will interferer. Hell your Microwave oven will broadcast a 2.4 Ghz signal when its turned on. I believe WiFi routers are limited to 100mw of power. While Microwaves are like in the hundreds of not thousands of watts. 

 

5 Ghz has less range and penetration power. It will go thru a few walls, but each wall will cut the signal and you potentially get less performance. Less stuff interferers with it. So basically you use 5 Ghz and hope that you get good enough signal. 2.4 Ghz should only be used on non critical devices or on devices where 5 Ghz doesnt really work. 

 

Furthermore ISP's never guarantee internet speeds especially WiFi speeds. Also Frontier is a crappy ISP. Yeah they have Fiber, but only because they bought unwanted DSL and FIOS areas from Verizon years ago. They always seem to be on the edge of bankruptcy or some thing of that nature. 

[Austroknot]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Keep in mind that Apple is probably not using the most top tier WiFi adapter in the phone. Generally where you will see WIFi shine a little better are desktop computers, MAYBE laptops. But phones are generally going to be a bit limited. I think the iPhone XR for example I read topped out at about 300 to maybe 400 Mbps. So that could defiantly be the issue there. 

 

At the end of the day. It comes down to the WiFi adapter in the device and the chipset used in the router. While WiFi is a "Standard", you need to keep in mind that there are a few Chipset makers and while they will all connect to each other for the most part, performance will vary. Intel is considered the better WiFi chipset btw. 

 

One of the big things too is 2.4 vs 5 Ghz. 2.4 Ghz has range but it generally has much lower speeds. On top of the fact because its used for other things like Bluetooth, Cordless phones, etc, other devices will interferer. Hell your Microwave oven will broadcast a 2.4 Ghz signal when its turned on. I believe WiFi routers are limited to 100mw of power. While Microwaves are like in the hundreds of not thousands of watts. 

 

5 Ghz has less range and penetration power. It will go thru a few walls, but each wall will cut the signal and you potentially get less performance. Less stuff interferers with it. So basically you use 5 Ghz and hope that you get good enough signal. 2.4 Ghz should only be used on non critical devices or on devices where 5 Ghz doesnt really work. 

 

Furthermore ISP's never guarantee internet speeds especially WiFi speeds. Also Frontier is a crappy ISP. Yeah they have Fiber, but only because they bought unwanted DSL and FIOS areas from Verizon years ago. They always seem to be on the edge of bankruptcy or some thing of that nature. 

Thanks! There’s definitely a lot I need to consider.

[Falcon1986]

@Austroknot

 

What most people don’t consider when they upgrade to 1Gbps internet is whether or not their router can actually route at those speeds and if their current means of WiFi can keep up. ISPs will provide all-in-one gateway devices that can usually do this, but they can only guarantee those speed on a wired connection since wireless is prone to so many interfering variables.

 

Not many low- to mid-range consumer routers can match those speeds, so quite a bit of bandwidth is lost if they use their own router. In this scenario, if you can’t afford to upgrade to one that can (and these will cost money), stick with the ISP device. In your scenario, the GT-AX11000 should have no issue with this.

 

Next, you cannot use a speed test on a phone to conclude anything. You need a wired connection (over Cat5e or better ethernet) to the AX11000 to determine for sure if the speeds are still holding at 940Mbps. For the WiFi side of things, you have to set it up properly to take advantage of those speeds on WiFi 6 (so, no WiFi interference on 5GHz, use of 80-160MHz channel width, WPA2/3-AES security, and clients that can at least do 2x2 WiFi 6). With the right settings, you can achieve link rates in excess of 1Gbps with real-world speeds fully saturating your connection on that router. While WiFi 5 can achieve close to 1Gbps on some clients, these are generally scenarios where both AP and client-side have 4x4 or better multi-stream communication, which is quite uncommon at least for client-side hardware. With WiFi 6 not only is the maximum theoretical speed increased, but the technology allows for more simultaneous client connections sustaining higher client-AP and client-client speeds.

 

Other recommendations would be to do the general things for WiFi optimization: don’t place the router in the corner at the edge of the house, instead place more centrally and high, no physical obstructions in the way of communication with clients, etc.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Even on WiFi 6 my Galaxy S10 tops out at 750Mbit to my LAN, when the stars are aligned perfectly.

 

In fact WiFi in my house ALWAYS tops out at 750Mbit regardless of settings, the only difference being I can do it on WiFi 6 with an 80Mhz channel but my laptops needs 160Mhz to achieve the same on WiFi 5.

 

You have to be very very lucky to hit anywhere close to Gigabit on WiFi and only in the same room as the router in direct line of sight, on a clean channel (no neighbours on the same channel), when the stars are in perfect alignment .

 

On a day to day basis its not unusual to see it doing 200-400Mbit, in fact right now its hitting 582Mbit, so pretty much inline with what you are seeing.

[Austroknot]

On 4/14/2021 at 1:08 PM, Alex Atkin UK said:

Even on WiFi 6 my Galaxy S10 tops out at 750Mbit to my LAN, when the stars are aligned perfectly.

 

In fact WiFi in my house ALWAYS tops out at 750Mbit regardless of settings, the only difference being I can do it on WiFi 6 with an 80Mhz channel but my laptops needs 160Mhz to achieve the same on WiFi 5.

 

You have to be very very lucky to hit anywhere close to Gigabit on WiFi and only in the same room as the router in direct line of sight, on a clean channel (no neighbours on the same channel), when the stars are in perfect alignment .

 

On a day to day basis its not unusual to see it doing 200-400Mbit, in fact right now its hitting 582Mbit, so pretty much inline with what you are seeing.

Ok great. Good to know that there probably isn't something inherently wrong.

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 hours ago, Austroknot said:

Ok great. Good to know that there probably isn't something inherently wrong.

Gigabits greatest advantage is more speed to share between devices.  If you need that on WiFi then the solution is to have a second WiFi Access Point (this needs to be a physical device wired into your router, not a different WiFi SSID from your main router) on a different channel and split the devices between them based on how you would use them.

For example video streaming devices only need around 25Mbit max so you could easily put those on their own WiFi network with only 20Mhz channel width and as your main WiFi is already capping the bandwidth, you'd still have bandwidth to spare between the two which keeps latency good.

 

Without adding extra hardware, if your router combines 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz into a single SSID, you can turn that off and have two different SSIDs.  Then you can put devices that only need lower bandwidth onto 2.4Ghz WiFi, leaving 5Ghz free for high bandwidth devices only.  One caveat there is it might not help if your router is CPU bound when running the maximum speed over 5Ghz, you'd only really know by trying it.  On WiFi 6 I get about 110Mbit on 2.4Ghz which is completely independent of the 750Mbit on 5Ghz, so that gets you closer to Gigabit in total.

General rule of thumb though of course is to wire in as much as possible.