Phone is only negotiating a <100Mbps link with gigabit router

[zachp004]

Hello all,

     I am currently running a XR500 with a 200Mbps connection from my ISP. Since beginning to using it, it has always delivered 200Mbps+ to all my devices. This is still the case today on all of my devices, except for my phone. Beginning recently, the speeds on my phone have been ~60Mbps max. This is very low compared to the 200Mbps it use to get. All my other devices still get 200+. After resetting my router & phone, updating all firmware, renaming my devices, randomizing MAC addresses, and restarting my modem, I still am only getting a link speed between 80-120 between my router and phone. This link speed is normally in the upper hundreds considering this is a gigabit router. 

 

My question is, how can I change this link speed so it is once again back to normal levels?

 

It should be noted that resetting the router and phone (I have tried doing this both separately and in conjunction) did help to solve the problem, but after 10 minutes the problem came back.

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

The gigabit router is for wired speeds only, has nothing to do with wifi.

 

 

What phone is this?

 

This seems like the case of a 20mhz channel, and no mimo, so these speeds seem pretty expected for this device, 

 

Is this device on 2.4 or 5ghz?

 

 

[zachp004]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The gigabit router is for wired speeds only, has nothing to do with wifi.

 

 

What phone is this?

 

This seems like the case of a 20mhz channel, and no mimo, so these speeds seem pretty expected for this device, 

 

Is this device on 2.4 or 5ghz?

 

 

The device is on 5Ghz, and I normally got speeds of 200Mbps before this problem. It is a Redmi Note 8.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, zachp004 said:

The device is on 5Ghz, and I normally got speeds of 200Mbps before this problem. It is a Redmi Note 8.

What is the channel width?

 

It seems like that phone doesn't have mimo, so that would explain the speeds.

[zachp004]

18 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What is the channel width?

 

It seems like that phone doesn't have mimo, so that would explain the speeds.

I am not sure why this would cause the problem, as it essentially happened overnight with no changes to any settings.

 

20MHz is what my network monitor app is measuring. I am not sure if this is what you meant by channel width.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, zachp004 said:

I am not sure why this would cause the problem, as it essentially happened overnight with no changes to any settings.

 

20MHz is what my network monitor app is measuring. I am not sure if this is what you meant by channel width.

What exact phy speed were you seeing before? Do you see high speeds on other networks?

 

This looks like a mix of the 20mhz wide channels and a low end wifi chipset on the phone. This seems to be a expected speed from what I see.

[zachp004]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What exact phy speed were you seeing before? Do you see high speeds on other networks?

 

This looks like a mix of the 20mhz wide channels and a low end wifi chipset on the phone. This seems to be a expected speed from what I see.

I have always gotten between 150 and 220 on my phones wifi on this network, even across my house. 

 

On 2.4 Ghz, the phone is getting 30-60, but on 5Ghz, it is getting 200+.

 

It seems to be defaulting to the 2.4Ghz channel more often despite the fact that the 5Ghz offers far greater speeds at the same distance. I am not sure what could have changed to cause it to have this behavior. 

 

 

I did some tests below. In the first picture, my phone is connected to 2.4Ghz and is receiving 62Mbps. In the second picture I forced my phone onto the 5Ghz band and it is getting 221Mbps. Both of these tests were conducted 30 feet from the route with multiple walls in between for good measure. It should be noted that the 5Ghz test only had 3 bars, where as the 2.4Ghz test had 4 bars. Despite the speeds being much greater, I believe this is why the router was preferring 5Ghz.

 

The last attached picture is the same Wifi settings panel from earlier. Note that the link speed is 292Mbps. This was measured in the same spot the tests were conducted.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, zachp004 said:

 

I did some tests below. In the first picture, my phone is connected to 2.4Ghz and is receiving 62Mbps. In the second picture I forced my phone onto the 5Ghz band and it is getting 221Mbps. Both of these tests were conducted 30 feet from the route with multiple walls in between for good measure. It should be noted that the 5Ghz test only had 3 bars, where as the 2.4Ghz test had 4 bars. Despite the speeds being much greater, I believe this is why the router was preferring 5Ghz.

 

The last attached picture is the same Wifi settings panel from earlier. Note that the link speed is 292Mbps. This was measured in the same spot the tests were conducted.

One way to force this is to have a seperate ssid for 5ghz, but it looks like it just isn't picking 2.4 vs 5ghz well, and there isn't too much you can do here without changing hardware.

 

Getting a phone with mimo will give you much better speeds also, but thats not free. 

[zachp004]

53 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

One way to force this is to have a seperate ssid for 5ghz, but it looks like it just isn't picking 2.4 vs 5ghz well, and there isn't too much you can do here without changing hardware.

 

Getting a phone with mimo will give you much better speeds also, but thats not free. 

I came up with a solution involving the auto switching capabilities of DD-WRT and virtual SSIDs, but the risks and complications of implementing it are not worth the potential gains.

 

For anyone who has this same issue, the problem is simply that Netgear's "Smart Connect" feature is bad and seems to impose large wireless performance taxes, despite it using the same 5Ghz that a dedicated 5Ghz channel would use.

 

Thank you @Electronics Wizardy for your assistance.

[Falcon1986]

2 hours ago, zachp004 said:

I came up with a solution involving the auto switching capabilities of DD-WRT and virtual SSIDs, but the risks and complications of implementing it are not worth the potential gains.

You're using DD-WRT on the XR500?

 

What's wrong with using unique SSIDs for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz broadcasts?