WiFi Upload Speed Fluctuates Dramatically.

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Hello! I am a small Twitch Streamer and I usually stream 3-5 days every week. I've noticed in the past few days, my internet connection fluctuates very badly (as shown in the graph below). This makes it almost impossible to stream at the same quality I streamed at before, and makes the entire stream hard to watch in general. If anyone has a potential fix to this problem, it would be greatly appreciated if you share it with me. Thanks!

 

Yes, I understand that I am streaming on WiFi, and I am trying to get hooked up with Ethernet but my router is too far away.

 

[BobVonBob]

Are you able to test if it's an issue with your WiFi or with your internet connection itself? If it's your internet itself there's literally nothing you can do but call your ISP to complain. As for the distance problem with an ethernet cable, powerline adapters are also an option. They'll carry internet over your mains power. Not as good as direct ethernet, but more reliable than WiFi.

[w_av]

20 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

Are you able to test if it's an issue with your WiFi or with your internet connection itself? If it's your internet itself there's literally nothing you can do but call your ISP to complain. As for the distance problem with an ethernet cable, powerline adapters are also an option. They'll carry internet over your mains power. Not as good as direct ethernet, but more reliable than WiFi.

ohhh right, i forgot EoP. i am probably going to try that.

I think it is my WiFI, my phone does the same thing on speedtest, where the upload speed slowly rises to 10 instead of instantly. I also just updated my wifi card's drivers, and no luck. Thanks for the help!

[Philz]

I've had the same issue for years and actually took the time to look into everything that could be affecting the connection down to the drivers running. If it's the same sort of thing I had which was a periodic predictable outage then what it came down to for me was Signal Interference. If you live in a highly dense area with a lot of signals then it seems that routers or other devices will send out pings searching for other devices wanting to connect and those signals overpower the currently running connections to devices on other networks. It was the last thing that I thought would be the problem.

However there are ways you can alleviate the problem of interference:

• Switch your network to 5 Ghz only
  • 2.4ghz band is overcrowded and things like microwaves can actually crowd that spectrum although you will be giving up some of the range that 2.4ghz has you will get more benefits than downsides
• Manually change your Wifi Channel to an empty channel
  • Download a wifi analyzer app on your phone and look at the spectrum bands, or the ratings for the different channels and in your router settings switch to the least crowded one.
• Use beamforming
  • means that the signal will not be simply radial and will instead be directionally sending your connection only in the direction of your device and back to the router wihich decreases interference
• Switch to a higher wifi standard
  • b/g/n are outdated I would only use ac or higher to have better throughput
• Adaptivity
  • there is usually a setting called something like adaptivity but it is different for every device. But what it means is that it can tell other broadcasting devices, most notably bluetooth, to not use the same spectrum they are using and those devices will instead search for a different spectrum that does not interfere to work on
• Slightly decrease the bandwidth
  • Commonly we have three options to choose from that are 20MHz, 40MHz, 80MHz, and sometimes 160MHz for bandwidth. The data transfer rate depends on the channel bandwidth. And by that logic, 160MHz should have the fastest data transfer rate. But that is not the case because when you try to use 160MHz channel bandwidth, it will create congestion with other networks, especially if you have neighbors. Their network will keep getting interrupted, and neither you nor them will be able to access the internet. So actually decreasing the bandwidth to a more middling range will decrease interference, but also decrease throughput at the same time.
• Give up on wifi
  • The final option is to throw in the towel and give up on wifi for any connections that need less latency and aren't just browsing nexflix and youtube. Wifi in its current iteration just doesn't lend itself well to any connection that does not allow periodic outages or interference. It's an unfortunate reality but there are alternatives to wifi that have been around for a long time like powerline adapters, or a 50ft ethernet cable. However with Cat5/6 cables be careful of the distance over 100ft cause the signal can drop off and you will need a powered repeater in the middle to keep the signal going for longer distances. You can actually learn the most about bizarre networking solutions from linus's channel that I have seen on the internet and they have dealt with some really weird wifi issues