Router not working as expected?

[Krofter]

Hi, I have a 100Mbps connection at home and when I do a speed test (Ookla), with lan, I get a reading of 80-90Mbps. But then I use the wifi, which is from a TPLink DIR615, in 2.5Ghz, I get a speed of only 30-50Mbps. (My model does not support 5Ghz and only has 20Mhz and 40Mhz channels). Any suggestions and insights would be welcome.

[Eigenvektor]

Check which Wi-Fi standard is used by the connection. It should use the highest standard supported by both the router and your Wi-Fi card. How far away from the router are you, are there walls between your PC and the router? Maybe also check whether neighboring Wi-Fis use the same frequency band/channel.

 

It should technically support up to 300 Mbps connection through Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n): https://www.speedguide.net/routers/d-link-dir-615-wireless-300n-router-243

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, Krofter said:

in 2.5Ghz,

Lots of wireless stuff uses this band. So you could have epic amounts of interference which will lead to bad connectivity and or slower speeds. 

[DoctorNick]

7 hours ago, Krofter said:

Hi, I have a 100Mbps connection at home and when I do a speed test (Ookla), with lan, I get a reading of 80-90Mbps. But then I use the wifi, which is from a TPLink DIR615, in 2.5Ghz, I get a speed of only 30-50Mbps. (My model does not support 5Ghz and only has 20Mhz and 40Mhz channels). Any suggestions and insights would be welcome.

What wireless card are you using? About 100mbps should be possible on this router(maybe).

[Krofter]

22 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

How far away from the router are you, are there walls between your PC and the router? Maybe also check whether neighboring Wi-Fis use the same frequency band/channel.

22

I am regularly at about 5-7meters away from the Router - at that time, there is about a brick wall in between me and the router. But the tests I did was keeping the laptop right beside the router so as to get easy access to the LAN ports in the router. I believe all my neighbours are in the same 2.4Ghz band itself , don't know which channel though. Can we analyse it with any app? Or do we need to go knocking on them?

16 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Lots of wireless stuff uses this band. So you could have epic amounts of interference which will lead to bad connectivity and or slower speeds. 

I don't think there are any iot or smart home devices in my neighborhood. But there are about 3-4 wifi hotspots that we could theoretically get interference from. But not consistently though. As we have brick walls, most of the external interference are also very week.

15 hours ago, DoctorNick said:

What wireless card are you using? About 100mbps should be possible on this router(maybe).

On my laptop, where I ran the tests, it uses a Wifi6 compatible card. So I do not think the issue is with that. Also we get the same speeds on testing with other mobile devices from home too. So I have narrowed it down to the router.

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, Krofter said:

I am regularly at about 5-7meters away from the Router - at that time, there is about a brick wall in between me and the router. But the tests I did was keeping the laptop right beside the router so as to get easy access to the LAN ports in the router. I believe all my neighbours are in the same 2.4Ghz band itself , don't know which channel though. Can we analyse it with any app? Or do we need to go knocking on them?

There are apps to do that, but you should also be able to get a list from the command line with:

netsh wlan show all

You may need to click the Wi-Fi icon in your task bar, let the list load there before you enter the command. Then you should get a list of neighboring networks and their channels. Alternatively your router might be able to do this. Mine has a view that shows how crowded each channel is, to make it easier to pick the least used one for yourself. It actually picks up a ton more than my laptop does.

 

You can also see your own channel and connection speed from Windows itself: https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-check-network-adapter-speed/

 

~edit:

1 hour ago, Krofter said:

On my laptop, where I ran the tests, it uses a Wifi6 compatible card. So I do not think the issue is with that. Also we get the same speeds on testing with other mobile devices from home too. So I have narrowed it down to the router.

The router supports Wi-Fi 1, 3, 4. The question is, which standards are supported by your card. It might be something like 1, 3, 6. In that case the fastest common mode supported by both would be Wi-Fi 3, which would limit you to 54 Mbps. Or it might support Wi-Fi 4, but only in the 5 GHz band rather than 2.4 GHz.

 

I think you should be able to see which mode is used as described in the link I posted above.

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, Krofter said:

I don't think there are any iot or smart home devices in my neighborhood. But there are about 3-4 wifi hotspots that we could theoretically get interference from. But not consistently though. As we have brick walls, most of the external interference are also very week.

2.4 Ghz is not only used in WiFi. That microwave you have, yeah the magnetron uses 2.4 Ghz to cook your food. Cordless phones, bluetooth, wireless keyboard and mouse. Ive heard water pipes in the wall can also cause issues. Ive seen weather cause issues, when storms would roll in my signal would drop a bit. Pretty much 2.4 and 5 Ghz from my understanding are a free for all as long as they follow the governments rules for use. 

[Krofter]

Hi, I know its been long for anyone following this issue. I went on doing some reading with the thought of purchasing a new router, and I made some self notes about it. I have put it here as a github site link. 

I would like to ask if the things I noted there are correct or not. And maybe it will be helpful for someone coming to this thread in the future.

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, Krofter said:

Hi, I know its been long for anyone following this issue. I went on doing some reading with the thought of purchasing a new router, and I made some self notes about it. I have put it here as a github site link. 

I would like to ask if the things I noted there are correct or not. And maybe it will be helpful for someone coming to this thread in the future.

One thing to add about channels is that some channels are not available in some countries. For example channels 1 to 11 are the only ones legally allowed to be used in the US. Next with 5 Ghz some of the band is shared with radar. So you have DFS channels, not all routers will support DFS channels. Im not sure what the router will do if it detects radar Im assuming it would make the DFS channels unavailable for use but that's something you would have to research in to. But some routers dont have DFS channel support because it requires a special certification from the government, at least in the US.

[Krofter]

11 hours ago, Donut417 said:

One thing to add about channels is that some channels are not available in some countries. For example channels 1 to 11 are the only ones legally allowed to be used in the US. Next with 5 Ghz some of the band is shared with radar. So you have DFS channels, not all routers will support DFS channels. Im not sure what the router will do if it detects radar Im assuming it would make the DFS channels unavailable for use but that's something you would have to research in to. But some routers dont have DFS channel support because it requires a special certification from the government, at least in the US.

Thanks for the info and explanation. I'll read up on it and add that too