Home Wifi Problem

[Dippo]

I’m having problems with my home wifi.

My broadband supplier is Sky, and I’m on a fast fibre deal (FTTC). The exchange is only about a quarter of a mile away, and the cabinet is 75 yards. My wifi router is in my living room, and at most 15 feet from my laptop in line of site. The only other items connected by wifi are my tablet and my mobile – the tv is connected via cable.

In the past, I’ve usually had download speeds on wifi of around 75 MB, and uploads of 19 MB. Over the past few months this has regularly dropped to around 5 MB download, and 12 MB upload. This drop in speed is on all devices connected via wifi. If I connect my laptop via a cable, I get the high speeds I used to get, so I decided it must be a problem with the router’s signal output.

I spoke to tech support at Sky, they got me to change the channel on my router. There was still no improvement, so they sent me a new one (Model ER115, if that helps). The problem is still the same.

I’ve tried setting the channel manually, choosing a few at random and doing speed tests, and it seems to best on Channel 10 where I get about 30 MB down, and 19 up.

Is there anything else I can do? I’m guessing that there’s something in the area (outside my flat) causing interference, which would account for the fact that I used to occasionally get my former speeds when I left the channel selection on auto. I don’t really want to run an ethernet cable to my laptop; it doesn’t really help the portability!

 

[KillerHERTZ]

What speed are you getting when you connect to it directly with a Ethernet cable? if its the same then you have no interference issues and the issue is with Sky.

 

[geoffus]

Secure password ?
Reset your router ?
Change location of router if possible, if you have high speed through ethernet then as you say its wifi transmission problem.
Can you change from 2.4ghz to 5ghz to try ?
Can you view devices to see if anything you not aware of using bandwidth ?

 

[Chrishazle]

Look for a program called inSSIDer from Metageek to look at what channels are in use and identify possible interference.

 

[Skd884]

Try channel 11, let us know, mine works very very well on 11.

 

[AltonAnt]

If you can try disabling wifi security e.g. no password and then check the speed. It is reverts to full speed the issue is with the security settings.
For modern wifi you should use wpa2 with AES encryption. 20mhz channels only too on 2.4ghz.

 

[Gollom]

This may sound a bit wacky, but do you have some wire mesh in the garage? Put it over the router - acts as a Faraday cage and can help rule out outside interference. REIN can be the devils own job to find and resolve My favourite fix ever on that kind of thing was when I asked someone to move their Christmas tree lights - instant fix!

Other things to try include moving router from things like power cords and cordless telephone bases.

 

[fourwheels]

We are with Plusnet Fibre Extra and normally get around 55 Mpbs and 15 Mpbs but during the first lockdown that dropped to single figures. I complained to Plusnet and they said it had been 'banded'.
I'm not sure what that means but when they removed the banding normal speeds were restored.
But now we are back with the same problems at various times of the day. I've come to the conclusion (in our case) that it really is down to more people working from home, or sat down in the evening, bored and on the internet. I guarantee that first thing in the morning speeds and functionality will be back to normal for a while.
Just wonder if Dippo finds its varies with the time of day?

 

[geoffus]

We are with Plusnet Fibre Extra and normally get around 55 Mpbs and 15 Mpbs but during the first lockdown that dropped to single figures. I complained to Plusnet and they said it had been 'banded'.

We were also with Plusnet and during the first lockdown our speed dropped by a similar margin, we altered all our settings via the advanced menu in the router and it didn't help.
We finally cancelled and went with Vodaphone on a similar priced deal, we now get 80Mbps through the same phone line.
I think your problem is Plusnet.

 

[Gollom]

We are with Plusnet Fibre Extra and normally get around 55 Mpbs and 15 Mpbs but during the first lockdown that dropped to single figures. I complained to Plusnet and they said it had been 'banded'.
I'm not sure what that means but when they removed the banding normal speeds were restored.
But now we are back with the same problems at various times of the day. I've come to the conclusion (in our case) that it really is down to more people working from home, or sat down in the evening, bored and on the internet. I guarantee that first thing in the morning speeds and functionality will be back to normal for a while.
Just wonder if Dippo finds its varies with the time of day?

We were also with Plusnet and during the first lockdown our speed dropped by a similar margin, we altered all our settings via the advanced menu in the router and it didn't help.
We finally cancelled and went with Vodaphone on a similar priced deal, we now get 80Mbps through the same phone line.
I think your problem is Plusnet.

You do know PlusNet are effectively BT's "value" arm?

 

[geoffus]

You do know PlusNet are effectively BT's "value" arm?

I do, so how come their broadband was so slow using their same wire ?

 

[zipdip]

Well do you have another router maybe it is that,with regard speed,I am with Talk Talk and have no limits as to how much I use it,they were fair when I signed up I wanted the very fast connection but they said the best you will get is 27mpbs so best stay with the standard package,now I do stream a lot and use the laptop and there are three of us at times using the service and it has been fine,one strange thing I found was with my Nord VPN I normally have it on the UK and it will drop the mpbs about one or two,but if I put it on Belgium I get 35mpbs.
I got a very nice email from Talk Talk a few months ago saying I was in the top 10% of people using the service the most,I was pleased that I was getting my monies worth.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Trouble shooting Wi-fi is a nightmare! It could be anything, and most likely outside of your control. Worth trying suggestions mentioned though.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

I do, so how come their broadband was so slow using their same wire ?

I suspect that Plusnet reduced capacity allocated to each line to manage demand in the area. Most customers won’t complain. It’s probably written into T&Cs that bandwidth may be affected by demand in the area, or may be reduced to satisfy temporary peaks demand.

 

[Gbrowncls55]

Well i had a similar problem with BT. I had been getting 70 mbps and suddenly noticed it had dropped to 29. called BT and they sent an engineer who fuddled with or replaced the booster in the cabinet at the top of the road and I am back to 70 again. (ethernet) you do need to know your wired speed really to assess the problem

 

[fourwheels]

We were also with Plusnet and during the first lockdown our speed dropped by a similar margin, we altered all our settings via the advanced menu in the router and it didn't help.
We finally cancelled and went with Vodaphone on a similar priced deal, we now get 80Mbps through the same phone line.
I think your problem is Plusnet.

Hi geofflus. Yes I think you are correct re Plusnet but in the past they have been very good and at the moment we are mid contract. Might have to bite the bullet though.
Interesting to use an iPhone app called Sweetspots which indicates signal strength and shows that it dips really low at times, although the average function shows it around 55 Mbps which is what the BT diagnostic test says we can expect.
I suspect it's when it dips low that we have a problem. The one thing that has changed locally is that we are surrounded by people working from home and as I said we had a brief spell in the summer of it working well.

 

[geoffus]

Ours was the same on Plusnet, then as first lockdown began speeds dropped to around 10mbps, with Vodafone it has remained high all the time, at moment it’s in the 70’s via my phone.

 

[ChrisHGTV]

We’re with BT and get about 120Mb consistently now, we don’t really see a drop at all. For a couple of years we struggled with dropouts and all kinds of connectivity issues. We finally had a really good engineer come round just before lockdown who replaced the wire coming into the house and he discovered the original installer had managed to staple through the wire when attaching it to the soffit! Once that was fixed it’s been good as gold. When we were siting the BT WiFi gadgets we used the BT app and that worked well. We even got an additional one for free as I wanted coverage in the garage as well. Quite happy with BT to be honest.

 

[AltonAnt]

As mentioned, there is no point checking your speed over wifi unless you can guarantee it is configured correctly and it is not being affected by interference or weak signal.
Check the speed using a cable then if that is fine check the wifi speed with security disabled.
If that is fine check again with security enabled to see where your issue is

 

[Germgh0st]

I'm with Virgin, and I'd never move to an uncabled area again because of these sorts of issues with ADSL. 500 Mb downloads all the way