Slow internet speeds! GAHHHH!

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Slow internet speeds! GAHHHH!
Tweet Topic Started: Feb 10 2017, 03:31 AM (571 Views)
+ Pyrus	Feb 10 2017, 03:31 AM Post #1
Posts: 39,342 Group: Legend Member #5,088 Joined: August 1, 2010 Gender Not Specified Country Chile	My roommates and I have been having problems with slow internet speeds for months now. We have Time Warner, which isn't exactly the greatest, but it's either them or AT&T. For last year and some of January, we paid for a 50mbps connection, which should've been fast enough for us to all be streaming HD videos on YouTube and playing non-laggy games on our current gen consoles. However, we'd consistently be getting kicked off the WiFi and we had no clue why. I'd come home at night after work, my roommates would already be home, and my laptop wouldn't connect or my phone wouldn't connect, or I'd connect and someone else would get kicked off. It was incredibly frustrating playing a game and losing connection in the middle of it for seemingly no reason. If all three of us were home at the same time, trying to get acceptable speeds was a joke (at one point I was getting less than 1mbps consistently). We tried resetting the router and modem several times, changing channels, and none of it worked for more than maybe a couple hours or a day. We called Time Warner and confirmed on their end that our speeds weren't being throttled, and we also upgraded to 300mbps. It didn't change anything, so we got a newer "smart" Google router that worked for a brief time but wasn't producing the results we were looking for, even after we got a new modem as well. So finally I bit the bullet and bought a rather expensive router, a TP-Link Archer C3150, and that's been doing fairly well for the past week that we've had it. My roommate's wired computer got 350mbps once right after putting the router in, but since then it's dipped down, and the highest I've ever gotten on the WiFi is almost 100mbps, but lately it's been fluctuating between 5mbps and 45mbps. For 300mbps, I would expect at least high 90s or more on a consistent basis, wired or wireless. I understand there's range to consider, but one of my roommates is in the same room as the router and he's not getting any better speeds than I am, and I'm in the next room over about 20 feet from the router. My other roommate is using both of the previous routers as repeaters, so could that be a factor? Could it be bad cables? They haven't been updated since before we moved in last year. Is it too many devices? Otherwise, I don't know what it could be if a new router and a new modem haven't fixed the problem despite having a plan 6x faster. I've Googled and pretty much everything I've read has suggested cycling the power or getting a new router, which clearly hasn't worked yet. Any help would be appreciated because it drives us f***ing nuts, and we're about to have a fourth guy move in this weekend.
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Hip3r	Feb 11 2017, 12:44 AM Post #2
Posts: 118 Group: Member Member #13,468 Joined: August 24, 2016 Gender Male Country Belgium Favourite Anime Dragon Ball Z What Browser do you use? FireFox	First off, the Internet speed is not 'divided' based on the number of users. Second off, nor do the devices which connect 'first' get the 'highest' speed. The speed of your Internet depends on a very huge set of factors. But, I will give you a small generic Idea of how Internet speed is influenced, Protocol: All routers natively grade packets on the basis of protocol so that the communication remains streamlined. For example, if you're watching a video (using http) while your friend is on a video call, his packets will get higher priority than yours because VoIP/RTC is a more demanding protocol: it requires a low ping time and greater bandwidth. This is usually called Native QoS and is somewhat burned into most routers. Bittorrent P2P protocol: If there's a Bittorrent client or an application which uses the BitTorrent P2P Protocol running on your network, then hands down, it'll suck all the bandwidth, regardless of anything else. Geographic factors: Distance/Latency between you and the server. Like if you're in the UK and downloading a file hosted in Japan while your friend is downloading a file hosted in say Russia, you'll see slower speeds because of the apparent difference in distance, and hence in latencies. QoS: Some routers allow administrators to set a priority IP, traffic from which is given priority over other devices' traffic. Band of communications (a/b/g/n/ac): Narrow bands/Single band clients usually get slower speeds than dual band clients. Distance From the Access Point : Devices near the Access Point will get a better signal, better latency and a good speed as compared to the ones away from it. And finally a note, As long as someone else beside you (>2) is using WiFi you will still sometimes face some issues such as, low speed and spikes. So, I would suggest to you if you are playing multiplayer games then play them only when you are the only one who is currently using the Internet(best case) or there is just one more person besides you(provided he is not streaming HD,voice/video calls etc.) or your other roommates are just browsing(with not much streaming). Okay now to the solution. Actually, it's very simple. All you needed was to simply install an another access point to distribute the load. Just think about it. How do you think some large companies or universities are able to expand their wireless coverage over a large physical areas and provide consistent speed to average number of users? Also, if your router/modem is dual band then some of you can use the 5Ghz band rather than the default one (i.e 2.4Ghz), provided your devices can also support 5Ghz. This will reduce the packet interference between you and your roommates devices. And as for random kick offs or not being able to connect it definitely must be a setting in your modem/router in QoS section, to limit the number of connections. Now whether you can change that setting or not(Native QoS) will depend on the router and your ISP. Edited by Hip3r, Feb 11 2017, 12:44 AM.



+ Pyrus	Feb 11 2017, 08:37 PM Post #3
Posts: 39,342 Group: Legend Member #5,088 Joined: August 1, 2010 Gender Not Specified Country Chile	Hey, thanks for that info dump. It taught me a few things I wasn't aware of. As for the solution, we tried using access points twice now. It hasn't changed anything. Time Warner is coming out tomorrow to look at things. edit: Update, the guy from Spectrum fixed it. It was a bad cable from the tele pole, as I suspected. Now speeds are right around 100Mbps in my room on WiFi, and 60Mbps downstairs in the kitchen where it used to be nearly impossible to get a good download going. Edited by Pyrus, Feb 13 2017, 07:16 AM.
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Hip3r	Mar 7 2017, 04:48 AM Post #4
Posts: 118 Group: Member Member #13,468 Joined: August 24, 2016 Gender Male Country Belgium Favourite Anime Dragon Ball Z What Browser do you use? FireFox	^^No problem dude! . It's good to hear that you were able to solve your Internet speed problem.



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