Question My Home LAN configuration

[philip2024]

I have an Internet connection with a modem connected to my Fritzbox 7530 router and a Fritxbox repeater in another room.
I have several problems that I can't quite pinpoint the cause. I have some cameras connected, no. 2 Google Speakers, an Alexa speaker, a Synology DS215J Diskstation and some connected users.
The bandwidth is ok and if I do a speed test I get approx. 150Mbs/20Mbs. The Google speakers - I don't know if it's due to the use of Alexa - no longer worked. To exclude Alexa's "interference", I turned it off and did a soft and hard reset of the Google speakers. Sometimes they work, other times they don't. If I try to reboot from the Google Home app the speakers start up (so the wifi is ok). I can also be sure that there is full wifi coverage being in an apartment of just over 60m2. In a forum, I read about disabling IPv6 from the router to solve this kind of problem, but it didn't work in my case.
With my Samsung Note 10+ phone, I have to wait much longer to receive data from certain applications than when I have a data connection. The DS215J Diskstation was configured with UPnP because I'm not very expert but it seems to work fine.
Where should we start?

 

[Fallen Kell]

I'm not quite sure the best place to start, but the first things I would look at would be WiFi congestion and interference. I also don't think you should really need the Fritzbox repeater in such a small area unless you happen to have brick/concrete internal walls (and even in that case, I do not see how a wireless mesh network would help as you would really need a wired backbone connection going through the wall(s) to a WiFi access point).

Given the size and that you mention it is an apartment, I would first look into the following:

1) Do a WiFi site survey (there are several free methods, and a few applications such as NetSpot which you can get a home version for $60, but I would stick with some of the free tools for now, like LizardSystems Wi-Fi Scanner)
2) Using the results of the scan above, attempt to look for non-congested WiFi channels and look at stopping the use of multiple channels (usually seen as a setting called "channel width" which you will probably want to just set to "20Hz" in the 2.4Ghz band and "40Hz" in the 5GHz). This will limit the overall speed that the devices can then receive, but if your max connection to the internet is only 150Mbps you really don't need to have a wifi network that can do 9.6Gbps.
3) Look into primarily using the 5Ghz bands for all your network devices if possible. There are so many devices now that use the 2.4Ghz band that WiFi is very congested, especially in apartments. Bluetooth speakers, headsets, phones, keyboards/mice, and even remote controls all use and thus interfere with 2.4Ghz WiFi.
4) Test with disabling the Fritzbox repeater. Mesh repeaters use the limited WiFi bandwidth to essentially repeat the wifi signals it receives from any device connected to it back to the other mesh routers, typically using a different channel (using a channel that could otherwise be simply used for the initial wifi signal, which in an apartment setting, due to other wifi networks in other apartments, adds even more congestion to the problem). For reference, I can handle my entire 2000 square foot house and both front and backyards (approx 21000squre feet or approximately 2000m2) with a single wifi access point, properly located within the house.

 

[philip2024]

Hi Fallen Kell, thank you for your reply!

I am answering you right now because I could only do some tests yesterday.

I chose to use the repeater in such a smaller area. After all, I wanted to be ascertained to get the maximum bandwidth in every angle of my house because I noticed that a little lowering of the strength of the Wi-Fi signal corresponded to a reduced bandwidth too. In other words, I would like to have a very stable Wi-Fi network in my apartment.

As I mentioned, the modem connected to the Fritzbox is by the Fastweb (Huawei brand) Internet provider.
Yesterday evening I set up the Fastweb router granting it an IP range of up to two (remember I had set it in Bridge and it only acted as a modem because it was the Fritzbox that acted as a router) and activated the two wifi bands. What immediately caught my eye is that with the Fastweb router if I did speed tests with Speedtest I got approx. 30Mbs/20Mbs ping Idle 20ms instead if I tried with the router connected Speedtest gives me 160Mbs/20Mbs and ping Idle 10ms which is approximately the same speed measured by the speed test performed with the Fastweb modem management software.
However, as was perhaps expected, loading some applications I mentioned occurred faster with the Fastweb modem in active router configuration than with the Fritzbox.
Furthermore, the 5GHz band of the Fastweb modem could not be connected with the mobile phone (always the Samsung I mentioned above) even though I had checked the network key several times, etc.

So, to complicate the scenario there would also be this difference in the speeds detected for which I cannot explain the reason.

For now, I have left out those anomalies with the Google speakers, avoiding the tests...

How to explain everything that emerged from these quick tests yesterday?

 

[Tech Junky]

Fastweb router

Don't use the router for a speed test as they don't have the CPU power to get accurate results. It's probably using the speedtest-cli version and that tends to give slower results than the PC GUI version or web option.

For wifi do you have an AP or just the provider modem? Getting an AP should resolve any Wi-Fi issues rather than the cheap built in option. Disable the WiFi on the provider box if the fritz is your main WiFi.

 

[Fallen Kell]

My point about the wireless mesh network is that for it to work, it is using wifi to repeat the wifi signal between the mesh routers (essentially cutting the bandwidth you have available in 1/2 or more due to congestion recovery). This uses up limited Wifi bandwidth in a most likely already very limited situation in an apartment (where there will be 4-20 neighbors who all have their own Wifi connections all competing for the same frequency bands that Wifi is allowed to use).

The biggest problem in apartments is always the interference you will have with neighbors' systems. The wifi protocol will slow down to support the oldest wifi generation device in range that is broadcasting on the wifi channels your wifi router/access point is utilizing. What this means, is that even if you have all devices that are Wifi 7, if someone is out there with an old 802.11b (Wifi 1) device on the same channel of the 2.4Ghz band as you, the wifi router needs to slow down to Wifi 1 speed protocols in order to let the old device be able to communicate without your devices interfering (as they need to share the channel and prevent simultaneous communications from different devices as only 1 device can broadcast at a time on Wifi, which is also why mesh routers, re-broadcasting a wifi signal slow down a network...).

Getting off the 2.4Ghz bands may help greatly, as the higher bands like 5Ghz (and now 6Ghz in places) do not penetrate walls and objects as well as 2.4Ghz does. This means that there will be fewer neighbors that will be in range with devices on the 5GHz bands, and less congestion from those devices using those channels, giving your devices more usable bandwidth.