WiFi problems? Start here.

[EvaCarey]

JackMDS has done a great job with ezlan.net

But there are some fundamentals about WiFi that need to be stickied that don't pertain to products and would help everybody. This only pertains to 2.4 Ghz wireless.

1) Change channels to 1, 6, 11 to see what works best - this solves most problems. You can download netstumbler to see what is in your area but really what channel is a "try to see what works best for you". Apartments or other close living quarters can be problematic.

2) Eliminate interference - phones, bluetooth, microwaves. Keep them away from senders and receivers. The farther you have these devices from you router and clients the better.

3) Don't "point" antennas at each other, that is the lowest strength there is in an omni-directional antenna. Imagine a doughnut as your antenna, the shape of the doughnut is your signal. The "hole" of the doughnut is where it is the worst, if you point these holes at each other even the best wireless gear out there will not perform very well. If your antennas are like this "AP- -client" that is the worst you can get. If your antennas are like this "AP| |client" that is the best you can get. This applies to any omnidirectional antenna (every antenna on a SOHO wireless device), any other type of specialty purpose antenna you can ignore it.

4) Broadcast the SSID - there is no security in not doing this and best practice is to broadcast it because many clients have problems if it is not.

And lastly - if you have a noisy environment with other wireless devices or interference within a 100 meters...you're going to have trouble. Trouble is very poor performance, frequent disconnects, you are "connected" but can't really communicate reliably and general "it's not working all the time and most of the time it's really slow".

If you are indeed in an environment with other 2.4 Ghz close to you there may not be a lot you can do after changing channels. If this is the case then look to 5 Ghz wireless, but the principles of antenna placement/positioning still apply. Even though 5 Ghz loses more signal through dense material the result can still be MUCH better than a noisy 2.4 Ghz environment.

-edit-

Edited for clarity.

Really helpful knowledge you have shared with us. These type of problems we all face many times and this can help us to solve it.

 

[lazybedone]

Had this problem too! Even had lots of problem with my AV and VPN, what's the best thing to do? Any help?

 

[qiwi]

Just bought this cheap s**t https://www.asus.com/Networking/PCEN10/.
It shows ~2MB/s speed while my phone speeds up to 60 MB/s from the same distance. How to fix it?

 

[lazybedone]

My wifi works fine, but the connection isn't. It takes too much time in opening a certain website. I don't know what to do. VPN's working fine I can say and all other things only the speed of the internet is the problem.

 

[the1truelegend]

Here's a Guide that should help people with the Wi-Fi problems they may have.

How to Boost Wi-Fi Signal Strength in Your Home - http://techu4ria.com/boost-wi-fi-signal/

 

[ay@m]

Hi all,

I'm at a lost over my wifi issue and hopefully someone here can help me solve this issue. I am having wifi issue when using my phones (Note 5, Note 3 and Mi Note) and they are not able to upload/send data - not all the time. However, when i am running speedtest on a specific server, consistently there are zero byte detected sent. Also when browsing certain website, i can't upload picture, even as simple as attaching a picture to a forum reply from my phone. Besides the speedtest app, some other app are also impacted where i can't upload a picture as well.

However, when I'm using my desktop PC and also laptop, or even my ipad mini, everything is working fine.

p/s: when i use VPN via my phone, the connection is fine though. Pls help refer to the picture attached from the link below.

Any suggestion or input what could be the issue here? I am unable to nail down if it's phone issue, router issue or my ISP issue.

Thank you so much everyone, any kind soul out there who can help me debug this issue!

http://imgur.com/a/tZ9Dr

 

[hoangcf]

my internet not connecting, wifi off

 

[Feneant2]

After years of frustration, I've come to the realization that WiFi just plain sucks. We've always had WiFi issues at home that range from slow speeds to constant disconnects, it's incredibly annoying. I've tried everything listed here and then bought a Netgear Nighthawk extender to get around it but even so the issues persist. When I have technicians over they see no issue and blame the microwave, the phone, the duct work, etc. I call tech support and they reboot the router then tell me there's no issue and I should wait and try again in a few hours (basically- they don't know how to help me and want me off the phone) . I've tried every channel from 1 to 11 and still it persists. I just got a new Gigabit router from my ISP that contains 4 antennas and does 5Ghz and I still get the issues! In fact, 5Ghz seems worse than 2.4Ghz on some devices.

We have a fair amount of devices (up to 8) connected to the Wifi but not always on at the same time... but I mean we have gigabit internet so there's no reason I couldn't plus 50 devices on it, but yet at 20-25 feet our signal turns to crap. (The ironic part is when I discover I see about 15-20 networks from 100-500 feet away!) Or rather I don't even know if that's it because we see full bars but yet it disconnects or times out. It does it on my phone, on my tablet, on my laptop, on my wife's computer, etc.

Long story short- I should have had my house wired with cat 5 in every room when it was built.

 

[mnewsham]

After years of frustration, I've come to the realization that WiFi just plain sucks. We've always had WiFi issues at home that range from slow speeds to constant disconnects, it's incredibly annoying. I've tried everything listed here and then bought a Netgear Nighthawk extender to get around it but even so the issues persist. When I have technicians over they see no issue and blame the microwave, the phone, the duct work, etc. I call tech support and they reboot the router then tell me there's no issue and I should wait and try again in a few hours (basically- they don't know how to help me and want me off the phone) . I've tried every channel from 1 to 11 and still it persists. I just got a new Gigabit router from my ISP that contains 4 antennas and does 5Ghz and I still get the issues! In fact, 5Ghz seems worse than 2.4Ghz on some devices.

We have a fair amount of devices (up to 8) connected to the Wifi but not always on at the same time... but I mean we have gigabit internet so there's no reason I couldn't plus 50 devices on it, but yet at 20-25 feet our signal turns to crap. (The ironic part is when I discover I see about 15-20 networks from 100-500 feet away!) Or rather I don't even know if that's it because we see full bars but yet it disconnects or times out. It does it on my phone, on my tablet, on my laptop, on my wife's computer, etc.

Long story short- I should have had my house wired with cat 5 in every room when it was built.

I'd do an RF study of the house, see what signals are around, what channels they're on, etc. Once you know that you can set up your network to specifically attempt to work around all the other RF noise, since you mentioned you can regularly see 15-20 networks besides your own, I assume the local RF congestion is at least somewhat of a factor for you.

However, Wifi is a two way street, you could have the best wifi router in the WORLD, and if you're connecting with a 10 year old laptop using 802.11G, then you're going to get garbage performance.

Also, just so you're aware, 5Ghz is significantly faster throughput than 2.4GHz, but 5Ghz has very little penetration ability through walls and other obstacles. 2.4GHz will have a much better range, but at the expense of throughput. With the proper RF conditions, wireless access point, and client device, I have seen a macbook pro hit over 900mbps over wifi from ~10 feet. and 500mbps+ from 40+ feet.

 

[Feneant2]

Any suggestion on a tool by which to do the RF study? Anything on Android that does that or do I need some kind of additional equipment.

Its funny you mention a crappy old laptop because I was using that and discovered it wouldn't connect at over 65Mbits. My Lenovo Y520 arrived yesterday and it has 802.11ac so I'd expect a pretty darn good connection. I haven't had much time to play with it but looking at the network settings it keeps changing the connection speed (maybe because it has Miracast?) and hasn't connected at over 100 and some.

The PC has a USB Wifi dongle which I believe does 802.11n with major connectivity issues as well. My tablet is fairly recent (Galaxy tab S) and it's having issues on both 2.4/5.

 

[mnewsham]

Any suggestion on a tool by which to do the RF study? Anything on Android that does that or do I need some kind of additional equipment.

There are some apps out there, though they wont be as good as dedicated pro level tools obviously.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.manageengine.wifimonitor&hl=en

Should still give you an idea of what your RF conditions are like however.


If you really want to test the new Lenovo, go into your router settings and disable the 2.4GHz radio, and then do some testing from ~10 feet from the router without walls in the way.

Even with bad local RF conditions, i'd expect you to see more than 100mbps and more likely upwards of 250-300mbps at least.

Do you have the exact model of the router you're using? That way I can see what sort of speeds it SHOULD be capable of.

 

[JackMDS]

Harley Davidson is a great Vehicle. It sucks if you have a Family of four and try to use it instead of a Car.

Consumers Wireless technology was not designed to do what Current ("Cheap") consumers try to use it for.

 

[Feneant2]

The router is an Actiontec R3000- not the greatest but its 811.02 a/c.

I moved the extender and so far the usb wifi is working much better, hasn't dropped. I don't get these new pc's, buy a nice gaming motherboard and it doesn't even have built in wifi!

I'm leaving for the weekend but on Tuesday I'll check things out, see if I can get better speeds.

 

[mnewsham]

I don't get these new pc's, buy a nice gaming motherboard and it doesn't even have built in wifi!

Because for gaming and other high throughput situations on a fixed client (gaming desktop) you SHOULD be using ethernet.

For gaming alone you add 5-10ms extra latency just by going through wifi, even in the best case scenario, and sometimes more than that.

Wifi is great for client devices that are mobile, tablets, cell phones, laptops. But a desktop really should be wired when possible, a wireless connection will never beat out a direct wired connection.

 

[Feneant2]

Me again, ended up calling our ISP to complain as our connection kept dropping- I don't think it was RF as mentioned because this wasn't latency, this was dropping. The Wifi PVR tapes shows and every few minutes it'd skip 15-20 seconds because the connection would drop. Turns out they gave us the wrong router and have now switched us to their top of the line router with 12 antennas and tri-channel. From the router I now get a speedtest of 1.27Gbits but yet I'm still noticing issues on Wifi that may or may not be linked to this..

What I'd like to do now is test the line, are there free tools that can measure the wifi signal over long periods? What I'd like is an application that I can setup to run on my laptop for a week or so that would constantly monitor the signal to see if/when/how many times it drops. I ask because on my laptop playing Path of Exile I get huge lag spikes once every 5-10 minutes. On my phone it's the same thing, every 5-10 minutes websites say there is no connection and have to be reloaded or games say they disconnected. This can happen from anywhere in the house.

 

[Xen111]

I have 2.4 GHz wifi currently done using a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND. When I still had a netbook wifi speeds would never be high, say maximum 6 MB/s. This at 40 MHz (hopefully) auto channel.

I now have a Level 1 WAP-6110 access point. They are close together (4 meters) with 2 thin walls in between.

Connected behind the WAP is a 100mbit network harddisk. When I upload to it using ftp I get 6MB/s (megabyte per second) but when I download it doesn't go above 3MB/s.

The device itself does a maximum of about 8MB/s writing over wired 100mbit.

I remember read speeds being slightly slower, maybe 6MB/s.

This could be a very congested area. Basically I have never had in this house speeds in excess of 6MB/s.

Myself I don't do a lot over wireless. There are some internet radios not doing anything. There is no smartphone, no microwave.

Oops. In the past I had been playing around with "Data Rate" and put it to some option. I just put it back to auto, my download speed suddenly doubled to 5MB/s lol.

I guess there is no point for my message anymore. But anyway.

Is 5/6 MB/s a normal number for a 150 mbps wireless-N network?

 

[ICT-M]

I have 2.4 GHz wifi currently done using a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND. When I still had a netbook wifi speeds would never be high, say maximum 6 MB/s. This at 40 MHz (hopefully) auto channel.

I now have a Level 1 WAP-6110 access point. They are close together (4 meters) with 2 thin walls in between.

Connected behind the WAP is a 100mbit network harddisk. When I upload to it using ftp I get 6MB/s (megabyte per second) but when I download it doesn't go above 3MB/s.

The device itself does a maximum of about 8MB/s writing over wired 100mbit.

I remember read speeds being slightly slower, maybe 6MB/s.

This could be a very congested area. Basically I have never had in this house speeds in excess of 6MB/s.

Myself I don't do a lot over wireless. There are some internet radios not doing anything. There is no smartphone, no microwave.

Oops. In the past I had been playing around with "Data Rate" and put it to some option. I just put it back to auto, my download speed suddenly doubled to 5MB/s lol.

I guess there is no point for my message anymore. But anyway.

Is 5/6 MB/s a normal number for a 150 mbps wireless-N network?

Hi Xen 111


no , it's not a normal state , you must find your problem , maybe your network storage device have slow speed storage or disk or your notebook or Wireless AP.
you must test each device seperatle , for example , connect 2 laptop to your access point and send file to another laptop and see speed. in the first define which device have problem and need to configure and tune then .....

 

[VirtualLarry]

I ask because on my laptop playing Path of Exile I get huge lag spikes once every 5-10 minutes. On my phone it's the same thing, every 5-10 minutes websites say there is no connection and have to be reloaded or games say they disconnected. This can happen from anywhere in the house.

I believe that this is essentially normal for wifi, as it re-associates every so often, or re-keys, or whatever. At least, I'm not 100% sure, but I think so.

 

[techmanc]

post was in wrong forum so I roved it

 

[KateBrooks]

Hmm, I have a modem router installed in my home. My mobile devices especially have slow Internet speed and one laptop in other room. I think the range is poor. How do I confirm this?

 

[piasabird]

I think this should be your first step in addressing networking problems.

Before you blame WIFI for your connection issues you might want to check how your wired Internet or Ethernet cable direct connection works. Connect at least one computer or even a laptop directly to the wired switch. Then test it from there to see how the connection works. If you get some outages your problem starts before the WIFI. It could be a faulty incoming line. It could be a cable modem, it could be a switch and it could be your ISP.

5G has a lower signal strength, but having higher signal strength could just cause more interference because you pick up more distant signals.

 

[JackMDS]

If you did not unplug your router before unplugging the modem, other devices connected to the router may disconnect from the network. The restarting of the modem can result in a wireless router connection being reset as well.

If the Modem and the Router are too independent devices disconnecting the Modem would disconnect users from the Internet, but the Internal Network including the Wireless would stay intact

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/29/best-wifi-fix/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Helpful, if VERY basic, article on wifi and ISPs and connection issues, especially considering we are all now "sheltering in". I didn't learn anything new from it, but someone not well-versed in wifi and internet tech might find value in it.

 

[Vegasus]

My desktop loses its WiFi connection often, even though it says the signal is strong. My desktop is also the only device in the house that drops its connection often. I've had multiple laptops, phones and game consoles connect to the same router without any connection drops.

My desktop's Wifi adapter connects to a PCI-E X1 slot, like what NVMe SSDs use, and has antenna wires that go across the case. This adapter also sits right next to the graphics card. It's so close that if an NVMe stick was in this slot, the graphics card would sit on top of it. I've tried to move the antenna away from the graphics card but the part of the antenna that connects to the adapter is still right next to the graphics card. I wonder if there is some electrical interference. It's been a few years since I added the graphics card. I think the Wifi was somewhat more reliable before it was there.

I'm thinking of getting a USB Wifi adapter for this PC, but would it conflict with the internal adapter? Do I have to unplug that one first, or will Windows 10 let me choose?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do I have to unplug that one first, or will Windows 10 let me choose?

Win10 will let you choose. You can "disable" the onboard PCI-E wifi too.