Wifi Speed - again

Berin

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Hi all, yesterday I had BT FTTP installed. I'm getting download speeds to my wired Mac of about 950Mbps, and upload of about 100Mbps.

However, on devices connected over Wifi, this falls to about 100Mbps down and still 100Mbps up.

My set up is:

BT home hub connected to the ONT (wifi off)
iMac wired straight to BT Hub

4 x Devolo power line adaptors:
1.Main adapter wired to BT Hub
2. To a Netgear switch withTV/Sky etc wired in
3&4. To 2 x UniFi AP AC lite access points

I know I won't get 950Mb Wifi because the power line adaptors speeds are from 300-500Mbps (due to the wiring in the house, I guess)

As an aside, when I just connected the ONT to my old DrayTek 2830, I only got 100Mbps down, even at the wired connection, hence why I'm using the home hub.

Any ideas on speeding up the WiFi?
 
The limiting factor in all of this, is the equipment you have.


If your laptop , pc wifi dongle set top box, or any wifi equipment, is at a maximum lower speed, thats all your going to get.

example

Name Speed

802.11a 54 Mbps is the maximum, but usually 6 to 24 Mbps
Not compatible with b or g networks. This is one of the oldest standards, but still in use by many devices today.


802.11b 11 Mbps
Compatible with g networks. Really, g was made to be backwards compatible with b to support more devices.

802.11g 54 Mbps
The most popular network type. Its combination of speed and backwards compatibility makes it a good match for today’s networks.

802.11n 100 Mbps
The fastest type of network. 100 Mbps is common, though speeds of up to 600 Mbps is possible under perfect conditions. It does this by using multiple frequencies at once and joining that speed together.

So to the house can be superfast, but the equipemt in the house wont be

you can buy loads of superfast usb wifi dongle's but cheap they aint ;)

If however you run cat 5 cable, homeplugs etc, you should get better speeds
 
So, is it the AP lite's the are limiting speed, do you think? As far as I can see, they run to 800Mbps or so.

Your problem may not be the AP's these tend to perform well, but if you want serious throughput the device your using needs to make use of the 5G wifi not the 2.4g of older wifi.

You say your problem is with "on devices connected over Wifi"

Suggest you review the devices to see what they suppot your problem maybe the source device - not the wifi AP.

Personally I always setup multi frequency AP's with a SSID for 2.4 and another SSID for 5ghz.

That way on a device which supports both tech - I can priortise the 5g connection over the "normal" connection. If you give both the same SSID your pretty much blind to what radio is bening used / speed to expect without looking in the Unifi Controller.
 
I think that’s what I have, there’s a 2.4g and a 5g radios both set up on the SSID. Some clients (mostly Sonos) are on 2.4g, but all the apple kit, ipads, iPhones, MacBooks etc are on 5g - still showing download speeds of 100Mbps


Your problem may not be the AP's these tend to perform well, but if you want serious throughput the device your using needs to make use of the 5G wifi not the 2.4g of older wifi.

You say your problem is with "on devices connected over Wifi"

Suggest you review the devices to see what they suppot your problem maybe the source device - not the wifi AP.

Personally I always setup multi frequency AP's with a SSID for 2.4 and another SSID for 5ghz.

That way on a device which supports both tech - I can priortise the 5g connection over the "normal" connection. If you give both the same SSID your pretty much blind to what radio is bening used / speed to expect without looking in the Unifi Controller.
 
I think that’s what I have, there’s a 2.4g and a 5g radios both set up on the SSID. Some clients (mostly Sonos) are on 2.4g, but all the apple kit, ipads, iPhones, MacBooks etc are on 5g - still showing download speeds of 100Mbps

I’ve set the Wi-fi to prefer 5g for devices that can use it.
I can’t help thinking the uplink speed is the key but I can’t see how it’s changed. There’s 500Mbps arriving at the Devolo plug, according to the Devolo controller, then a cat 5 from the Devolo plug to the AP, yet the Unifi controller says the uplink is 100Mbps.
 
I’ve set the Wi-fi to prefer 5g for devices that can use it.
I can’t help thinking the uplink speed is the key but I can’t see how it’s changed. There’s 500Mbps arriving at the Devolo plug, according to the Devolo controller, then a cat 5 from the Devolo plug to the AP, yet the Unifi controller says the uplink is 100Mbps.

You want your ubiquiti kit on gig links - if you don't have this you will be throttling the capability. I HATE plug to plug links - especially when using more than 2 in a house as they usually end up trying to deliver some clever routed network and fail terribly - usually not in bandwidth but in hesitation trying to decide which way to route data.

In my experience trying to go for ultimate performance which I think is what you would like means using proper kit i.e. decent cable, correctly installed and terminated. Fudging data over the neutral and earth of a power cable is never going to be a thing of beauty. Its a bit like buying a supercar and then running it on the cheapest unleaded you can find.

In summary to run at gig speeds wired and especially wirelessly - everything needs to be pertty much perfect in my experience.
 
Agreed, but the powerline adaptors solve a problem until I get to a point where I can cable the house.

I thought I’d solved it as a couple of my cables were cat 5 and not cat 5e, but I changed them and it made no difference.

The odd thing is, there’s something somewhere limiting the speeds to 100Mbps, because my Unifi controller has a 100fdx label next to each AP. Plug the AP direct to the router and it goes away.

The minimum rating on the powerline adaptors is 550Mbps, and the Devolo controller reports 300-50bps, yet I can only get 80-90 measured.

There’s a setting, somewhere, limiting this.

Meanwhile I’ve got 950Mmbs on the wired devices in my study and 80-90Mbps wireless elsewhere, so at worst I’m 10 times better off than I was before.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I thought I’d solved it as a couple of my cables were cat 5 and not cat 5e, but I changed them and it made no difference.

Had my house cabled with cat7 last year. :)
Its a bitch putting the plugs on as the wires are so fat... until I found plugs that incorporate a pcb that forms the connections in the plug and a wall socket connector for the wires.
 

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I also have BT FTTP and get 900+ Mbps down and 100Mbps up to the router on a wired connection.

Over the years, I have played with various different solutions including power line, wifi extenders etc... About two years ago I bought three of the BT Whole Home disks and set them up. They have been great - and we have a big rambling old victorian property with very thick walls that played hell with other "solutions". So a mesh network would seem to be the way to go.

But even with this setup, I can only get around 450Mbps up, but still 100Mbps down. This is the same from multiple devices, so I think that's just the throughput limitation of the mesh system in my house. Specwise, it should be able to go faster, but in the real world there are other limitations (for example, Sonos has it's own wireless mesh network going on throughout the house that may impact).

Anyway.....450mbps is pretty damn good good wirelessly! BT did send me their new "Smart Hub 2" which I installed recently and I have been assigning some devices to that wifi network rather than the mesh network, to free up more of that 450mbps. The Smart Hub 2 wifi seems to also get around 400-500Mbps itself and has pretty decent range, so by splitting devices across the two networks I should be able to theoretically use most of the 900Mbsp bandwidth.
 


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