A-nom-nom-nom-aly BSC SSC19h ago

Please boost to try and reach some one far more knowledgeable than me.

Network Speed Issues.

Today I finally had my fibre to the home activated.

But I'm struggling with speeds to some wifi devices.

5ghz band is reporting a connection speed of over 800mb to my mediaserver and main pc... and 650Mb to my phone.

Networks have always been a blind spot for me.

Router is a Fritzbox 7530AX, with an older Fritxbox 7530 being used in mesh.

There are also some powerline adapters in the house to extend wifi out to the converted garage where my mum's bedroom is, and the wifi dongle for the solar/battery system as the signal was too weak to reach from either of the routers.

Current speeds are

Main PC 100Mb down, 65Mb up
Server 120M down 65Mb up
Phone 510Mb down 68Mb up

Fibre to the home is 550Mbps down and 75Mb up.

At first i thought it's signal strength, but that's good. Then perhaps distance from the router... Except other devices in the same room are getting 650Mb connections just fine.

Then I thought it was the wifi dongle, a D-Link DWA X1850 AX1800 Wifi 6 USB adapter.

Both computers use the same dongles, router is wifi 6 as are the dongles. The shield TV box in the room is only wifi 5, but gets 650Mb and the Pixel 6 Pro phone gets 650Mb.

I'm stumped. I've even disconnected the mesh router and forced all connections through the main router which is in the room below... about 3m away with only a wooden floor between.

Any help would be appreciated.

For reference, my previous ADSL connection was only giving me 40Mb... So I had no idea that I was getting such dreadful speeds across my home network.

All PC's running windows 10 Pro

#Networks
#Wifi
#Help
#FediHelp

Show threadA-nom-nom-nom-aly BSC SSC17h ago

Additional info

Checked my mums phone and computer.

Phone is a Motorola G34, so a budget phone that cost about £120 and it's getting nearly 500Mb connection in the same room as the router.

Her computer on the other hand... tested with her wifi dongle (wifi 4) and one of mine (wifi 6).... Doesn't get her above 70Mb.

I'm going to dig out an ethernet cable and plug that in directly to her computer and see if she gets full speed that way.

If it does... then I think the dongles are the likely problem.

EDIT: Ethernet gets full speed of around 500Mb

So looks like some shitty, poorly advertised D-Link wifi 6 dongles... not getting any better speeds than an old TPlink wifi 4 dongle.

Show threadRay McCarthy

@Anomnomnomaly
Ditch the powerline adaptors because they are really mains powered radios that cause interference.
Run ethernet cable for PCs. laptops. If the distance is more than 100m you can extend by 100m with a cheap switch, 1G router with DHCP disabled or a repeater. I have a cheap 8 port switch in the kitchen between upstairs switch & router and the shed.
WiFi is shared and dramatically affected by walls, floor/ceilings, distance & other wifi.

Many WiFi dongles do 10 Mbps to 150 Mbps.

1:51pmWeb
Show threadA-nom-nom-nom-aly BSC SSC15h ago

@raymaccarthy

That's the plan as soon as possible... I only got them because wifi couldn't reach to my home office a few years ago.

Now the 'office' is directly above the room with the router and signal is excellent.

But I still need a powerline adapter to get a signal out to the other side of the house, my mums bedroom is out in the converted garage, and there's the solar/battery system that connects to wifi too...

Out of the 4 powerline adapters in use, I could probably ditch 2 of them today.

The plan is to run an ethernet cable from the router as it's now by an outer wall instead of in the middle of the house... cable up to the loft, install a switch up there.

I've got ethernet sockets in 2 bedrooms after fitting those during renovations last year. Then I can install a wifi extender from that switch out to the garage.

Then all powerline adapters can be removed.

Show threadRay McCarthy15h ago
@Anomnomnomaly
As well as extending ethernet cable at least twice (300m total) more cheaply than a powerline adaptor, you can get budget ethernet fibre adaptors.
Many of our ethernet cables running at 1 Gbps started off 25 years ago carrying 10 Mbps and are only Cat5.
The shed is at the bottom of the garden and the cable there goes into an old Router with DHCP off as 4 port switch + WiFi + Server.The Solar controller is there too, but WiFi & BT are disabled except initially for a FW update.
Show threadA-nom-nom-nom-aly BSC SSC13h ago

@raymaccarthy

I've got a 25m roll of external grade cat 8... and the 2 sockets in the bedrooms wired into the loft are also cat 8... and there's probably another 25m of that still up there. Just needs connectors fitting and a switch up there. I've got the tools to fit the ethernet ends and a tester to ensure the cable is good. It's just crawling around in the loft that's the problem... If I can get to the far back side of the loft and drill a hole outside, I can feed the cable out, drop it down and back into the lounge... that's 3 rooms wired then... But the opposite side of the lounge is where the TV and satellite box are and the only way to run a cable at the moment is to nail it to the skirting board and up around a double door frame.

I'm hoping that at some point I'll be able to wire the home network with 2.5GB, but be ready for 10GB if needed.

I hate networking with a passion... it never works as it's supposed to... it won't connect for hours or days and then all of a sudden it does... you've not changed anything. Today, I unplugged the powerline adapter to test the wifi network and see if it improved... now 3 of the 4 powerline adapters connect and one doesn't... and After 5hrs today of fucking around trying to make things work properly... I'm about ready to put my foot through the TV... Instead I've said fuck it, I'm not touching it again today.

Show threadRay McCarthy15h ago
@Anomnomnomaly
30 years ago we had ISDN*, Token Ring, Cheapernet coax (hunt the BNC connection that fell off) and started to add Cat5 in the city. Moved to rural and had 19.2K from 1998 (LAN all cat5) till 2005! 2005 to 2023 was an 8 Mbps Microwave link, then Fibre.
Most of the LAN was 100 bps from about 2000.
[* 28, 33, 56K from 1994 to 1996, then 128k ISDN]
Show threadA-nom-nom-nom-aly BSC SSC13h ago

@raymaccarthy

My first modem in a PC was a 56k one around 98. I'd been online at a friends workplace before then over ISDN... But it wasn't really any quicker.

I remember downloading sound files for the game 'Worms' so that we could play that with different voices... Mine were all based on The Simpsons.

My first network gaming experiences were also at his workplace... Marathon 2 on the mac... one of the sub games called 'kill the man with the skull' and we'd all play that after hours.

Much simpler times... I plugged in the modem, dialled my ISP and it just fucking worked... Even when I got DSL around 2001... plugged in a modem to the PC and it just worked.

Now I can't get a TV to connect to a wifi router 5ft away.

Show threadRay McCarthy12h ago

@Anomnomnomaly
I'd never connect TV or similar to a network. Too much spyware.
Laptop can feed TV.

Phones & tablets used to have HDMI (I still have an Android 4 Sony Ericsson phone with HDMI). Screen cast or miracast is garbage compared to HDMI, VGA or even PAL composite.

My Home Theatre amp isn't connected either! I have a cheap USB-SATA box with HDD from a scrapped laptop on my €50 Satellite box, and that plays images, video, mp3 etc, as well as recording FTA TV / Radio.

I did test DNLA.

Show threadA-nom-nom-nom-aly BSC SSC12h ago

@raymaccarthy Oh my TV's aren't connected... but this is my mums TV and she watches a lot of Netflix... It is an older 2016 4k one though... so less spyware than these days.

My tv is offline and I use a Shield TV box to connect to it. I've got that locked down as best I can, with most stuff disabled and a VPN running 24/7. I only have kodi, emby, netflix and disney+ installed on it... and no autoupdates. I've got 3 of those boxes.

I run my own mediaserver, it's a bit overkill with an AM4 5600G cpu, 32GB DDR4 3200mhz ram and around 60TB of storage. The bluray drive in it has just started to fail... so ripping my own discs is becoming a problem now... they stopped selling drives that could do that about 13yrs ago... so unless i can find a 2012 sealed pioneer BDRom... I'll have to resort to more nautical means to rip the media from the discs I purchase.