My Internet Is Slower Since Upgrading

[Roteco]

I have an issue with my Telus internet that I'm hoping someone might have an idea about. Today, I upgraded from Internet 25 to Internet 150, and my internet speeds are slower after the upgrade. According to the Telus website, I should be getting download speeds up to 150 mbps. I'm not even close to that. Initially, the speeds were great. Right after the tech left, my download speed was 102.9 mbps, my upload speed was pushing 50 mbps, and I was pretty pleased with that. Shortly after, it went down hill in a big way. There has been a noticeable downgrade in internet performance on my laptop. Pages aren't loading as fast as they did with Internet 25, and videos that never would have needed buffering, are now taking forever to play. I have done some speed tests since I noticed the issue, and the numbers are not good. In the 4+ hours since the tech left, my DL speeds in mbps are, 4.2, 9.0, 2.4, 18.9, 3.95, 15.4, 13.64, 21.6, and 14.29. UL speeds are comparable. I've restarted all of my devices, and unplugged the new router twice.

Has anyone had this issue after upgrading to Internet 150? Any solutions? Any thoughts would be appreciated. I'm not on fiber, so it's 150 not 150/150. 

[xray]

Are you connected by WiFi or Ethernet?

[Roteco]

I'm on WiFi. Connected just as everything was when I was on Internet 25.

[xray]

You need to determine if it's your WiFi connection that's slow or your Internet connection. Did you get a new router when you upgraded from 25 to 100? If so then the WiFi settings may be different.

Do you have desktop/laptop that can use Ethernet? If so then do a test over Ethernet as well.

[Roteco]

I appreciate your responses.

The tech did install a new router when I upgraded. I brought an Ethernet cable home from work and connected it to my laptop. The download speed was 88.9 mbps while connected through the Ethernet cable. A lot better, but still a ways from 150. I disconnected the cable and did another test immediately after over the WiFi again, and the speed was 20.9. A speed test over Wifi on my iPad was 70.9(80.0 with the OptikTV off, if that makes a difference). If there's a setting on my laptop that will adjust WiFi speeds, I'm not sure how to access it.

Also, one other thing I've noticed last night and today since - there have been moments where the internet connection will drop right off. I can see the WiFi strength indicator in the task bar lose it's signal bars, and the OptikTV will cut out at the same time. My other devices lose the internet and switch to LTE at the same time. I wonder if I got a defective router?

[xray]

The best approach is to focus on 1 problem at a time. If you are consistently getting 90 Mb/s using Ethernet then your Internet speed is reasonable given there may be other factors involved. Focus on fixing the WiFi connection speed first.

What are the WiFi capabilities of the devices you are doing the speed tests with? (802.11ax, 802.11ac, 802.11n, etc.) 

Can you find the WiFi connection information on the device you are testing with? It will look something like the screen capture below and the pertinant info is highlighted. Each device is different so it may not be presented in the same format.

Note the link speed i 433 Mbps. I could have 1 Gb Internet but my speed test will never be higher than the link speed. The link speed is the theoretical  maximum at that point in time and your actual speed could be lower depending on many factors such as channel congestion, noise, interference, changing your location, etc.

Once you have this info then we can see if there's some adjustments to the router settings that may help.

[Roteco]

Okay. Your screen capture didn't show up in the post as I see it, but I was able to do some digging(through Settings and Device Manager) and I was able to find that info for my laptop. The Protocol that is listed is 802.11n. The link speeds keep changing. In Settings, on the Network And Internet page, when I go to WiFi and click on the Network Properties, the link speed is different every time. The first time, the link speed was 26/26 Mbps, but I've checked it several times since and the values keep changing. 117/117, 104/104, 87/87, 130/130, and back to 117/117 Mbps. I tried a speed test right away while the link speed said 117/117 and the download speed in the speed test was 0.52 Mbps. Upload speed was 26.4 Mbps. 

[xray]

My screen capture was from my Android phone. It will be different for every OS.

The fact that your link speed keeps changing may indicate your router is switching channels trying to find a less noisy one. Another possiblity is that your laptop is switching back and forth between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz because you router has SmartSteering enabled. You certainly won't be getting anything close to your Internet speed when the WiFi link speed is unstable. The speed test measures the slowest step between the device and the server and right now the slowest step is your WiFi link speed.

Follow the instructions here to TURN OFF SmartSteering. You will need to rename one of the SSID's when you do this so that you have 2 WiFi SSID's to choose from. My recommendation is to keep the current SSID for the 2.4 GHz frequency and create a new SSID with a 5G suffix. With SmartSteering off it means you won't automatically switch to the 2.4 GHz when you are farther away from the router for a stronger (but slower) WiFi connection. Hopefully this also means your WiFi connection will  be more stable and we can isolate cause and affect if we need to change other settings associatted with each frequency.

[Roteco]

Thank you again for the reply!

After reading through the pages from the link you've provided, I'm pretty sure that the TELUS tech did all of that when he was here. He was on his laptop for about 20 minutes, and he said that he had changed things so that all of my devices won't need the wifi passwords changed. Also, there is only one wifi network with my router's name that appears available to choose from, not two. I think that he's already combined the 2.4 and 5GHZ frequencies, but I'm not 100% sure of that. Is there a way to check?

[xray]

Sorry for the confusion. My recommendation was to turn Smart steering OFF not on. I provided the link only to show you where the setting is not necessarily to follow the instructions verbatim.