T3200 and Home Network woes

[Jorgy556]

I have a very basic knowledge of networking, but by no means an expert. Located in NW Calgary.

I have the Internet 75 plan, which is the highest available in my area until they can get fibre installed (it's been 3 years since they surveyed and marked my yard, still no ground broken).

I have the Actiontec T3200 Wireless Modem and, honestly, it seems incredibly inadequate.

I do have a lot of IoT devices in my home: bulbs, switches, homes security system, Alex echo dots, TVs, on top of regular Internet devices (laptops, smart phones). I have most of the IoT devices segmented onto a secondary 2.4Ghz SSID, and then the devices requiring more horsepower on the 5Ghz.

I feel like I've configured the modem to best configuration possible within my scope of knowledge, and it had been okay up until 6 months ago.

Now, the modem will drop connectivity every couple of hours, causing all of our IoT devices to become unresponsive.

I don't ever get anywhere close to 75mbps down (which is still sad in this day and age), usually peaking around 4.8mbps if nobody else is doing anything in the house.

The modem is on the main floor of the house where most of the devices are located, it is in an office, but it's not obstructed by any cabinets or sitting in a corner under a desk, with a large glass door and large glass window on the interior of the home.

It's become increasingly worse and incredibly frustrating as I have to pull the power on the modem about three times a day, just to get some semblance of stable connectivity.

I had contacted Telus support last year, and the person on the phone said that the T3200 (first released in 2017!) was the best they had and that's even with the introduction of WiFi 6! That really blows my mind, how is it possible that in 6 years, Telus has not found something better?

Other than continuing to wait for fibre arriving (god only knows when that'll happen at this point), or switching providers, do I have any other options here? Could the modem be defective, or is it just my inadequate DSL connection?

Thanks

[Nighthawk]

The T3200 was the latest of the VDSL modems that was released. Everything that came after it is for fibre specifically. The wifi problems has nothing to do with the DSL connection. Having to power cycle the T3200 several times per day isn't normal either. Did you call technical support about this recently? You mentioned you only called them a year ago.

As for the speed, is that 4.8MB/s or 4.8mbps? They are two very different speeds. Are you testing with a device that is wireless or connected through ethernet? How are you testing the speeds? Speedtest.net? Fast.com? Again, same question as above. Did you call technical support about the slow speeds recently since the problems started?

I use a T3200 with my fibre connection and get 940mbps. It was the same one I used with my bonded DSL 50 connection prior to fibre being available and the speeds were almost always at or close to 50mbps for me on DSL.

[xray]

How many devices do you have in total on your network? My experience with the T3200M is that it struggles when there are more than 20 or 25 devices. That's one of the reasons I run an Asus router inside my network. I currently have anywhere from 45 to 55 devices connected at any given time. I'm also on Internet 75 and I work from home. No issues at all.

As for the speed you are getting log on to the T3200M and run the speed test from there. It's under Advanced Setup/Modem Utilities. That will eliminate any WiFi issues you have from the equation. Do it when your network is not busy to get an idea of upper limit for speed.

[Jorgy556]

26 active devices on my network, and another 5 that are idle.

Ran the speed test from the embedded web server and it reports average down as 37Mbps and 9 up.

However, that does not reflect the true stability and reliability of those speeds when we are unable to watch TV, can't connect to our home security services, my laptop drops from the wireless network every 20-30 minutes, and downloading content over the Internet - whether it's over the Xbox or work file, I never get more than 5Mbps download speeds.

When I'm trying to get Gigabytes of files, it's taking hours to complete, and I'm having to watch SportsNet in 480i.

I'm going to try to get a hold of technical support again, find out what my options are, but I can never seem to get a hold of anyone and call backs are at the most inconvenient time.

[xray]

I just did a speed test from my T3200M. This was done while someone was doing a video call at the same time. I normally get over 80 Mbps if my network is idle.

[xray]

Yes, the best course of action is to get a Telus service tech to look at it. That's definitely not normal to only get 37Mbps download. Your T3200M may need replacing.

[yycjdb]

FWIW I'm also on the Internet 75 plan with the T3200M router and everything was running fine for about 2 1/2 years since we moved into our new place until about 6ish months ago. First symptom was glitches from Optik TV. Went through Technical Support and they suggested that I needed to replace my older cable boxes with the newer 4K cable boxes (that only use 5GHz wifi). (Side note: one of the new 4K cable boxes was a lemon out of the box and this required a technician visit. Replaced, worked okay.) However, since we've gotten these new cable boxes everyone in the family is complaining about network drops / connection errors / etc.. 

I'm trying to pin devices to the 2.4Ghz signal under SmartSteering to see if this helps at all. If this doesn't work I guess I'll have to get a technician out here again. 

My speeds are okay (50 Mbps down, 16 up).

[jackrabbit000]

…

[yycjdb]

AFAIK TELUS doesn't offer synchronous Internet where the down and up speeds are the same (or even similar). As long as you don't have the network drops like the OP and myself you should consider yourself lucky. 😀

[jackrabbit000]

…

[Nighthawk]

@jackrabbit000 This discussion was about DSL, not fibre, and for a different issue than you are experiencing.