Upgraded to new modem, but same slow wifi issues remain

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

So i have 1GB service. Had service appointment today because slow wifi speeds for quite a while now, in range of 25mb/s to no connection at worst to 160ish mb/s at best.

switched from T3200 to newest model. Laptop wired directly to modem get 1.2 GB/s which is awesome. Wifi test on iPhone right next to modem after install best around 300MB/s and laptop hit 400mb/s.

2 story walkout so have 3 wifi boosters. Back to best of around 160mb/s sitting right next to wifi booster as i type.

very frustrating as spent two hours doing changeover with help from a very nice technician. But no real improvement in wifi and now cameras in security on roof and doorbell not recording.

I have had this issue for a number of years. I get that won’t get 1gb/s speed on wifi but 500 anywhere in house would be nice rather than 50 to 150 if going to pay for gb speed. Connection is fibre optic.

do i need to buy a better router and hardwire it into modem to get faster wifi throughout house? Happy to do so if someone thinks that will help.

[NFtoBC]

300 to 400 Mbps sounds right for Wi-Fi. It will drop as you move away from the router. The speed will halve on each hop of a mesh network, as each packet has to be re-transmitted along the route.

Remember, Gigabit service is meant to offer reasonable speeds to multiple devices / users on your network, rather than super high speeds to one user. Many content suppliers cannot provide their data to consumers at GB speeds.

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

I might believe that if i had not witnessed speeds of nearly 700 mb/s on my iPhone standing right next to my router the time before this weekends social distance service call (i.e TELUS employee can’t enter house) when a TELUS technician came to look into why my system was performing poorly.  After that i was getting speeds of 350-400 mb/s on my main floor (router is in basement) so i was pretty ecstatic. 

That seemed to last a few weeks then service slowly degrade down to the current level.

When i look up high speed routers capable of transmitting greater than 1Mb/s, i wonder if something like that, purchased on my own, and connected by cable to the TELUS router, may be a possible solution.  I know that the wired speed going into the fast router would be going at 1.3GB/s, so perhaps this higher speed router may boost my wifi speeds to the higher levels i have experienced (albeit briefly) in the recent past.

[nvv6]

Are you sure that speed wasn't using multipath TCP? (It combines a wifi and cell connection and sends data over multiple paths) I have seen speed tests of ~800mbps when standing right next to an 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) router that costs $500+, but it's not very practical because you'll almost never actually see that speed. As far as I know Telus don't provide Wi-Fi 6 routers yet. If you're in a location that has any interference you're also unlikely to see such speed, and no amount of money will really fix that until Wi-Fi 6E devices are available in Canada.

[nvv6]

One other thing I only thought to mention after making this post: what is the end goal of having really high bandwidth over your wifi? The speeds you have are way more than enough for streaming video, for example. Have you noticed websites are slow to load or something? Although somewhat improved by HTTP/2 multiplexing requests over a single connection, loading websites can sometimes involve establishing hundreds of connections to different IP addresses. The limitation for something like that is generally latency and not raw throughput, and speed tests don't generally cover that kind of thing. They might contain a ping test, but I don't think they're generally a realistic measure of normal household traffic and how well the overall network performs.

Another thing to consider with Wi-Fi is security. Some of the router manufacturers might make routers capable of high speed test results when standing next to their wifi routers, but have abysmal track histories for patching vulnerabilities. Some others provide regular updates but might not be quite as fast for speed tests. On the other hand, new security features can sometimes cause problems. WPA3, while not perfect, does have some improvements over WPA2. Although WPA3 is supposed to allow existing WPA2 devices to connect, some poorly made devices don't currently work even when WPA3-transition mode is enabled.

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

To answer your questions (and thanks very much for replying and trying to help me understand whether this issue is solvable or not by the way 🙂 ) in order:

1. I did the same test both times with the same phone using the same process (fast.com).  This only difference is last time had a T3200 and this time had switched over to the latest and greatest modem.  But even prior to the modem switch, the  speed over the wifi had degraded to the levels I am getting now with the new modem.

2. I enjoy webpages being able to load much quicker the way they do with super high speed.  Plus if I am going to pay for 1GB service, I think getting at least half (say 500MB/s) on wifi is a reasonable expectation.  Otherwise I think the users should be notified that wifi speeds will only be 20% to 30% of the cabled speed.

3. As for security, I use a VPN on certain devices (which I know reduces significantly) reduces the wifi speed.  So I would like my wifi to be as high as possible prior to the VPN slowdown.  Note that I don't use VPN on my phone or the other machines I test the VPN with when reporting wifi results.

So it sounds like there is a potential that I could get higher wifi speeds if I were to invest in a more expensive wifi router?  Here are some that I have seen listed as the best of the best:

https://www.techradar.com/news/networking/routers-storage/best-router-9-top-wireless-routers-on-test...

Do you think that one of these may help me?

Thanks again for your assistance.

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

Is there anyone else with network expertise that thinks that going to a more expensive router may assist me in getting faster wifi speeds? I think the Telus technicians have likely done as much as they can to help me given the limitations of the equipment they are working with. So now I am just trying to educate myself and will purchase a faster router on my own if that will help the wifi speed in my house.

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

This is just so frustrating! Just rebooted router and getting 71MB/s standing right next to it!

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

And now the lights on the boosters have all turned red! And i forgot to mention that after the new router install last week that the doorbell camera feature for the alarm system no longer works on my phone.  I need for this moratorium on in house technician visits to end so i can return to some form of decent service because this DIY stuff has only made things worse.

[NFtoBC]

Have you restarted each of the devices? My experience is they work well within the speeds of my low-speed Fibre.

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

Restarting the boosters has returned my wifi boosters to having blue lights. Thanks for that suggestion, a small victory like this is huge right now. 🙂

Next challenge, security system cameras!

[NFtoBC]

In my limited experience, some IoT devices do not play well with SmartSteering. I had repeated problems with door locks, for instance. This is particularly the situation if they are older devices.

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

So i was able to reconnect my doorbell in one step, but i keep failing with my roof mounted camera. I can push the button on the back of the camera until the light flashes white and gives off the temporary alarmxxox wifi signal. I can connect my phone to that just fine. I just keep failing in the last step where i try to connect my camera to my home wifi network. I may have to get a technician out to tackle that unless there are some other methods to try.

[KingBoy59]

Im having the same problem for the past month. Ive been using ethernet forever and never had issues with games and such but all of a sudden my ping is good sometimes and bad sometimes. When it is good it is consistent and never get packet loss. I check my packet loss on windows powershell and it is at a 4 percent packet loss. I contacted Telus and they told me to check my speeds and my speeds were fine but I think there is a problem over at Telus maybe im wrong but a lot of my friends that also use Telus are having the same problem with Ethernet and their wifi cuts out in some places. When im right next to my router, my internet is really bad and I dont know why. This ping problem is also unbearable at this point. I was wondering if anyone could help me out because I dont know anymore. I have also reset my modem and router several times over the past month

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

So I’m no tech expert either but let’s see if between us, and with the help of others on this board, if we can make our slow wifi go away.

My setup: TELUS optic tv, home phone, alarm, GB internet. When hardwired to the internet, i consistently get speeds of 1 GB or higher. So the speed is definitely making it to my house.

i think I need to be educated as to the correct terminology of the gear that i have so that i can make sure i understand what people are suggesting, and also explaining why want i want to try to increase my wifi speeds through the house may or may not work.

All the main equipment is in my basement, which is a walkout of a two storey. There is a white rectangular box mounted to the basement wall. What is this thing called? Also i have the latest and greatest modem? Or is it a router? Or both. For this, I used to have the T3200 but was given the new Cylindrical shaped TELUS hub the last time a tech came out for a social distance visit and guided me from his van in installing it.

So because the hardwired laptop gets gig speed on fast.com, is it the white box on wall or modem/router that is slowing wifi to max 300 mb/s standing right beside both devices (they are within a foot of each other)? i also have 3 wifi boosters by the way, but struggle to get over 140 mb/s in most places.

A friend today installed a netgear orbi ac3000 (do i have this name right) on his 300 mb/s home system today and was getting 330 mb/s wifi speed right beside it. So what is this netgear orbi thing called and can i use it on my system. If so is it an add on or a replacement for something. I somehow think it provid s a better wifi signal through the house. 

I understand it costs $500 but if this is the magic bullet, i am happy to avoid future pain and suffering.

[Tiredofbeingfamilytechsupport]

Here is a link to the netgear orbi:

https://www.netgear.com/landings/best-wifi/?cid=us-best-wifi6-srch-cpc&utm_source=search&utm_medium=...

[nvv6]

This is simply the nature of Wi-Fi. You're unlikely to get close to gigabit speeds even with the best Wi-Fi access point and client sitting right next to each other. With multiple access points and multiple clients you can probably max out the gigabit connection, but it's not possible to test that from a single client. The speeds you're seeing are pretty much expected. (We might see slightly better speeds with Wi-Fi 6E if Industry Canada decides to open up the spectrum here for unlicensed access, but it'll be at least a few years before we see significant improvements beyond that.)

As for the boosters I think that's pretty much the expected speed from a Wi-Fi extender. If you want better than that you'll need to hard wire additional access points. I don't know if the boosters can do that as I've never used them. I also don't know if the boosters are capable of better speed wired in or if you'd need different access points.

As for the cameras you might want to reconfigure them, even if the Wi-Fi name and password haven't changed. I've found that some devices will need that done when swapping out the access point or router.

[Oilerfan]

What's the model number for the new modem?