Skinny home wireless broadband

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Skinny home wireless broadband

asaint

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#205539 17-Nov-2016 10:11

On Skinny broadband wireless our upoad speed is 20-30 mbps while download speeds are 5-10 mbps. Is there anything we can do make our download speed better. We rang skinny, they said there is nothing they can do.

dickytim

2514 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1673324 18-Nov-2016 07:59

Move the modem around the house, close to a wall or window. We see 20-30mb/s down and 10+ up regularly with peaks a little higher.

Moving the modem from where the HTPC is in the middle of our lounge to next to an outer wall made a large difference.

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coffeebaron

6195 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1673337 18-Nov-2016 08:24

Install external antenna kit

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techocrazy

23 posts

Geek

#1673489 18-Nov-2016 11:21

I'm probably not qualified to talk on this but.... :)

Your internet speed will be determined on about three things. The load your servicing cell tower is experiencing, the distance from the tower and the strength of the signal you are receiving.

So as the wise people before me said, moving the modem / router around will defiantly have an influence on speed. And installing an external antenna can also help especially if the signal being received is weak.

The other reason for slower speeds might simply be that your servicing cell tower is nearing its capacity.

In my experience of using the Skinny broadband router, I would get 50 mbps down and 45 mbps up if I placed the router in direct line of sight to the tower (about 800 metres away). If I moved the router to the middle of the house away from a window I might get 30 mbps down and 15 mbps up. More recently I have found that speeds tend to be getting slower in my area (especially at peak times) with speeds being in the region of 15 mbps down and 15 mbps during really busy times.

It is also worth noting that if you attempt any large direct downloads over Spark / Skinny's 4G network, you may have you speeds temporally throttled while the download is in progress. (I'm guessing this might only apply to areas with capacity issues).

Overall I'd say, move the modem around until it gets the best signal, install an antenna if you have a real need for speed or in my case wait patently until Spark decides to roll out 4G+ / LTE-A in more places :)

amiga500

1484 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1681537 2-Dec-2016 23:22

Pleased to say that after about nine months with Skinny broadband my speeds are still good. 40.07 Mbps download, 31.26 Mbps upload. However, I am close enough to a tower that Tiger Woods could prob. drive a ball past that tower - on a good day.