WiFi issues - do I need new equipment?

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boland

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#198995 30-Jul-2016 22:05

We got just hooked up to Fibre, but our WiFi is horrible. I've got a Huawei HG630b (b/g/n) router. Connected on N, still max download speed is 30 mbps (standing next to it). Connected to LAN is 90+ MBPS. I also have a TL-WR1043N (b/g/n) router. Same issues, max 30 mbps. I only try one at the same time.

Routers are located in the garage (about 20-30 m from living). Speed drops to about 1mbps (!) when in living room.

Summarized:

No congestion (only two other wifi routers nearby on completely different channel).
Next to router 30 mbps max (tried multiple devices)
Speed drops to 1 mbps on 30 meter distance. Signal strength according to Windows still full. My phone shows 2/4.
Tried our router and a spare router (used in bridge mode), both on b/g/n.
The hg630b does not support to disable b/g. Tried that on the TL-WR1043N (only enable N), no difference.
Tried all channel modes (20, 20/40, 40)
Short burst mode
Security to WPA2 PSK AES as recommended on other sites.

I have really no idea what to do except to buy a new router. However, the HG630b is only 2 years old, seems a bit young? 30 mbps in the living should be enough, 2 mbps is just ridiculous.

I am working on getting LAN connections in the house, so could install another access point soon (I don't have one yet).

freitasm

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#1601475 30-Jul-2016 22:53

Though of having those in the house itself instead? Better to have it closer to where it will actually be used as distance affects coverage.

Set to 20 width. And use a Smartphone app to identify which channel has less interference - and use 1, 6 or 11.

boland

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#1601483 30-Jul-2016 23:24

freitasm: Though of having those in the house itself instead? Better to have it closer to where it will actually be used as distance affects coverage.

Set to 20 width. And use a Smartphone app to identify which channel has less interference - and use 1, 6 or 11.

Thanks for replying :) Yeah, working on getting cables installed. But still, wifi N should be more than 30mbps right? The TP Link is advertised as 300 mbps. I know that's theoretical, but just 10% is weird?

freitasm

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#1601484 30-Jul-2016 23:26

In optimal conditions...

froob

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#1601487 31-Jul-2016 00:08

boland: ...wifi N should be more than 30mbps right? The TP Link is advertised as 300 mbps. I know that's theoretical, but just 10% is weird?

Unfortunately the WiFi speeds you'll see in reality are much less than the speeds advertised. My experience on my own equipment is that 2.4GHz wireless N with a 20MHz channel width gets a maximum speed of something like 40 or 50Mbps. With 5GHz / N / 40MHz on my current wireless access point I can max out my 100Mbps connection. In comparison, my previous wireless router on the same settings could only hit about 80Mbps.

My guess from your results is that your wireless routers are both 2.4GHz only, and the device(s) you are testing on only support 20MHz channels on 2.4GHz. In that case, your results are not far off what I would expect.

A distance of 20 to 30 metres in a house is quite far for a WiFi signal - I'm guessing there are quite a few walls for the signal to pass through?

As already suggested, your best bet is going to be getting the wireless router much closer to your devices. If you do want to get faster speeds, you might look at getting a 5GHz capable wireless router. Bear in mind that 5GHz offers much less coverage than 2.4GHz, meaning you would most likely need several wireless access points to cover a house. It sounds like that may be the case anyway!

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michaelmurfy

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#1601496 31-Jul-2016 03:08

Just a basic example. These Speedtests are done on a slightly busy network (at the moment as I am doing some work) however it'll give you an idea.

2.4GHz (20MHz, Channel 11, 8 other networks on channel):

5GHz (Channel 44, 802.11AC 80MHz, 0 other networks on channel):

These tests were conducted off a Chromebook connected to a Cambium e400 enterprise grade access point ceiling mounted in the very centre of the house. I am physically 5m away from the AP. As you can clearly see a 5GHz network performs far better than a 2.4GHz network (except in my case it performed far better than I thought it would). I don't have a consumer grade access point to test however I bet it'll perform much worse again on 2.4GHz.

As stated many times 2.4GHz networks are not for speed, they're for convenience. The channels are far too overcrowded and in my case the only thing that 2.4GHz is used for is my printer and that is it - everything else connects either via Ethernet or 5GHz. If you're looking at a new access point I'd recommend doing a run of Cat5e/Cat6 to the very centre of the house and installing a Xclaim-XI3 on the ceiling. Yes, I fully understand it is "expensive" but if you want a decent wireless experience this is your best option as it'll plaster the house with decent 5GHz 802.11AC WiFi.

Take it from me. I've been through a tonne of routers over the years trying to find the perfect solution. My parents have got a XI-3 in their house on their VDSL connection and while it is overkill it is just more so they can max out their VDSL line on all their devices (since they're very reliant off WiFi due to the size and age of their house). No, they don't need it but streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Instant and Hulu) are their main forms of entertainment and I wanted the best experience for them.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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richms

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#1601497 31-Jul-2016 03:42

30 is about right for single chain 20MHz 802.11n - the air rate is only 72, and you get about half that.

The 300Mhz is dual chain, 40MHz, which needs a device that supports it at the other end. 1 antenna is easier to fit into small things than 2, so not many phones have 2, and there are heaps of laptops out there using crap wifi even on their supposedly good models. Many cheap tablets also have a SDIO based wifi module which has appalling max speeds because of its interface to the CPU.

802.11ac, same room, decent gear and you will get 450+ megabits easy. Use junk gear using 10+ year old standards on a band being crapped over by all sorts of other equipment too, and 30 is what you see on a good day.

Putting a decent router that far away from your living area is pointless as the devices have to send back.

As mentioned, get yourself some decent 802.11ac accesspoints (assuming your gear supports 802.11ac) and cable them back to the router. Turn the wifi on the router off because things may end up connecting to that and having a bad time for performance. If you dont have the cables yet, then get yourself some powerline bridges to try out, get from a place you can return them to if they will not work. 20-30m thru a house implies it is McMansion sized, so it may have multiple power phases which do not play nicely with powreline networking gear.

If your gear doesnt do 802.11ac then 30ish is about all you will ever get over wifi for single chain radios. You may see more sometime if you go to a 40Mhz channel and the band is clear, but if it is not clear than that will make performance worse for you.

Richard rich.ms

sbiddle

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#1601538 31-Jul-2016 09:24

30Mbps is perfectly normal for a 802.11n WiFi deployment. Yes it's possible to get more, but under every day circumstances this is a fairly typical speed.

You need to remember a few important things about WiFi - firstly quoted speeds are excluding all overheads at layer 2 and layer 3, and that WiFi is half duplex rather than full duplex like Ethernet. This means UDP performance will always be much higher, and when you conduct a speedtest using TCP the half duplex nature of WiFi means it has to wait until until can send an ACK to every TCP packet which slows it down. This is one of the reason why WiFi is inherently unsuitable for day to day use in environments where you may have something such as an app doing extensive database lookups as it'll be vastly slower than Ethernet.

At the end of the day WiFi is a complementary, convenient offering. It is not, and never will be a replacement for Ethernet.

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Crowdie

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#1601578 31-Jul-2016 11:10

sbiddle:

At the end of the day WiFi is a complementary, convenient offering. It is not, and never will be a replacement for Ethernet.

I have to disagree. To quote stats from Cisco Live:

"Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will account for two-thirds of total IP traffic by 2020. By 2020, wired devices will account for 34 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 66 percent of IP traffic. In 2015, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 52 percent."

sbiddle

the half duplex nature of WiFi means it has to wait until until can send an ACK to every TCP packet which slows it down

Individual acknowledgements are only required with 802.11, 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11a wireless network. 802.11n introduced block acknowledgements to reduce this overhead. The implementation of transmit opportunities also reduces the overhead by the increased use of SIFS.

sbiddle

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#1601588 31-Jul-2016 11:48

Crowdie:

sbiddle

the half duplex nature of WiFi means it has to wait until until can send an ACK to every TCP packet which slows it down

Individual acknowledgements are only required with 802.11, 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11a wireless network. 802.11n introduced block acknowledgements to reduce this overhead. The implementation of transmit opportunities also reduces the overhead by the increased use of SIFS.

I'm fully aware of that but trying to explain frame aggregation to in simple words isn't easy. Frame aggregation doesn't remove ACK's, it simply attempts to minimise the performance hit of a half duplex PHY layer to improve throughput.

Crowdie

228 posts

Master Geek

#1601600 31-Jul-2016 12:14

I teach ACK vs Block ACK as something like:

ACK (802.11)

1. Person #1 - "I went down to the beach" (Data)

2. Person #2 - "OK" (ACK)

3. Person #1 - "and the kids started building a sandcastle" (Data)

4. Person #2 - "OK" (ACK)

5. Person #1 - "while my wife went to the shop" (Data)

6. Person #2 - "OK" (ACK)

7. Person #1 - "and brought ice creams." (Data)

8. Person #2 - "OK" (ACK)

Block ACK (802.11n/ac)

1. Person #1 - "I went down to the beach" (Data)

2. Person #1 - "and the kids started building a sandcastle" (Data)

3. Person #1 - "while my wife went to the shop" (Data)

4. Person #1 - "and brought ice creams." (Data)

5. Person #2 - "OK to all" (Block ACK)

It is pretty easy to see how 802.11n/ac's use of block acknowledgements improves performance over 802.11a/b/g's use of acknowledgements.

raytaylor

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#1601606 31-Jul-2016 12:53

Frame aggregation is well beyond the scope of this topic.

The message is still that wifi is not designed for super fast and reliable service, thats what ethernet is for. It is simply designed for convenience with a few speed improvements added on that help. Collision collapse is still a major problem that I dont see getting resolved anytime soon.

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Crowdie

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#1601809 31-Jul-2016 18:41

You can easily run a large company on a 802.11 network. I have moved a number of large New Zealand companies onto 802.11 only networks (with the exception of printers) and this reduces the number of switches required and, hence, their power consumption. The worldwide movement, as the Cisco stats show, is away from Ethernet and only 802.11 and 4G.

raytaylor:

Frame aggregation is well beyond the scope of this topic.

I was correcting Mr Biddle.

boland

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#1601825 31-Jul-2016 19:02

Thanks all for the extensive answers!!

Waiting for the internal wiring (need some tools, ordered online) and will then move the router to the center of the house.