Any ideas why my wifi is slower than it is suppose to be?

-2

I have a 300mbit/s internet connection and I actually get bit faster since I download from steam around 40Mb/s when using my desktop computer and ethernet. My problem is that when I use my laptop and wifi with the same modem, the download speeds are way slower than they are supposed to be. I get about 3Mb/s speed when I download from steam on my laptop. It is only few months old laptop, wifi signal is good and windows 10 says it is using 802.11ac and 5Ghz. I am also testing it having the laptop right next to the modem and nothing between them and also no other wifi devices connected to the modem. Still I am only downloading 3Mb/s. Laptop gets the same speed as my desktop computer if I connect the ethernet cable to it. The modem is Technicolor TC7230.

Any ideas how to troubleshoot the problem and what reasons there could be for such low download speed?

Belasan

Posted 2018-07-23T01:45:47.807

Reputation: 9

Have you looked to see if you are running the latest firmware on your modem and the latest wifi driver on your laptop? Also, could the modem be stuck in eco mode? (https://crowdsupport.telstra.com.au/t5/Home-Broadband/Technicolor-TG797n-v3-slow-wifi-speed/td-p/342597) Bottom line though is you probably have a lousy modem.

– davidgo – 2018-07-23T02:10:35.327

Do you have any settings for channel width in 5ghz? – Tim_Stewart – 2018-07-23T04:16:00.167

It looks like you're mixing up your units. Based on your description I'd suggest you have a 300Mb/s Internet connection and you can download 40MB/s, which is 400Mb/s, from your desktop. Your WiFi might be downloading at 3MB/s, which is 30Mb/s. That's 10x slower, so not good, but not the apparent 100x slower you seem to be suggesting. – roaima – 2018-07-23T07:52:22.070

I try to look into if there is some kind of eco mode in modem settings. I wasn't thinking that I was suppose to get 300MB/s. I am paying for 300mbit/s connection and I am getting 40MB/s which equals 320Mbit/s using ethernet which is pretty good. I still think 3MB/s (24mbit/s) is too slow wifi connection when device is right next to the modem. – Belasan – 2018-07-23T10:03:47.557

I found something interesting in the 5Ghz wireless settings. There is 3 options for bandwidth 20Mhz, 40Mhz and 80Mhz. The setting has been set as 80Mhz, but the modem still says "Current: 20Mhz". Not sure why it uses different bandwidth than what it has been set to. – Belasan – 2018-07-23T10:26:38.100

Answers

The two things that I would try, are

check wifi speed with a different device (smartphone) with the identical speed test. This checks if your notebook/card/driver is at fault.
check different manual wireless channels for the 5GHz WiFi.

If you get bad performance on all wireless devices at all different wireless transmission modes of your modem/router, the router is probably at fault.

Since you say that your reachable internet download speed on ethernet is reasonably large, you have ruled out your internet connection itself. Also take into account 8b=8bit=1B=1Byte, i.e. 8Mbps=8Mbit/s=1MB/s.

Edit: Could of course also be that there are too many networks in your environment. Maybe check the channel graphs and occupation numbers per channel via Tools such as WiFi Analyzer for Android. Other than that, I suppose your modem is at fault - even though your numbers seem way too low even in that case.

phy-shell

Posted 2018-07-23T01:45:47.807

Reputation: 1

Internet speed test using my samsung galaxy S7 phone seems to be only little bit faster. Around 4MB/s. – Belasan – 2018-07-23T10:21:25.710

-1

The theoretical maximum speed of the router's 2.4Ghz wifi frequency band is 300Mbps, but the actual maximum speed is 100Mbps(12.5MB/s). The largest feature of 5Ghz wifi frequency band is higher wireless transmission speed. We all think, the beginning level speed of 5Ghz wifi frequency band is 433Mbps, some high-performance 5Ghz wifi can reach more than 1Gbps, but as we know the actual speed is less than theoretical speed.

Based on your description, your laptop works with the 2.4Ghz wifi frequency band, so the speed is 3Mb/s, it is normal. We can check if our router supports wireless network of 5Ghz wifi frequency band, if so, we can use 5Ghz wifi frequency band, if not, we can change a router with 5Ghz wifi frequency band, and then we can use 5Ghz wifi frequency band.

Daisy Zhou

Posted 2018-07-23T01:45:47.807

Reputation: 812

OP has mentioned that he is using the 5GHz band. – Fanatique – 2018-07-23T07:25:19.937

1Windows 10 wireless network properties says it is using 5Ghz and 802.11ac. Before when I had slower internet and slower modem that was only able to use 2.4Ghz, I was still able to get around 10MB/s when transferring files between computers, so I think 3MB/s is still too slow even for 2.4Ghz. – Belasan – 2018-07-23T10:07:57.370