Top reasons your WiFi is slow | Hacker News Reader

Top reasons your WiFi is slow

blog.metageek.net

44 pointsarmgitaar11 comments

I radically improved my home wifi by installing UniFi kit. It’s a huge step up to have multiple high quality APs distributed throughout the house rather than just one AP trying to blast ever higher power. It also means that I can use much more of the available spectrum and there’s far less interference. Enterprise-class wifi is just so much better than the stuff aimed at consumers (especially the gamer market like the nighthawk router series).

Edit:

For the most part though when I speak to people who aren’t your typical HN crowd, they complain about slow WiFi when they mean that their internet is slow. The WiFi is usually way faster than their internet connection so it doesn’t really matter at all. The other big factor is latency, and basically nothing in a home network is adding an appreciable amount of latency to their connection. It’s only when you are dealing with FTTP that things like good WiFi tend to matter.

A lot of SOHO kits also have multiple antennas per band allowing for more devices without sharing a connection. Usually worth it.

Also, I've seen #4 (interference) happen a lot, cutting the channel width tends to lead to much more stable (though slightly slower max) connections... Much improved streaming consistency.

In my apartment building, hundreds of wifi devices sharing the same radio channels.

Currently, my network runs on an ancient Apple "Airport Extreme" base AP.

Upstream is an 80 Mbps internet connection.

Would upgrading to enterprise kit make any difference?

In my experience, in a crowded single-AP situation, the most bleeding-edge grotesque looking Netgear Nighthawk you can afford will probably do better than spending the same money on SMB/Enterprise gear. Ubiquiti UAP-AC-HD / UAP-AC-SHD reportedly do well in crowded space but I've no experience with those models.

Disable 2.4GHz if you can. Use separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs to force everything 5GHz-capable to that band. Use the smallest channel width. Use the lowest transmit power and highest receive sensitivity that gets the coverage you need.

I have an issue I haven't been able to diagnose. The further the distance from my router, the slower the internet speeds, but not proportionate to the strength. If I move 20 feet away, my signal is still quite strong, but my speeds drop from 150mbps to 60mbs, another 10 feet and it's down to about 15mbs. Luckily I live in a very small apartment. If anyone has any ideas, it would be appreciated!

Thats due to dynamic rate shifting - as you move further away and the signal strength decreases, your client and AP will negotiate new data rates. Data rates will get slower with lower signal quality in effort to reduce error rates. Signal strength is also not linear, essentially a loss of 3 dB is the signal strength being cut in half. Without know much about your environment, you can try putting the AP closer to the middle of locations where you use WiFi at or get a second AP. You can also try a repeater/extender, which is usually frowned upon, but hey, if it helps it helps.

You could be either dropping off the 5Ghz band and onto the 2.4Ghz one (5Ghz has much less penetration and so it dies off way before 2.4Ghz does), or just getting closer to a source of interference.

Hmm, thanks that makes sense. Gives me something to look into anyways.

Give #4 a try and cut your channel widths down... you may not hit 150mbps, but you should have a more stable connection.

By using OpenBSD as an AP I have never been able to get speeds above 10 Mbps even with excellent signal strength. Just by booting Linux on the same AP I can connect with 150 Mbps, but I like the OpenBSD way of doing things so much, that I choose the slower speed instead.

I find #4 is really a frequent improvement... just cutting the channel width to half the router's default leads to much more stable and better performing connections.

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