Network transfer speeds

[Tippon]

My home network seems to be slower than it should be, and I don’t know why. I’ve got a Vodafone wireless router with N and AC, and gigabit ports. My computer and two Buffalo hard drives are connected through 200Mb/s homeplugs, and everything else is wireless. Everything wireless is using N instead of AC. There’s a gigabit switch between the hard drives and the homeplug.

When I transfer files between my desktop and the media PC, I get about 5MB/s max. The computers are both in the same room as the router, one on the homeplug, and one on wifi. My PC, the router, and the two hard drives are connected to three separate homeplugs because of the room layout. My whole network seems to be slow, but the two computers are the only things that I can transfer files between easily.

Other than running cables directly to the computers and the router, what should I be doing to rule things out? Thanks for any help guys 🙂

Topic

[Richard]

I was always under the impression that 2.4GHz had better penetration than 5 so if 2.4 was marginal 5 would fail. My walls appear to be death to Wi-Fi so between floors and with the odd diagonal ‘line of sight’ through a wall Wi-Fi reception was grim. I am not certain that a roof mount unit would overcome the issues for me.Wi-Fi only items can be a pain as the bedroom wall is over 50 feet from the ground floor router with a couple of walls in the way. A second access point on the 1st floor is only about 30 feet away but again has a couple of walls in the way so that is not an easy pathway

[Dave Rice]

You’re quite right, 2.4 Ghz has more range than 5 Ghz. However we’ve found that if 5 Ghz is marginal then 9 out of 10 times 2.4 Ghz is too. Our test kit is 2.4 Ghz only which was down to cost when we started doing this seriously (the kit is still current however) and it’s not proved limiting.

In a commercial environment like pubs and clubs we will generally install 2.4Ghz only kit. On the public WiFi we restrict the access to the internet only and may throttle the bandwidth. The owners wireless devices get their own channel and are unlikely to need AC type speeds as those that do will be in the back office and wired in. We provide another secure channel for the likes of card readers.

Looking at the 2 AP British Legion installation, over the weekend they had 145 different devices attach to their crappy ADSL line and no complaints. Try that with a “home” access point never mind the management features, and these devices are only £60 a pop.

The real bugger is devices, they make their mind up what they’re frequency they’re going to use and when to swap AP in a multi AP environment. The Ubiquiti APs try to influence the decision the clients make but isn’t always successful, especially on cheap kit.

This is my house at the moment, as you can see it’s the client spec that has more affect than the frequency. The bottom one is the laser printer and it’s sat within 2 metres of the AP but of course it just doesn’t need loads of bandwidth so it’s specs are low. The only device you’ll see faster than this is my V110 laptop which connects at AC433.

For everyday use every device feels fast enough to do what it needs to do. It’s only when I’m shifting loads of data about (usually customer backups) that Gigabit makes a difference and then it’s a huge difference. That’s what the workshop is for.

[Tippon]

I couldn’t get into the attic to place the repeater today, but I did a quick scan around the house with Wifi Analyzer. In the living room with the router, both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals were about -38dBm, but most rooms were in the minus 60’s and 70’s, with some even worse than that.

The Vodafone router automatically scans channels every so often, and should change them if needs be, but today it looked like every one of my neighbours was sharing channel 6 with me. Ironically I was getting a better signal from them half the time…

I’ll try setting it to channel 1 and having another check tomorrow.

[Author]

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