What's an acceptable difference between wired/wireless speeds?

agrinnall

I moved house 6 weeks ago and now have Virgin Media cable, accessed through a Super Hub 2ac router. A wireless speed test that I ran a few days after installation on 7th September showed download speed of 90 Mbps and upload 6 Mbps - fantastic!

Just lately things have felt a bit slow so I ran some more tests, and I wonder what you think about them.

• Wired test : 107 Mbps download, 6 Mpbs upload
• Wireless (connecting to 5G signal) : 53 Mbps download, 6 Mbps upload
• Wireless (connecting to 2G signal) : 47 Mbps download, 6 Mbps upload

The wireless tests were conducted in the same room as the router, within 3 metres distance.

All other devices (except my printer) were disconnected from wifi at the time of the tests.

The wired test shows that connectivity to the exchange appears to be fine. Is it acceptable for wifi speed to be less than half of wired speed? And is there any reason why it's so much lower now than it was a few weeks ago?

I haven't contacted Virgin yet as I wanted to get some views from the forum first - if you think it's normal, or you can suggest something to resolve it myself, that's fine.

spannerzone

You probably need to make sure nothing else is reducing the speeds such as a neighbour's wifi or other devices that might causes interference.

Use a wifi analyser app (on a phone/tablet) or inSSIDer for Windows and see if other wifi users nearby are clashing with yours.... a neighbour's wifi device may be using the same channels which will have some effect on your wifi speeds. If that's the case, you need to move your channel to one less congested (if possible)

However, wireless speed is nearly always a lot less than wired and I get similar 50% as you do although I don't have wireless AC at the moment. If the speed was good and now is poorer, then it seems likely something is interfering, possibly non wifi in origin like a video sender or other 2.4GHz device.

enfield_freddy

if you ar using a later version of windows


control panel / network and sharing , then you will see your wifi , click on it and a box will open , what is the speed shown for the above 3 methods of connection ?

agrinnall

Thanks freddy. Network speeds:

Wired 1Gbps
2G 144Mbps
5G 300Mbps

Your suggestion of interference could be right so I'll do the analyzer thing and see what's happening. I also wondered (and this may just be me throwing around acronyms, as my expertise never moved much beyond the world of COBOL/CICS/DB2) whether there might be an issue with DHCP leases, and that restarting the router might help free up some resources - the IP address shown in my speed test records on Think Broadband has been the same throughout.

agrinnall

The analyzer app is pretty cool.

It shows that there is nothing else within range using 5G, on 2.4G there is one other VM router on channel 1, which is what I'm using, although it's very weak so maybe just accounts for the small difference in speed between the two that I see.

If I can find out how to do it I'll try to switch to another channel, nothing else is in use in the low range although 6 in the mid range is quite busy with VM, Sky and BT.

RumRat

For Info. My Virgin 100Mb connection is the same on Ethernet and WiFi. both max out at 105Mb download.
Same room distance about 11 feet, 5Ghz WiFi. There being little or no difference is why I've not needed to route any wires.............Happy days.

kwikbreaks

If you do phone you'll find that no ISP makes any guarantee on WiFi speeds because they are so dependent on interference and building construction. The specs and quality of your kit as well as anything provided by the ISP can have a big impact too.

thescouselander

Sounds like you might have your 5ghz network set up on the 802.11a (54 mbps) standard. Go into advanced settings in the config page on the router and make sure you set 5ghz to use the 802.11n. IIRC the super hub interface is set up for the not so technically literate so the you'll need to select the option that simply has the higher rate as per the pic below. 5Ghz wifi doesnt have much range on it so I'd recommend going for the middle option for a more robust connection.

jb66

Virgin have provided you with A Superhub with ac wireless technology, they are providing the service for you to achieve maximum wireless speeds, you need to invest in an AC wifi Network card as your equipment is the bottleneck.

marty2be2000

agrinnall wrote: »

• Wired test : 107 Mbps download, 6 Mpbs upload
• Wireless (connecting to 5G signal) : 53 Mbps download, 6 Mbps upload
• Wireless (connecting to 2G signal) : 47 Mbps download, 6 Mbps upload

The wireless tests were conducted in the same room as the router, within 3 metres distance.

All other devices (except my printer) were disconnected from wifi at the time of the tests.

If your printer is only capable of 54mb Wireless G then it will pull the connection speed down for all devices connected on 2.4GHZ to Wireless G speeds. Try the speed tests again with the printer also turned off.

What devices are you using to connect wirelessly (make, model) apart from the printer, not all devices will support the wireless protocols needed to get the best of the wireless connection.

Try connecting two devices to the wireless and run the same speed test concurrently on both and add the speeds obtained from both devices together, whilst this will not be an accurate figure due to the intricacies of the TCPIP protocol it should give a better figure.

Another thing to remember is the range on 5GHZ is a lot less than 2.4GHZ and it is also more affected by walls and solid objects which is why you see a lot of 2.4GHZ networks but hardly any 5GHZ ones.

agrinnall

Thanks folks, I'll do some experimenting and see what happens.

Marty, I'll retry with the printer disconnected, that was the only other equipment using the wifi at the time of the tests but normally I'd also have a smart TV (possibly 2 at times), a smartphone and occasionally a tablet so if your suggested explanation is correct that may explain why I saw some even lower speeds at other times. And thinking about it the very first, faster, test may well have been done before I'd set up the printer.

For those with concerns about range, that's why, as I made clear, I did the tests in the same room as the router so that there are no walls or other obstacles in the way. Unless you are saying that the signal bounces around the room and weakens rather than going in a direct line from the computer to the router.

jb66 wrote: »

Virgin have provided you with A Superhub with ac wireless technology, they are providing the service for you to achieve maximum wireless speeds, you need to invest in an AC wifi Network card as your equipment is the bottleneck.

Can you explain why the equipment is the bottleneck when the wifi connection speeds on both 2.4G and 5G are higher than the broadband speed? If the wifi adapter says it's connecting at 300 Mbps is it lying to me?