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Forum Discussion
C7000-100NAS Slower WiFi speed vs wired connection
Have C7000-100NAS on Comcast with a 500Mbps plan, have never got the speed of more than 200-250Mbps on any of my devices and all of them are connected wirelessly. While troubleshooting with Comcast s...
Same problem.
Ran speedtest and it showed lower than expected internet speeds on 2.4 ghz devices than expected. Contacted ISP and service was diaspatched. We checked router settings, cable connections and all were fine. We disconneted the cable from the C7000 and the service tech tested the line with a meter showing we were getting communication speed slightly above what we were contracted to use.
Here is what I didn't know before the Tech explained the slow 2.4 speed.
Connectivity to the 2.4 Ghz wifi network and routing to other 2.4 Ghz devices within the network are only impacted by the amount and size of data being sent at any one time.
Connectivity to the 5 Ghz wifi network are the same.
However.... router communication to the ISP is controlled by the ISP by Band and by Channel at the Router. So 2.4 Ghz & 5 Ghz communications are not intermixed going to/from the ISP nor equal (50% of the cable dedicate to 2.4 Ghz and 50% of the dedicated to 5 Ghz).
Analogy: Imagine the ISP's coax cable is a 1" pipe. Within that 1" pipe are 2 pipes called 2.4 and 5. We users do not know the size of these two internal pipes and their size is controlled by the ISP. I am a Comcast Blast customer and as it turns out, the ISP allocated the 2.4 pipe to use 30% of that 1" pipe to the ISP and the 5 pipe uses 70% for internet access.
What the tech and I found was the 2.4 Ghz band traffic to the internet was being delayed by the router (so much data to the internet and the 2.4 pipe was to small to handle it). In otherwords, to many devices requiring internet connectivity (ie. Cloud services) on the 2.4 Ghz band. I moved devices that are 5 Ghz friendly off the 2.4 Ghz band and that helped a lot but introduced another minor problem: Those devices that were able to communicate with other devices as long as they were on the same "network" broke lost communication with one another but that is another topic of discussion.
The problem I am seeing is the product community is selling 2.4 Ghz products because of signal strength/distance and the ISP is reducing the 2.4 Ghz band (pipe) over their cable in favor of revenue generating video streaming. Who's stuck in the middle getting the same "Things look good on our end" from the Product & ISP Support?.... The customer.
Try moving as many 5 Ghz capable devices to 5 Ghz one at a time checking each one.
I moved almost half of my devices from 2.4 Ghz to 5Ghz, lost some functionality but my 2.4 Ghz devices are no longer having the problem they were before the move.
I am going to be very picky about buying Wifi devices that are only 2.4 Ghz.
PS. I did not have any luck with my ISP request to enlarge 2.4 Ghz and reduce 5 Ghz use between our house and ISP.
> Here is what I didn't know before the Tech explained the slow 2.4
> speed.
That's a very frightening way to begin a story. (I've heard many
explanations of many things from many people. Not every one was valid.)
> However.... router communication to the ISP is controlled by the ISP
> by Band and by Channel at the Router. [...]
That's where your story stops making sense, and begins to sound (to
me) like a fairy tale which was created by a technician with more
imagination than factual knowledge.
> Analogy: Imagine the ISP's coax cable is a 1" pipe. Within that 1"
> pipe are 2 pipes called 2.4 and 5. [...]
You can imagine that, but I claim that cable-TV ISP service does not
work that way.
> [...] as it turns out, [...]
How, exactly, did you determine this?
> [...] the ISP allocated the 2.4 pipe to use 30% of that 1" pipe to the
> ISP and the 5 pipe uses 70% for internet access.
What happens to the wired devices? How big is that (imaginary)
dedicated "pipe"?
> I am a Comcast Blast customer [...]
How fast is that service supposed/claimed to be?
I propose an experiment. Get hold of a computer with a gigabit
Ethernet interface, and connect it to your C7000. Run a speed test
using that computer. How much of your promised speed do you get that
way? Which (imaginary) dedicated "pipe" is that, and how much capacity
does it leave for the other (imaginary) dedicated "pipes" which are used
by your wireless devices?
What speed can you actually measure when using a computer/device with
a 5GHz wireless connection? With a 2.4GHz wireless connection? Can you
get those numbers to make any sense with your dedicated-pipe hypothesis?
What happens if you run two speed tests simultaneously, on, say, the
wired computer and your fastest 5GHz wireless device? How do those
dedicated "pipes" hold up then?
> Try moving as many 5 Ghz capable devices to 5 Ghz one at a time
> checking each one.
It's certainly true that putting more traffic through the 2.4GHz
radio will reduce the capacity (speed) available to any particular
client device which uses that radio band. That is entirely unrelated to
the communication between the router and the ISP.
> PS. I did not have any luck with my ISP request to enlarge 2.4 Ghz and
> reduce 5 Ghz use between our house and ISP.
What kind of "not any luck" was that? I'd expect a response like "We
can't do that." (Because I doubt that they could do that.)
In the real world, I claim, 2.4GHz and 5GHz (and wired-Ethernet, and
any other) communications _ARE_ intermixed going to/from the ISP.
But why trust me? For all you know, I could know less than your
technician. Run the experiment. Analyze (and reveal) the results of
your speed measurements. (That science stuff is a miracle.)
Tried switching off the 2.4Ghz network but doesn't seem to help, speed is more or less same as before.
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I
agrCtlRSSI: -36
agrExtRSSI: 0
agrCtlNoise: -86
agrExtNoise: 0
state: running
op mode: station
lastTxRate: 1053
maxRate: 1300
lastAssocStatus: 0
802.11 auth: open
link auth: wpa2-psk
BSSID: b0:b9:8a:dc:23:d4
SSID: Magic ;-)
MCS: 8
channel: 153,80Commandline output
Statistics directly from the router/modem, attached screenshot