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Forum Discussion
2.4ghz is slow, 5ghz is perfect.
Hello, recently i've been having trouble with our home internet speed. We have a 250mbps plan from Xfinity. 5ghz is perfectly fine while 2.4 is not. To try to help fix it I enabled 20/40 coexistence ...
Your title was perfect and describe the problem (not actually a problem).
2.4ghz IS slow. And its sensitive to interference. it does broadcast futher and through more materials though. Thats the problem with it.
Its even worse if you live in close proximity to other homes/residences. Because of the fact that it broadcasts further/through more materials AND its more sensitive to interference, it creates havoc in closer living situations. Such as apartments, condos, town homes, and even single family homes that are halfway close to each other.
When I used to live in an apartment, 2.4ghz was pointless. Where I live now (1/3 acre with 3200sq ft home), its not worthless but its not fast enough/reliable enough to stream HD video. And I've tried multiple manufacturers, mesh systems, etc. So it isn't a manufacturer problem, its an issue with streaming on 2.4ghz problem.
A couple things you potentially can try but might not help much.
1. Try changing the wifi channel the 2.4ghz is on. if there is interfernce, it might help moving to a different channel. I'd recommend 1-6-11 because of channel overlap.
2. If you HAVE to have a device on 2.4ghz because 5ghz doesn't reach, make sure its the only streamer on 2.4ghz. It might help by reducing the network congestion. Sadly, having 80% signal strength doesn't matter much if there's interference.
3. optimally placing the router. when you're only using a single router solution, there isn't any wifi overlap so moving the router might help a bit to give a better signal.
4. Make sure your streamers are on 5ghz if they have a half decent 5ghz signal. 5ghz is so much faster than 2.4ghz that even a weak signal is usually faster than 2.4ghz.
How big is your home?
What are the interior walls made of?
maybe moving to a mesh system or even just adding a mesh extender (i'd recommend the tribands) might give you better 5ghz coverage for streaming.
See, thats the thing. We didn't have a problem with 2.4ghz a few weeks ago. Its only now that its become a problem. My father insists on having the router in his room (because his pc is in there, where he plays iRacing over ethernet), which happens to be on only one end of the house making it impossible to get 5ghz on the other end. My room is in the center of the house, where the router should be placed and where I have preached for him to move it to the center. The house is made of mainly just plaster and concrete and we aren't located close enough to other neighbors to have interference from that, but again, I didn't have a problem with this a few weeks ago. Also, whenever I do a speedtest on the Nighthawk app, is it testing it from the device or checking it through the router?
gagestemper wrote:See, thats the thing. We didn't have a problem with 2.4ghz a few weeks ago. Its only now that its become a problem. My father insists on having the router in his room (because his pc is in there, where he plays iRacing over ethernet), which happens to be on only one end of the house making it impossible to get 5ghz on the other end. My room is in the center of the house, where the router should be placed and where I have preached for him to move it to the center. The house is made of mainly just plaster and concrete and we aren't located close enough to other neighbors to have interference from that, but again, I didn't have a problem with this a few weeks ago. Also, whenever I do a speedtest on the Nighthawk app, is it testing it from the device or checking it through the router?
Just plaster and concrete? huh. I wouldn't say "just". Those 2 are literally 2 of the best blockers of wifi signal.
Again, you can try changing the wireless channel. But I'm not convinced it'll help.
it might have worked fine before and something started interfering or even just the program needing more data and you were already at the peak.
You might checking into using moca adapters (ethernet over coax), power line adapters, or a wireless extender. Keep in mind with the wireless extender that it needs a decent signal to run off and you have plaster/concrete in the home.
Sorry about my usage of the word, "just." It wasn't meant to be used in that sense. I thought there was supposed to be more than plaster and concrete in the materials in a house but of course, my mistake. I changed the channel and it did give me a somewhat substantial boost in performance. From a whole 1mb to 10, which does make streaming kind of possible. Also, I searched up a moca adapter and I was wondering, if you were to plug that into the coax in someone elses room while the router and modem is in another room, would you be able to hook a computer up to that adapter and it work?
Usually you need at least 2 (unless the router has moca built in).
1 to connect to router and one to the device you want to use.