Wireless speed is slow, especially at night, what's going on?!

[TxAggie]

Hi All - Total wifi/router NOOB here.

Problem I've been having is that on my normal wifi (not the 5G*this setting works great) I'm getting speeds of less than 10 mbps and at night it can be less than 1. I pay for 100 mbps and when I plug directly into the modem with ethernet cable I get about 108 mbps.

Sometimes during the day it comes back up to 80 mbps or so. I actually got tech support to help me during the day when I was gettin like 20 mbps and they said it was because other people were using the same channel I was on in the neighborhood. We did a search, changed the channel to one it didn't appear that people were using and then it ran great... until that night again when it snapped back below 1 mbps. At any rate I tried switching the channel again and nothing worked.

It's really intermittent... like right now I'm getting 80 mbps and its in the morning. It's driving me nuts. I really am tired of wondering why this is happening at say 2AM.

Can anyone help?!

TIA!

[TxAggie · Accepted solution]

Just thought I'd follow up on this for those that were curious. I had tested my speed directly through ethernet at the modem/router combo and was getting the full 100 mbps that I was paying for. Unfortunately, I was not getting this out of my 2.4 ghz connection wirelessly (it was going in and out somewhere between 1-40 mbps). I was advised by help desk to change the channel via router login to get off a channel that others were using. This temporarily helped, but still the problem persisted. I called back again and we did a reset of the equipment that seemed to again temporarily help (maybe 2 days). After both of these things were tried they noted that my unit was to blame and they would be sending me a replacement. Hope this helps for those in the future. Also was unsure of how to handle this since I did not buy the telephone service contract this is SUPER EXPENSIVE...despite me having a 1 year warranty on the equipment. I made the point with out could I convince them that I needed a replacement if they wouldn't at least test to see if it was working properly. Seemed to work.... At any rate.. new device being shipped to me now.

[DarrenM]

Hello TxAggie 

It does sound like some type of interference are you testing the wifi speeds on one device or multiple?

DarrenM

[TxAggie · Accepted solution]

Just thought I'd follow up on this for those that were curious. I had tested my speed directly through ethernet at the modem/router combo and was getting the full 100 mbps that I was paying for. Unfortunately, I was not getting this out of my 2.4 ghz connection wirelessly (it was going in and out somewhere between 1-40 mbps). I was advised by help desk to change the channel via router login to get off a channel that others were using. This temporarily helped, but still the problem persisted. I called back again and we did a reset of the equipment that seemed to again temporarily help (maybe 2 days). After both of these things were tried they noted that my unit was to blame and they would be sending me a replacement. Hope this helps for those in the future. Also was unsure of how to handle this since I did not buy the telephone service contract this is SUPER EXPENSIVE...despite me having a 1 year warranty on the equipment. I made the point with out could I convince them that I needed a replacement if they wouldn't at least test to see if it was working properly. Seemed to work.... At any rate.. new device being shipped to me now.

[VE6CGX]

If you don't use WiFi analyzer such as inSSIDer or Acrylic, smart phone app. Use it and check your neighbor's wireless signals and pick the best channel for you. Did you try this?

[TxAggie]

I haven't checked that. But will in the future. Not sure if my above message was clear or not but they did find my unit to be faulty -  so they will be sending me a new one at no charge since I was still within my 1 year free repalcement warranty less the cost of shipping.

Thanks for the advice.

[TxAggie]

Well this took an interesting turn of events. Got my new router. Had the same exact issue.

I unplugged my baby monitor and all of a sudden my speeds were much better. So obviously the two were connected.

Unfortunately, was still experiencing pretty slow speeds. Maybe like 25 or 30 mbps instead of around 70-80 like I'm used to getting. Support told me that I needed to have my internet provider (suddenlink) to update my firmware from V2.01.14 to V2.01.18....I think they were just trying to get me off of the phone. Suddenlink told me there was no way in which they could do this. Can anyone tell me if I can do this on my end?

Thanks

[DarrenM]

Hello TxAggie

No you can not manually update firmware on cable modems they are all pushed out via the ISP and many reps do no know or understand this.  It could be that your area is overloaded with connections so certain times of the day you may have slower speeds. You would have to check with your ISP on that.

DarrenM