Question Poor and variable Wi-Fi speeds on Chromebook ?

[RickVS]

I have a Lenovo S330 Chromebook that my wife uses on the couch. It is about 10 feet away from a Verizon network extender. I have an LG Gram right next to her. I have 300 Mbps coming into the house. My LG Gram consistently gets around 300 Mbps on a speed test. The Chromebook OTOH can get 80 Mbps one minute, and 160 Mbps the next minute, and is generally slow to do pretty much anything no matter if I have it connected to 5G or 2.4. Doesn't seem to make a difference. Couple questions:
1) why is the signal coming into the Chromebook so up and down while it doesn't change with my Gram sitting one foot away?
2) is there anything that I can do to get better performance from the Chromebook?
Thanks.

 

[Lutfij]

1| They don't use the same adapter. One uses a Marvell adapter;
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/Lenovo/Lenovo_Chromebook_S330/Lenovo_Chromebook_S330_Spec.PDF
while the other should have a much better adapter, like an Intel 7260NGW or something with WIFi6E, depending on your model considering there's not just one LG Gram's out there. Very likely that the drivers for each are at play here considering I know that the LG Gram's are meant to run on Windows OS.

Moved thread from Android & Chrome OS section to Wireless Networking section.

 

[RickVS]

Thanks. I've looked for USB wi-fi adapters however it needs to be for Chromebook and needs to wholly plug into the usb port since it needs to be mobile. Found only one that maxes out at 150 Mbps which doesn't help.

 

[bill001g]

That almost seems like it is jumping between 2.4 and 5. Do you have the same or different SSID for 2.4 and 5. You can force it to a radio band if they are different.

Is the version extender running MoCA or is is a wifi repeater. If it is a wifi repeater how strong is the signal from the main router. maybe the chromebook it directly connecting to the router instead of the extender.

Maybe explain why you think it is "too slow to do anything". Bandwidth only really matters if you are downloading large files. Something like watch 4k netflix only uses 30mbps. It will not use more even if it is available.

 

[RickVS]

I have the option to connect to either 2.4 or 5 (the SSIDs are different), and it doesn't seem to make a difference. The signal strength at times will be strong and other times medium even though literally nothing changes. I don't think this is a repeater. The extender looks exactly like the router that is in the basement. When I say slow, I mean like loading web pages specifically. When Chrome is closed and reopened, I have five websites that automatically open. I just tested it and it took 1 minute and 10 seconds to open them. I just did a speed test and I got 195 down and 109 up which should be fast enough I would think. Also, navigating web pages that are open isn't 'snappy'. Everything just feels slow.

 

[bill001g]

That might be packet loss which kind is the same thing as wifi speed in a way. The reason some devices are slower is that lost data must be retransmitted by the wifi radios which takes time.

I am not sure about chrome but there should be something that show the connect speed. In windows it is under status, unless microsoft moves it again. This is not really the speed it represent what is called a MCS number which lets you get a idea how the data is being sent. Things like mimo and QAM encoding rates.

It really should not affect normal web usage the data rates even it is reloading a bunch of pages at the same time is only a couple mbps...unless of course there are stupid autoplay video ads.

This sound more like a DNS issue. Try to manually set the dns to 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1. The default is to use your router as a proxy to the ISP DNS server. Both these can cause strange issues. Google (8.8.8.8) and cloudflare (1.1.1.1) also support encrypted DNS which is a recommended setting.

 

[cruisetung]

Have you tried other browsers?

If buying USB adapter, you can only use the ones with built-in driver support.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChromeOSFlex/comments/wg4iqn/known_good_usb_wifi_adapters/

It works in ChromeOSFlex, probably will work in Chromebook
https://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY

==

Well, someone compile a list of hardware that's compatible with ChromeOSFlex , not ChromeOS.
ChromeOSFlex however can be considered a lightweight ChromeOS

https://drive.google.com/file/d/171r3mWa8COKr6aFVt-RnoAGmOByI01z8/view?pli=1