[SOLVED] Why am I not getting the speeds that I pay for on ANY of my devices?

[Neostarwcc]

Okay so, I'm paying for Gigabit internet and I'm not getting ANY of the speeds that I'm paying for.

My phone (LG K40) is only getting 80 Mb/s internet, my roku ultra box that I paid $150 for a year ago (Forget the model) is only getting 40-60 Mb/s internet, my Samsung Galaxy S5 tablet is getting 200 Mb/s around, my wife is getting less than 60 MB/s on a RJ-45 Cable and a little under 200 Mb/s on wifi. My computer is the fastest and is getting around 490-500 MB/s (Despite having a gigabit cable and no, it's not the cable I've tested multiple cables). I thought maybe it was my router so I switched out my router for an TPlink Archer A10 model which should be overkill for sending out gigabit wireless speeds and has only gigabit LAN ports. It doesn't have 10/100/1000. But yet somehow through a 25 foot RJ-45 cable she gets 60 Mb/s speeds? Really? It's a gigabit ethernet cable as well I'm pretty sure.


I think I fixed my wife's problem by getting a much better wireless adapter than she had before that's supposed to be able to handle 2,600 MB/s speeds (TP Link Wifi 6 AX3000), I'll find out when it comes Tuesday but as for my internet and the internet of my devices? I have no idea. But, what can be done about my other devices? Upgrade them to 5G? Isn't 5G only good if we pay for 5G from a 5G wireless carrier? I honestly don't even see the point in paying the $14 a month I pay for unlimited calling and limited data from Spectrum because we hardly use our cellphone at all. In fact, the buttons are so small on the thing I can't even use it and I was forced to give it to my wife to use. Which, she doesn't. She uses the phone maybe once or twice a month at most.

I honestly don't see the point in paying for gigabit internet if I don't get the speed I pay for on ANY of my devices. I honestly have no clue what I need to do to fix it all. Samsung came out with the S7 tablet which is a 5G tablet but it's also a $700 tablet (I paid like $400 for my s5 years ago), and I'm sure if I bought an iphone or some stuff I could get really fast speeds on that. But I don't want to spend several thousands of dollars in devices just to get the speeds I'm paying for. What can I do?

I had the idea of buying myself a wireless card as well but why should I? My computer is less than 2 feet away from our modem.

 

[rgd1101]

But yet somehow through a 25 foot RJ-45 cable she gets 60 Mb/s speeds? Really? It's a gigabit ethernet cable as well I'm pretty sure.

did you test directly to the modem?

 

[Neostarwcc]

Yes, we've gotten a few modems from Spectrum and all do the same thing. I don't know if this is a configuration in my router that I didn't do or maybe the RJ-45 Cables that I'm using a no good. My wife found out that her cable is a cat5e cable. Which should be able to transfer gbit speeds. My LAN card is supposed to handle up to 2.5 Gbit/s wifi but yet for some reason it's running as a 1 Gbit connection in AIDA64. A Gbit connection that gets half the speed I'm paying for... I'm about to just upgrade my cable because I have no clue what kind of cable I have. They gave it to me with the router.

 

[rgd1101]

Yes, we've gotten a few modems from Spectrum and all do the same thing.

if direct connect to the modem not getting the speed, no router is going to get that speed.
what the model of the modem?

modem should have a stat page

 

[Neostarwcc]

the modem Spectrum gave me is this one

https://www.technicolor.com/distribute/home-experience/access/docsis3.1

Its supposed to support up to 10 gig internet so maybe its my ethernet cables If? I probably haven't bought new ones in years.

If I have really slow cables hooked from my modem to my router maybe thats the problem.

 

[Neostarwcc]

I just tested the modem directly to my computer. I got 987.22Mb/s and 52 Mb/s upload so its not the cable or the modem. This is really weird.

 

[gggplaya]

Disable any QOS or features like that on your router. Definitely your router is too slow.

You won't get any speeds near that on wifi. Most of your client devices are 2x2 antenna's, so that means you can only connect to 2 antenna's at a time. Your max theoretical connection is usually double your real world speeds in wifi because it's so inefficient. Your router could have 10 antenna's and claim to be 10000mbps. But if your client device is only 2 antenna's, on wirelessAC, then the max theoritical connection speed is 867mbps. With wifi inefficiencies, you might be about to get about 400-450mbps assuming a full clean signal.

Also, please stop mixing up your bits and bytes.
B = Bytes
b = bits
1 Byte = 8 bits
10MB/s =80Mbps
60MB/s = 480Mbps.

 

[bill001g]

That router should be able to get closer to gigabit rates when you use ethernet connected devices. There are a couple of hardware acceleration features in modern routers that allow traffic to be handled outside the router CPU. Even fairly inexpensive routers can get close to gigabit speed wan/lan.
I would try a factory reset of the router. Only set the ADMIN and wifi passwords. I would disable the wifi radios and make sure only 1 pc is attached via the lan ports. If it still only gets about 500mbps then I guess you could try firmware but this would almost be a defective router. A number of the testing sites show that particular router can get well over 800mbps wan/lan so you would think yours would also.

You pretty much wasted your money on the new wifi card. You really have to dig down and find out what the numbers really mean. Just because both have numbers like 2600 is the marketing guy trying to con you because they know people will not look this stuff up.

Your router is only wifi5 (ie 802.11ac) so it will not use the new features of wifi6. The wifi nic card you purchased only has 2 antenna so it also can not use the 4x4 mimo feature on your router.

I will lie a little to make the example simpler.

Your router can run 4 feeds of using 80mhz channels of say 4x400 or 1600.
A wifi6 card will run 2 feeds using 160mhz channels so say 2x800 again 1600.

So both these can get 1600 number they are are very different in how they do it. Your router does not support the 160mhz channels (that is one of the key features of wifi6). So what will happen is you will get a connection using 2 x 2 on 80mhz channels or about 800.

Now these number do not really represent the speeds you get in a real world install.


Note if you have the option to return or not buy the wifi6 card I would do that. Until you get a wifi6 router it serves no purpose and wifi6 devices are already obsolete. There are now wifi6e routers and nic cards that have been recently announced. Not sure when you can actually buy them but I suspect by next summer wifi6e devices will be fairly common.

 

[Neostarwcc]

Disable any QOS or features like that on your router. Definitely your router is too slow.

You won't get any speeds near that on wifi. Most of your client devices are 2x2 antenna's, so that means you can only connect to 2 antenna's at a time. Your max theoretical connection is usually double your real world speeds in wifi because it's so inefficient. Your router could have 10 antenna's and claim to be 10000mbps. But if your client device is only 2 antenna's, on wirelessAC, then the max theoritical connection speed is 867mbps. With wifi inefficiencies, you might be about to get about 400-450mbps assuming a full clean signal.

Also, please stop mixing up your bits and bytes.
B = Bytes
b = bits
1 Byte = 8 bits
10MB/s =80Mbps
60MB/s = 480Mbps.

So it is the wifi of the devices that's the problem but not the router? My router is not using QOS but is using Because my tablet is getting the fastest internet out of any of my devices (200 Mbps or so). I did upgrade my wife's wifi adapter like I said so at least two of us will actually get the internet we actually pay for.

 

[gggplaya]

So it is the wifi of the devices that's the problem but not the router? My router is not using QOS but is using Because my tablet is getting the fastest internet out of any of my devices (200 Mbps or so). I did upgrade my wife's wifi adapter like I said so at least two of us will actually get the internet we actually pay for.

You should NOT do your speed testing with wifi, period. You will not get gigabit speeds on wifi. You should only be testing using gigabit ethernet.

 

[Neostarwcc]

You should NOT do your speed testing with wifi, period. You will not get gigabit speeds on wifi. You should only be testing using gigabit ethernet.

Just figured this out. The adapter I ordered for my wife came in yesterday and she wasn't getting any better speeds than before. Then we moved the treadmill that was near to her computer and she is getting 500 Mbps internet now. So yeah, you're probably right there's no such thing as gigabit speeds over WIFI but at least she is getting half of what I paid for. I ordered all brand new ethernet cables for all of my devices including the one going to the modem to the router and my speeds around around 995 ish now. Probably the closest i'll get to getting the internet I pay for so I guess I'll call it fixed.

Because wireless devices like tablets and cell phones and whatnot (Especially the cheapish ones I have now. My tablet is now almost 5 years old I should be happy I get the 200 Mbits I sometimes get on the thing.) will never reach my wife's wireless speeds I can call it all fixed right? So only if I moved my entire computer network into a computer room and brought all of my desks together would all of my computers be getting the internet I pay for. Thanks I wasn't aware of that. I thought when a wireless adapter advertises for instance that it can achieve speeds up to 2,800 Mbps for example that it could handle that kind of internet. Guess not.