Question Why do some laptops have better wi-fi connections/speeds to another using the same Wi-fi network?

[ShangWang]

I notice that despite multiple devices in my house hold using the internet, my laptop always seems to not have an issue loading videos whilst if I use my phone and I'm not using the laptop, videos buffer way more.

Why is this? Is it because of better wi-fi cards/software or is it because of this thing called traffic priority? I have no idea how to set this priority and no one set it up but it seems some devices naturally just have better wi-fi.

 

[Jarrett0043]

could be multiple things, some you will have to troubleshoot... how is it connected 2.4g or 5.g how is your router setup to prioritize WIFI connections? check your connections under WIFI. what channel is your WIFI network on could be conflicting with other peoples network on the same channel. troubleshoot the devices that is having the issues, reconnect to WIFI, agian what network is it connected to 2.4 or 5.g how far away are you etc... troubleshoot it.. its kinda trial and error thing...

 

[ShangWang]

could be multiple things, some you will have to troubleshoot... how is it connected 2.4g or 5.g how is your router setup to prioritize WIFI connections? check your connections under WIFI. what channel is your WIFI network on could be conflicting with other peoples network on the same channel. troubleshoot the devices that is having the issues, reconnect to WIFI, agian what network is it connected to 2.4 or 5.g how far away are you etc... troubleshoot it.. its kinda trial and error thing...

I see, I have no idea how my wifi router is set up for priority but I'm assuming that some devices might automatically get better connection than others.

Other than this traffic priority control on your router, the only other factor affecting your wifi speed on the same network is your system's wifi card and software?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Tablets and phones, being smaller than laptops and therefore not having room for as long an antenna, will always have a harder time with wireless, especially at longer ranges.

 

[ShangWang]

could be multiple things, some you will have to troubleshoot... how is it connected 2.4g or 5.g how is your router setup to prioritize WIFI connections? check your connections under WIFI. what channel is your WIFI network on could be conflicting with other peoples network on the same channel. troubleshoot the devices that is having the issues, reconnect to WIFI, agian what network is it connected to 2.4 or 5.g how far away are you etc... troubleshoot it.. its kinda trial and error thing...

Hi again, I was also wondering if the speed of your internet based on how good your wi-fi card or software is also affects the speed of the internet of others.

For example if I download a game at high speeds, will that cause other peopl who are using the same network to automatically have their wi-fi slow down as well?

Does faster wi-fi speed on a device take away some kind of finite source data?

 

[bill001g]

Wifi is shared bandwidth......but so is the internet connection behind it. So a download will affect other users but it is hard to say by how much. It all depends on what percentage of the bandwidth it is using.

To a point this is not a huge issue. Wifi is pretty fast compared to many internet connection. If you have a gigabit internet then the wifi might be the bottleneck. For many people the internet is where the bandwidth bottleneck occurs.

The much more messy condition would be if your pc was uploading data. It is pretty easy for the router to control data being send to different users since it will move between users data streams quite rapidly.
The router must be able to hear the transmission or nothing works but lets say the 2 pc are on different sides of the house where each can hear the router but not each other. Because the method used to see if it is safe to transmit is to listen for other data this can cause both end device to transmit at the same time. When the signals arrive at the router they damage each other. This will causes data retransmission and slower speeds. The machine with the weaker signal will also tend to have there data damaged more often.

It gets very complex when you start discussing different types of wifi hardware...ie it depends on what you mean by "good". Lets say one users is using 802.11ac and the other is using the older 802.11b. The router will quickly switch between these protocols as it servers both users.
So lets say it has a 1500 byte packet for both. Since 802.11b uses a much less dense data encoding it will use the radio bandwidth for a longer period of time than 802.11ac. So in a way the lower quality equipment uses more "bandwidth" but it is better to think about this as how much time it has control of routers transmission than looking at it as how much data is being sent

 

[ShangWang]

Wifi is shared bandwidth......but so is the internet connection behind it. So a download will affect other users but it is hard to say by how much. It all depends on what percentage of the bandwidth it is using.

To a point this is not a huge issue. Wifi is pretty fast compared to many internet connection. If you have a gigabit internet then the wifi might be the bottleneck. For many people the internet is where the bandwidth bottleneck occurs.

The much more messy condition would be if your pc was uploading data. It is pretty easy for the router to control data being send to different users since it will move between users data streams quite rapidly.
The router must be able to hear the transmission or nothing works but lets say the 2 pc are on different sides of the house where each can hear the router but not each other. Because the method used to see if it is safe to transmit is to listen for other data this can cause both end device to transmit at the same time. When the signals arrive at the router they damage each other. This will causes data retransmission and slower speeds. The machine with the weaker signal will also tend to have there data damaged more often.

It gets very complex when you start discussing different types of wifi hardware...ie it depends on what you mean by "good". Lets say one users is using 802.11ac and the other is using the older 802.11b. The router will quickly switch between these protocols as it servers both users.
So lets say it has a 1500 byte packet for both. Since 802.11b uses a much less dense data encoding it will use the radio bandwidth for a longer period of time than 802.11ac. So in a way the lower quality equipment uses more "bandwidth" but it is better to think about this as how much time it has control of routers transmission than looking at it as how much data is being sent

Thank you for all that info! So let's say those two laptops (one which is better and one which is worse) were doing the same exact thing like watching a specific video:

Would the one with better equipment have more priority/make the connection for the worse laptop even worse, or vise versa?