Question Wifi to my desktop suddenly became very unstable and slow after 10 months of minimal issues

[DavidStridh]

I've been living in a basement for the past 10 months, sharing a Wi-Fi connection. My dad helped me set up an ASUS router in my room to boost the signal, which is connected via ethernet to my desktop. This setup worked fine for a while, with typical speeds of 20-40 Mbit/s for both download and upload. I could stream, browse, and play games like WoW without issues.

However, recently the internet has become extremely slow and unstable, often dropping to 0.5-2 Mbit/s and sometimes it just stops working outright (tested on https://www.bredbandskollen.se/ let me know if there are better sites to test on). Pages barely load, and gaming is impossible. Oddly, the Wi-Fi on my phone still works fine.

I'm not sure what additional details might help, so please let me know what info you need to better understand the situation.

Very grateful for any help!

 

[bill001g]

Pretty much you are using a external wifi card that looks like a asus router. It does not improve the wifi or get better signals levels than say a USB nic...well it is better than those very tiny USB devices you get for $5.

Maybe your phone is using 2.4g and the pc 5g or the reverse. You could try placing the router in a different location in the room.

Basement blocks lots of wifi signal so there is no good solution. You shouldn't play online games on any kind of wifi even the best signal can get random interference causing lag spikes in the game.

I would look into MoCA devices if you have coax cable in both location. If that is not a option maybe powerline networks would work for you. With the ones that have a 1000 or 2000 number on them you should get over 100mbps in most houses and it will be much more stable than any wifi.

 

[DavidStridh]

Pretty much you are using a external wifi card that looks like a asus router. It does not improve the wifi or get better signals levels than say a USB nic...well it is better than those very tiny USB devices you get for $5.

Maybe your phone is using 2.4g and the pc 5g or the reverse. You could try placing the router in a different location in the room.

Basement blocks lots of wifi signal so there is no good solution. You shouldn't play online games on any kind of wifi even the best signal can get random interference causing lag spikes in the game.

I would look into MoCA devices if you have coax cable in both location. If that is not a option maybe powerline networks would work for you. With the ones that have a 1000 or 2000 number on them you should get over 100mbps in most houses and it will be much more stable than any wifi.

Thank you so much for the quick and thorough response!
I've been looking into powerline network but wasn't sure if that would be any better.

 

[lantis3]

I've been looking into powerline network but wasn't sure if that would be any better.

powerline is much worse than moca because of too much noise.

Moca will run at rated speed, yet worst powerline case can be only 1/10 of the speed of the spec.

 

[bill001g]

powerline is much worse than moca because of too much noise.

Moca will run at rated speed, yet worst powerline case can be only 1/10 of the speed of the spec.

Yes if you have the coax cables. Powerline will likely be much better than wifi in this case because of the extremely poor signal levels on wifi.

 

[Ralston18]

I will go back to and ask about:

"This setup worked fine for a while, with typical speeds of 20-40 Mbit/s for both download and upload. I could stream, browse, and play games like WoW without issues."

My underline.

10 months being that "for a while".

Connectivity being:

ISP === (Coax, DSL, Fiber) ===> Modem ---Ethernet cable -->[WAN port] Router [LAN port] -----Ethernet cable to your basement desktop.

Feel free to edit and correct the above line diagram.

Not sure about network connectivity because you mention Wifi in the post title then use Ethernet in the post....

One immediate thought being that there may be two network adapters enabled: wired and wireless. Should only be one enabled network adapter.

Make and model information for modem and router (or modem/router if combined)?

And other connected network devices?

Any known changes to hardware, software, drivers, or network?

On your desktop take a look in Task Manager and Resource Monitor. Use both tools but only one tool at a time.

Look for apps, utilities, etc. that may be grabbing and holding desktop resources thus slowing performance.

Also run "ipconfig /all" (without quotes) via the Command Prompt on the desktop. Copy and paste the full results in a post.