[SOLVED] Wired connection is fine but WiFi is unusable even right next to the router.

Moocats

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Oct 24, 2014
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Hi guys, I'm by no means an expert but consider myself generally competent with computing and general networking but we're having some real issues in our house.

We're with Sky as our ISP with FTC but not the house and are using their latest "Sky Q hub" router model SR203 which I refer to below as router prime.

The computers in the house are all wired with cat5e cable and are all working perfectly. However, the WIFI is utterly unusable creating problems for our cellular telephones and tablets. I can sit right along side router prime and I have a service reminiscent of 56K.
Signal strength is solid downstairs and still decent upstairs however I have an old router setup as a WAP upstairs with a 3rd router in the garage also running as a WAP.

DHCP services has been disabled on both WAP's and they have been manually addressed as 192.168.0.2 and 192.168.0.3 respectively. I also set the DHCP range on router prime (addressed as 192.168.0.1) to start at .10 ensuring for certain no other network device can ever be issued .2 or .3 by router prime. I also have each running on independent channels to avoid interference overlap on the same band between my three routers and also neighbour WIFI networks. I believe I entirely disabled their firewalls also.

For the benefits of testing, I have turned off the WAP's with no change to WIFI reliability whilst connecting to router prime.
Signal Strength averages at -51 dBm whilst in the same room as router prime.
I have performed full factory reset on router prime and there was no change.
The ISP have even supplied a new router of the same model and again, no change.

I've been trying to work out when the problems begun. It's a tricky thing to pin down as I rarely use the wireless as I'm more often than not on the PC if I need to be online with my phone rarely being used for browsing etc. We've only had router prime for a few weeks and the ISP dispatched replacement a mere day but I can not recall any such problems when using our old sky hub router. It is my intention to return the old one to service from merely being an access point, factory reset and re-use it once more to see if the trouble persists but what is bothering me is the sheer oddity of this situation and I find myself not convinced that will be a tangible fix.

I can not see any configurational reason as to why the WIFI would be so utterly abysmal with so strong a signal when the connectivity wired is perfect and the fact it's occurring with two brand new routers is very strange indeed and I can't help but wonder if something else is at play here but what could it be? In addition to trying to use the old router again I will be speaking with my provider tomorrow (in about 14 hours of this post going live) but I'd love any suggestions, comments or general feedback before then in case there's something I'm overlooking or something I should ask the ISP to do/provide etc.


Thank you all for any thoughts or input.
 
Solution
So do you have issue when you connect to the AP wifi source. You can change the SSID on the AP so you know for sure you are connecting to them. I assume the devices you call WAP are connected via ethernet.

If it is multiple end devices having issues connecting to multiple WIFI sources in your house then it must not be some bad hardware. If it only does not work with the main router then you suspect maybe some defective radio chips but since it has been replaced that is more unlikely . It also is unlikely you have mulitple phones that have issues

I would also see if you have problems on both the 2.4g and 5g bands. They use different radio chips in the router so it would be unlikely both fail at the same time. Since they...
So do you have issue when you connect to the AP wifi source. You can change the SSID on the AP so you know for sure you are connecting to them. I assume the devices you call WAP are connected via ethernet.

If it is multiple end devices having issues connecting to multiple WIFI sources in your house then it must not be some bad hardware. If it only does not work with the main router then you suspect maybe some defective radio chips but since it has been replaced that is more unlikely . It also is unlikely you have mulitple phones that have issues

I would also see if you have problems on both the 2.4g and 5g bands. They use different radio chips in the router so it would be unlikely both fail at the same time. Since they also operate on different radio frequencies it also means it is less likely it a neighbor interfering.

Since your wire connections work fine your router and ISP connection are not the source of the problem. People ask here all the time how do I limit wifi usage. Almost no router has any ability to limit wifi. For some reason consumer routers do not know what traffic is coming from the wifi chips and coming from the LAN ethernet ports. For you this means it is not some strange configuration that limits devices connected via wifi.

This is a hard one. I do not know good testing tools for phones. What you want to do is see if you can transfer data between your ethernet conencted PC and the phones and see what data rates you get. My favorite tool is called iperf it is very simple network only test tool but I don't know what phones it runs on. This is mostly to see if it is maybe it is something like a browser or other software doing this. A actual wifi problem will be slow no matter where you get the data.
 
Solution
Make sure the 2 radios are assigned different SSID. Lately some routers only assign a single SSID...for people who get confused easily. If you do this though then the pc nic will pick what it thinks is best, a stronger 2.4g signal is not faster than a weaker 5g but the nic will choose based on signal strength.
 

Moocats

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Oct 24, 2014
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Installing the old SR102 model sky router and using it the primary once again seems to have fixed the issue. There's clearly something about the model hubs that isn't liked here. I just wish I could have put my finger on what it was.

Thanks for your input Bill.
 

microtank

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Mar 26, 2021
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Man what is the bandwidth plan first off. Cause people with 1000 mbps are having problems and not realizing a cellphone can use all of it and cause problems on the entire network