Bad wifi signal and latency in old house, how to improve?

[stacker512]

Hi,

I am living in a house that has bad wifi signal.
Internet is provided to the front of the house in the living room, it is fibre to the premises, 100mbps speed. Should be plenty fast for what I need
Router is just there, and that's got wifi on it.

My office room is upstairs in the front of the house but I think the walls are really bad for wifi (20s/30s/40s wall construction?).
My server, desktop, work laptop, and personal laptop are upstairs, so I have spawned a short distance local LAN in the room, but things still eventually hook up via wifi.

Youtube often stutters, takes ages to load.
File downloads and transfers are slow.
Online games have intermittent lag, sometimes fine, but it does cause the games to report "lost connection to the server" due to packet loss.

I work in IT, I need stable connection for Zoom calls, meetings, actual work, study etc.

The only 2 options I can think of are:
1. run Cat6 cable across the hallway and stairs and ceiling
2. pay builders to cut up the walls and run Cat6 cable through the walls.

Option 1 is probably not going to happen because of the fiancee factor - she won't like the cables.
Option 2 is probably not going to happen because of the cost involved (I tried to get one company to quote me and they never got back to me), plus the absolute chaos and havoc it would involve in the house.

Any other options that people could suggest?

Powerline adapters might not work - electric is old here and may be on different circuits, plus not sure about signal filtering / EMI noise on the line.

[servodude]

Before you do anything check you are actually getting 100mbps when right next to the router (fast.com on your phone will do)

Once you've confirmed that then you can start looking at the options in the house.

The first thing to try is to lift the router as far off the floor as you can - that's just physics, you aim to get the lowest average line of sight to the router antenna for the areas you want signal
I've managed to get mine in a centrally located cupboard and that put the antenna ~8' off the ground
- and I've now got a box full of powerline and wifi-extenders that I don't normally need!

If you can't do that you can look at adding extra hardware: external antenna, powerlline, mesh systems and wifi access points (tracked via cable to a different point in the room?) are all available at different price points

It is really difficult to predict if any particular solution will work so I would try and order from somewhere with a decent return policy (Amazon?)
- or see if you can borrow bits to try out first

-sd

[Infrasonic]

You don't have to run ethernet through the house, you could go around the outside using fibre/ethernet cable rated for external use.
I'd put it in some conduit.
A few on this board have done just that.

[Urbandreamer]

The best/correct answer is to run the wires.

With respect to getting someone to do it for you, the problem is that people who run mains wires don't want to touch the job as they have no experience connecting the ends of the wires. Ones who do office installations don't want to channel plaster. So again won't touch the job.

You say that powerline adapters may not work. Have you tried? How much money are you willing to spend to find out?
A set of two AV1000 adapters costs less than £30 off ebay. Indeed I got 5 for £32 recently*.
Perfect for testing the idea. In theory that's 1 Gbs from the fiber point to your office.
You could go for AV2000, which in theory is 2 Gbs between adapters. However I think that the adapter to router and adapter to switch/computer is only 1 Gbs.

I say "in theory", because as you know, it's dependent upon the wiring and distance.

BTW, you may already be expecting rather a lot off WiFi. From your description the 5 or 6 GHz signal doesn't have a chance so you are using the 2.4 GHz (slow) signal.

*I'm currently running an old AV600 installation and have decided to change to newer, faster models. I'm waiting for some cat6a cables to arrive before doing the swap. Oh cat6 would do the job, but cat6a was £3 each instead of £2.50 for such short cables.

[BigB]

I live in an oddly extended 50s house with solid brick walls, which create 3 notional swimlanes in the house with front-to-back walls. We use a combination of powerline + mesh, we have 1 mesh router in each of the 3 swimlanes. We support multiple wfh + varying amount of 20 somethings who stream constantly.

[DrFfybes]

First thing I'd do is to check the speed you are getting, plug into the router, then use wifi stood next to the router, then wander around. There are a few wifi scanner apps available - I think I used WiFi analyser when I was trying to set up the repeaters in this place and discovered in the bedroom the strongest signal was from a farm 300m over the field. You might also discover you are getting interference from a neighbour.

Once you've done this you can play with moving the router to see if that helps, at least you can work out where the signal is being blocked. For us it was a chimney in an old external wall that is now internal.

What router are you using, is it the Provider's one or your own? If your own then double check all the settings are correct.

Then, once you know where the issues lie, you can look at powerline/cabling/repeaters.

Internet is provided to the front of the house in the living room, [...]
My office room is upstairs in the front of the house but I think the walls are really bad for wifi (20s/30s/40s wall construction?).

What is the signal like in the room above the router? There should be almost zero drop between the floors assuming standard wooden construction, however someone may have put some insulation or foil backed underlay down.

Paul

[Urbandreamer]

Just a quick note for those dedicated to WiFi. There are apps that show signal strength and networks available for mobile phones.

[xeny]

Hi,

Powerline adapters might not work - electric is old here and may be on different circuits, plus not sure about signal filtering / EMI noise on the line.

Amazon's returns policy would allow you to find out at low risk/cost, and as you only need 100Mbit, they are potentially easily fast enough without being remotely as expensive as dedicated network cabling.

Do you have any stats for a typical wifi connection from your office to the router, i.e. are you ending up on 2.4 or 5 GHz, and what kind of nominal link speed are you achieving?

[mc2fool]

Hi,

Powerline adapters might not work - electric is old here and may be on different circuits, plus not sure about signal filtering / EMI noise on the line.

Amazon's returns policy would allow you to find out at low risk/cost, and as you only need 100Mbit, they are potentially easily fast enough without being remotely as expensive as dedicated network cabling.

Broadband speed doesn't necessarily define the speed requirements/desires for the LAN. I only have 40/10Mb broadband, which is more than enough for my WAN uses, but I'd be mightily upset if my (gigabit) LAN crawled along at that speed. Aside from anything else the daily Macrium backups to my NAS would take ten times longer.

Having said that, the OP does say that their server, desktop, work laptop, and personal laptop are all on a "short distance local LAN"...

[stewamax]

You don't have to run ethernet through the house, you could go around the outside using fibre/ethernet cable rated for external use. I'd put it in some conduit.

Much the best way. A 100m drum of external Cat 6a costs around £120, add proper termination sockets and a WiFi access point, and your bottleneck will be your 100Mb FTTP service!
And as you use Zoom, subscribing for a faster service will improve things markedly and not cost much more than you pay now: going from 100Mb to 300Mb should not cost you more than around £6 pm extra.

[mc2fool]

And as you use Zoom, subscribing for a faster service will improve things markedly and not cost much more than you pay now: going from 100Mb to 300Mb should not cost you more than around £6 pm extra.

Uh? I use Zoom regularly over my 40Mb BB without any problems. The most in Zoom themselves requirements is 4Mb.

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article? ... a8f3c0c69c

[stacker512]

Hi,

Powerline adapters might not work - electric is old here and may be on different circuits, plus not sure about signal filtering / EMI noise on the line.

Amazon's returns policy would allow you to find out at low risk/cost, and as you only need 100Mbit, they are potentially easily fast enough without being remotely as expensive as dedicated network cabling.

Do you have any stats for a typical wifi connection from your office to the router, i.e. are you ending up on 2.4 or 5 GHz, and what kind of nominal link speed are you achieving?

Got this:

$ iwlist wlp5s0 scan

Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=40/70 Signal level=-70 dBm

Although the KDE widget for networks shows:

Signal Strength: 44 to 48%
Connection Speed: 87.7 MBit/s

A Google speed test shows:

56.1 Mbps download
20.7 Mbps upload
Latency: 11 ms
Server: London
Your Internet connection is very fast.
Your Internet connection should be able to handle multiple devices streaming HD videos, video conferencing and gaming at the same time.

Hah not sure I can believe it.

Ping to one host on the inet shows this, sample size = 43:
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 83.577/140.664/269.518/38.244 ms

Quite a range! Lots of jitter?

I have to have 2m of thin co-ax cable leading to external wifi antennas so there's a slightly more direct line of sight to the upstairs hallway. The router is some 4-8m away downwards and slightly sideways.

Maybe it's to do with wifi interference? iwlist scan shows 18 cells that it can see - are we all just competing for the same set of network frequencies somehow? i.e. it might be worse in the evening when neighbours / students are home.

[Infrasonic]

2.4Ghz is very congested, not only with other wifi SSID beacons but also Bluetooth, microwaves, baby monitors et al.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/02 ... placement/

[servodude]

Amazon's returns policy would allow you to find out at low risk/cost, and as you only need 100Mbit, they are potentially easily fast enough without being remotely as expensive as dedicated network cabling.

Do you have any stats for a typical wifi connection from your office to the router, i.e. are you ending up on 2.4 or 5 GHz, and what kind of nominal link speed are you achieving?

Got this:

$ iwlist wlp5s0 scan

Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=40/70 Signal level=-70 dBm

Although the KDE widget for networks shows:

Signal Strength: 44 to 48%
Connection Speed: 87.7 MBit/s

A Google speed test shows:

56.1 Mbps download
20.7 Mbps upload
Latency: 11 ms
Server: London
Your Internet connection is very fast.
Your Internet connection should be able to handle multiple devices streaming HD videos, video conferencing and gaming at the same time.

Hah not sure I can believe it.

Ping to one host on the inet shows this, sample size = 43:
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 83.577/140.664/269.518/38.244 ms

Quite a range! Lots of jitter?

I have to have 2m of thin co-ax cable leading to external wifi antennas so there's a slightly more direct line of sight to the upstairs hallway. The router is some 4-8m away downwards and slightly sideways.

Maybe it's to do with wifi interference? iwlist scan shows 18 cells that it can see - are we all just competing for the same set of network frequencies somehow? i.e. it might be worse in the evening when neighbours / students are home.

Contention is probably a lot of it
Your signal strength of -70dBm is just at the margin of acceptable
I would probably be trying to moving my router a bit to get this improved (checking here I have -60dBm @5G and -50dBm @2.4G)
- on my 5G I get 110mbps over wifi ( I pay for 100) and half that on the 2.4 despite the RSSI being 10dB better

Can you see a 5GHz connection from your router where you are? Even with a lower RSSI it might work better if there are fewer things on it (the lower range working in its favour regards contention)

[Urbandreamer]

I mentioned that I was replacing my AV600 powerline adapters with AV1000 ones.
Well it's done and a speed test shows that, unsurprisingly, I've doubled my download speeds.

[mc2fool]

I mentioned that I was replacing my AV600 powerline adapters with AV1000 ones.
Well it's done and a speed test shows that, unsurprisingly, I've doubled my download speeds.

I take it that's an internet speed test? If so it says that your powerline adapters were (and maybe still are?) the bottleneck, rather than your broadband connection.

So, what did you get before, what do you get now, and how fast is your broadband connection?

Are these over the mains or over WiFi (or both)? And what is your on the LAN speed, e.g. for copying a laaaarge file between PCs over the powerline adapters?

[Urbandreamer]

I mentioned that I was replacing my AV600 powerline adapters with AV1000 ones.
Well it's done and a speed test shows that, unsurprisingly, I've doubled my download speeds.

I take it that's an internet speed test? If so it says that your powerline adapters were (and maybe still are?) the bottleneck, rather than your broadband connection.

So, what did you get before, what do you get now, and how fast is your broadband connection?

Are these over the mains or over WiFi (or both)? And what is your on the LAN speed, e.g. for copying a laaaarge file between PCs over the powerline adapters?

It was a internet test, through the mains power line adapter, a 1 Gb interface and cat6a cables. It was under 30 Mbps from memory when I last tested it. It is now 76 Mbps both at the router and via power line. I knew that they were a restriction, but was using WiFi and had limited broadband when I bought the AV600 gear. For interest download speed via WiFi through the power line is 66 Mbps. That's using a travel router plugged into the power line adapter to provide the WiFi, rather than using a WiFi extender. I'm expecting a mesh extender to drop through the post any day. Some of my devices only have WiFi, while others do not have WiFi, hence the mix.

My broadband was recently upgraded as part of BT replacing their old copper lines. It's talktalk's Fibre 65 VoIP now.

Copying large files is not a good test, as the speed constraint there will be the speed of my very old NAS. I suspect that the Ethernet interface on it is only 100Mbps. As you are interested I did it anyway, 8.8MB/sec.

NOTE, I am not promising that anyone else will see the same results. I was just pointing out that it's a cheap thing to try.

[mc2fool]

I take it that's an internet speed test? If so it says that your powerline adapters were (and maybe still are?) the bottleneck, rather than your broadband connection.

So, what did you get before, what do you get now, and how fast is your broadband connection?

Are these over the mains or over WiFi (or both)? And what is your on the LAN speed, e.g. for copying a laaaarge file between PCs over the powerline adapters?

It was a internet test, through the mains power line adapter, a 1 Gb interface and cat6a cables. It was under 30 Mbps from memory when I last tested it. It is now 76 Mbps both at the router and via power line. I knew that they were a restriction, but was using WiFi and had limited broadband when I bought the AV600 gear. For interest download speed via WiFi through the power line is 66 Mbps. That's using a travel router plugged into the power line adapter to provide the WiFi, rather than using a WiFi extender. I'm expecting a mesh extender to drop through the post any day. Some of my devices only have WiFi, while others do not have WiFi, hence the mix.

My broadband was recently upgraded as part of BT replacing their old copper lines. It's talktalk's Fibre 65 VoIP now.

Ok, thanks. Well the powerline adapters are now clearly faster than the broadband (I believe TT Fibre 65 is actually OpenReach 80/20, which is why you're getting more than just 65 through it), although if you changed the broadband recently too then the historical comparison is maybe not so valid.

Copying large files is not a good test, as the speed constraint there will be the speed of my very old NAS. I suspect that the Ethernet interface on it is only 100Mbps. As you are interested I did it anyway, 8.8MB/sec.

Well ok, but do you not have two gigabit ethernet devices you could try copying a large file between? They'd have to be either side of the adapters of course....

[Infrasonic]

I've mentioned it before in relation to Powerline, Devolo do a power conditioner to clean the signal up...https://www.devolo.co.uk/magic-2-lan-dinrail

Never used it and not seen any reviews for it, but if PL is the only real wired option then I'd install it if it works as advertised.

4 year old thread here on real world powerline results and +/- issues...
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking ... etworking/

[Urbandreamer]

My speed was quite adequate for my needs. I upgraded the equipment because I felt that it was getting flaky.

However since there seems to be an interest in my internal network speed I downloaded iperf to my laptop and to my pi-3.
The pi-3 doesn't have the best Ethernet adapter, but it was an easy test.

Scratch that I repeated the test using a Lenovo Yoga and a Lenovo X230 which was twice as fast.

iperf -c 192.168.1.190
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.190, TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  153 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.1.185 port 60598 connected with 192.168.1.190 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0-10.1 sec   144 MBytes   120 Mbits/sec

To compare, the same computers plugged directly into the router.

Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  128 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  4] local 192.168.1.185 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.190 port 55150
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.10 GBytes   940 Mbits/sec

So, were I concerned about file transfer speed's I'd be well advised to route cables or locate the NAS adjacent to the computer using it.
However as it exceeds my internet speeds, that is my bottleneck.