Internet wifi questions

[SpringHeeledJack]

One has recently upgraded (or down, depending on experience ) to a cable based internet that is very fast. The router comes with a 2G and 5G band connection. I've noticed that when even close to the router the speeds achieved are only a fifth of the 'Up to' speeds when using wifi. I'm aware of the irony that now my internet is very fast compared with the old offering, but to only get a fraction of the purported speed is a bit disappointing. A friend mused that my older laptop might only connect to the 2G band which would always restrict the speed well below, whereas another said I was likely sharing the pipe with whomever else was in the street and that would throttle the speed downwards.

I've also noticed they my IP address stays static, which countermands my assumption that these days they were dynamic, changing when you were offline or the ISP was tweaking the network etc ? Is this better or worse than dynamic ? Any wisdom appreciated.


SHJ

[Ancient Observer]

Have you looked at wiki to read up on the "standards"? My older, ("n") but not antique, modem/router courtesy of BT delivers 30mbps to a newish tablet the other side of the house, from circa 39mbps as it comes in to the house. (About half what I am apparently paying for ). What does your modem/router suggest you should be getting?

But mine coughs and splutters to keep an older Sony tv in full stream, so I'm guessing that is the tv's receiver's problem, not the modem/router.

So many complex things in today's life. The whole marketting thing of "New" should be banned. You get one "new" service, and it turns out that nothing else fits it....
A friend says that we can blame all this marketing "new" stuff on Dulux who got heavily in to "new" back in the 50s.

[mixture]

A friend mused that my older laptop might only connect to the 2G band which would always restrict the speed well below,

Certainly easy to check :
(a) Check router specs
(b) Check laptop specs
(c) If laptop covers the full 802.11 spectrum, then check software is connecting to correct spectrum (look for something called "PHY Mode").

whereas another said I was likely sharing the pipe with whomever else was in the street and that would throttle the speed downwards.

In the vast majority of cases, this is more likely to be the problem.

How else do you think the providers can offer "super fast broadband" at a stupidly low price per month. You get what you pay for. Pay more, you get better broadband. Pay less, you get contention, packet shaping, rate limiting,caching, FUPs, AUPs and all the other crap the ISPs sysadmins can conjure up on their core routers so as to try to break-even or even make some profit on the broadband (assuming its not being artificially cross-subsidised by another part of the business... hello BT Retail, I'm looking at you )

I've also noticed they my IP address stays static, which countermands my assumption that these days they were dynamic, changing when you were offline or the ISP was tweaking the network etc ?

I'm sure if you look at the small print of your contract you'll very much find you are on a dynamic IP address.

You may well find you are on the equivalent of a long lease DHCP from the ISP. But nonetheless, the IP won't be specifically assigned to your router.

As the relentless march on depletion of IPv4 resources continue, you may well find that ISPs with customers on dynamic IP contracts will start becoming more aggressive in an attempt to free up IPv4 resources. You may well find yourself subjected to more nasty sysadmin tools such as "carrier grade NAT" in the not too distant future. BT have already been slowly and quietly rolling it out to their unfortunate customers since 2013.

There are other weapons than "carrier grade NAT" at ISPs disposal, if an ISP is using CGNAT and is adhering to RFC6598, then you'll have an external IP in the independent reserved IANA 100.64.0.0/10 range. But ISPs may of course ignore RFC6598 and use something else like RFC1918 .... or worse !

To inject a little bit of balance, for your average eyeball network user, CGNAT and the rest is unlikely to make much difference to their life if what you do on the internet is confined to the environs of a web browser such as Firefox. But if you're doing corporate VPNs, voice over IP or anything more interesting than watching EweToob then you're going to be in for a miserable time. If you thought local router NAT was bad enough, you aint seen nothin yet !

[Saab Dastard]

You need to identify what the difference in speed is between a wireless and wired connection inside your own property, ideally to the same device (not at the same time). If there's no difference then the throttling is down to contention in your area or other issues with your ISP.

If there is a difference (and it's almost certainly the wired connection that will be faster), then your home wifi setup is falling back to a lower speed connection between the WAP (wireless access point) and the PC - various reasons, usually down to signal strength / interference from nearby WAPs.

If you don't need to support older wifi - b, g for example - then you should switch off support in your WAP for the unneeded bands, as this certainly used to be a cause of reduced throughput.

If you rarely switch off your router, then you would expect the DHCP lease to remain fairy static, irrespective of the lease period. That's how DHCP works - the client attempts to renew the lease before the expiration time (usually at 50% of the lease period). Since the address is palpably still in use (and therefore not in use by anything else) the client should not have a problem renewing it and there would be no need for it to change, in normal circumstances.

SD

[BEagle]

I have several devices connected to my Virgin router - which is a dual band system. But although both laptops have 802.11b/g/n wireless cards, only one of them recognises the 5 GHz signal. The printer, both Ethernet bridges and the Philips Streamium all use 2.4 GHz.

So my old Dell Vostro 3300 provides a download speed of 109 Mbps on 5 GHz, yet the newer HP TouchSmart only achieves 19 Mbps on 2.4 GHz, although upload speeds on both are around the same at about 6 Mbps.

I know that the TouchSmart is rather a limited device (and it's only used as a backup or for the odd bit of surfing), but whether the slower downstream speed is due to the wireless card or the overall low spec. of the computer, I do not know. I guess we've now reached the stage that 'internet speed' is often more limited by the device than the infrastructure?

[Keef]

I recall some military intelligence imparted to me in my youth: "use wireless for attack; use wired for defence."

While there are some impressive speeds achievable with the latest generation of wireless modems etc, there are always several reasons why it's not quite as good in practice as it should be. In a populated area, there may be a near neighbour on the same WiFi channel. Your laptop/iPad/whatever may be at the limit of range of the access point, and so on.

My desktop PC is wired to the router. I get 65meg down, 18 meg up pretty much all of the time. It used to be close to 80 meg down when first installed, but I was one of the first in the village to get FTTC. They've been installing it as fast as they can go, and as more and more folks have changed over, the speed has dropped. C'est la vie.

My portable things all get the fastest speed they can achieve on whatever 802.11 protocol each uses. None is as fast as the wired connection to the desktop.

My ISP specifically offers fixed IP addresses. That's useful for the VPN I use. The counter-argument is that IPv6 may be required sooner rather than later. The router I have can do IPv6, but I've not found how to get the iPad on 3G to recognise it.

[Obba]

One would think that cable would have a higher bandwidth. ADSL is terrible for bandwidth no matter the speed. So your dl shouldnt affect you ul.


Maybe your new modem/router doesn't have very good antennas? I know some as mine come with 3.

i solved quite a few dead spits in the house by simply (cat6), to a AP. cheap and full speed coverage over the entire house.

[Biggles78]

SpringHeeledJack, check your wireless device and see if it is a 1 x 1 or a 2 x 2 device. If it is 2 x 2 then it may have the wrong drivers and be running at 1 x 1 "speed". I had a laptop arrive from the factory with the wrong drivers installed and it took me some time to work out what the issue was and then find the correct drivers.

Originally Posted by obba

One would think that cable would have a higher bandwidth. ADSL is terrible for bandwidth no matter the speed.

Please keep in mind that cable and wireless are a SHARED medium. That means the more people using it the less there is to go around. Think of it like a 3 lane road at 3am and you are the only one on it. Theoretically (all legalities aside) you are limited by as fast as your car go. The exact same road in peak hour when all 3 lanes are being used and traffic is bumper to bumper, your speed is limited due to the high number of other users.


xDSL on the other hand is like a private road just for you and your speed is limited by the condition of the road.

[mixture]

xDSL on the other hand is like a private road just for you and your speed is limited by the condition of the road.

Either you have oversimplified or you are talking rubbish. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and guess you are in the former category, therefore :

For the avoidance of doubt, xDSL is a private road in the portion of copper that runs between your house and the local telephone exchange.

Once you hit the first piece of active equipment at the local exchange (most likely the DSLAM) , all bets from there onwards are anyone's game. And believe me, the ISPs know that and will take opportunities at every level !

To repeat what I said above :

How else do you think the providers can offer "super fast broadband" at a stupidly low price per month. You get what you pay for. Pay more, you get better broadband.

If you are a home user, and you are paying pittance per month, then irrespective of whether you are on copper, cable or "fibre" ... you will be on a shared medium of some description, and you will be crammed in there amongst a litany of other ISP customers.