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technicat's avatar
technicat
New Contributor

really poor download performance

A few days ago I was getting 8Mbps, which isn't great, but all yesterday it never got over 1Mbps. Today at one point in the afternoon it actually hit 15Mbps (the peak bandwidth advertised for the Essential package), but the reset of the day has been 1-3Mbps. Upload bandwidth has been around 2Mbps, but that's more in line with what I'd expect.

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  • technicat's avatar
    technicat
    New Contributor

    Wired was steadier over the past few days, getting 10-15Mbps with wifi ranging from 1-8Mbps (with an occasional spike to 11 and even 15Mbps) and typically hovering around 2-3Mbps (better than that 1Mbps all day) while upload for both was steady around 2Mbps. However, both have improved to a steady 15-16Mbps in the last 12hrs or so. Previous reboots of the router didn't help but it did improve after I accidentally rebooted after dropping the router while trying different placements. That may be a coincidence, though.

  • grymwulf's avatar
    grymwulf
    Contributor II

    Essentially when having the problem, if you can, compare the wired vs wireless.  If both are pretty similar, odds are it's a problem with the incoming connection.  Typically I see wifi between 40-60% of line speed - even heavily optimized setups that normally have parity with the wired connections can still suffer slow days due to environmental factors (radio interference, sunspots, storms, power line work, a day that ends in y, etc).  So if the wired is within 20-25% of the advertised speed (plus or minus) but the wifi is down in the dumps, try several different ways to improve wifi:

    • http://lifehacker.com/5931743/top-10-ways-to-boost-your-home-wi-fi
    • http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372811,00.asp