I am getting above speeds to the router, but the Wi Fi speeds coming out of the router are slow. Getting over the 1 gig speed to the router, however by using a speed test from by phone, the highest I have seen is around 250m. My computer is hardwired to the router, could this be affecting by download speeds? What else could slow the speeds that much?
What model router? What kind of phone? Are you connecting to 5Ghz?
Speed testing over WiFi isn't a good measurement because lots of things can skew your results: radio interface, number of streams, channel bonding, half-duplex nature, WiFi overhead, wireless contention, distance, legacy devices, TCP acknowledgements, retransmits, etc.
Any Pods or network extenders connected to your gateway router? 250 Mbps seems good for what you've described.
Speed testing over WiFi isn't a good measurement
What he said. I am good at asking questions but before my morning coffee I am not good at expressing why I am asking the questions.
I was half-duplex at expressing as well because what I should have written was spreed testing through a router wouldn't be a good measurement.
What else can affect your speeds on WiFi? Cordless keyboards, mice, baby monitors, RC Toys, garage door openers, cordless phones, Microwave ovens, Bluetooth devices, (like your wireless game controllers), ALL of the wireless networks in your area, and physical obstructions such as walls, doors and even furniture can cause WiFi interference. Then you have EMI interference, monitors, TV's do you use fluorescent screw in light bulbs? The obstructions, if you have Device electronics in between like TV's/stereos. or hardened walls like bathroom walls, or a laundry rooms.
I once worked with someone that had a smart house, and the router was INSIDE the wall in their downstairs laundry room. Think all that wiring surrounding a wireless transmitter, that's like putting it inside a faraday cage! Then it has to go through walls, steel door to the box, and the washer/dryer to get to some of the places in the house.
The ONLY accurate speed measurement will be a wired ethernet computer, using at least a 1000baseTX connections, ot a 2.5gb connections.
What else could slow the speeds that much?
Time. With only the testing device connected to a router, you could assume the router is giving all its processing time to the testing device: 1000 Mbps.
With two devices connected to the router, you could assume the router is only giving half its time to the testing device: 1000 Mb every 2 seconds (1000 / 2 = 500 Mbps). This is a very loose example.
The challenge is, you really need to perform more measurements to understand whether the constraint(s) is (are) a) The router b) the wi-fi device c) distance or obstruction. I can test speeds (using Google mesh) using the onboard testing and get a) speed to Cox b) speed from router to router c) speed from router to device. OR, I can take a device, go close to the router I want to test with, switch wi-fi off/on to reestablish the connection and, if the device supports it, run a local rather than web version of Speedtest, which at least provides a frame of reference. My Samsung S22 is useful and on a 5Ghz connection will run at 450+. (I just ran a test at 486.) My laptop will run about 350 most of the time. Once you know a base speed, you can try other locations and determine how much the drop is due to distance. You can then use WiFi Analyzer, WiFiman, or similar to understand how much the signal has dropped. You'll observe that 5Ghz drops off faster than 2.4 if a wall is in the way. So, I'd start there and with some empirical data we may be able to provide useful suggestions on ways to improve performance.
Google offers a pretty useful tool, huh?
Lots. I still have the old Google Wi-Fi app, and I have the Home app.
The reason 5ghz drops off faster is due to the wavelength. Since it "bounces" up and down more than twice as fast as 2.4ghz, that means for each meter of travel, it's distance traveled is actually twice as far. Because of that, physical obstructions block more than twice as much of it's signal as well. Additionally anything with a device electronics board will do the same, or worse, because of the components, and the boards themselves, it can depending on the components end up completely blocking the signal. A Microwave will completely block 2.4 ghz, because they run on the same freq, and they are designed to hold it inside so placing your router on one side and trying to use 2.4ghz wifi on the other will not work, and if you DO get it to work, it will be slower than molasses running uphill on a cold winter day.
The reason 5ghz drops off faster is due to the wavelength.
I like to compare it to sound waves. Just like a low pitch fog horn can cross long distances and through obstacles, so can the lower frequency Wi-Fi signal.
As for speed, I just saw a video on the importance of Wi-Fi channel width. If you don't live in a congested area, increasing the width can increase your wireless speed. Like a highway, the wider the lane, the more traffic that can pass through it. Does anyone know if the Panoramic gateway allows configuration of channel width or what it defaults to for 5Ghz? 20Mhz?
