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Great wired speeds, awful wireless

rr
Newbie
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎19-07-2013

Great wired speeds, awful wireless

Hi,
Have recently moved to plusnet fibre 80/20, and using the supplied Technicolor 582N attached to the Openreach modem.
If I connect with a wired connection to the 582N, I get consistent speeds of ~74mbps on Speedtest, and these good speeds are reflected when downloading files.
However, as soon as I try using the wireless the max speed I get is about 40mbps.
I have tested with 3 laptops, 2 phones and a PC, at various distances/rooms etc, from 1m to 20m away, but the max results are the same.
The PC has a 2.4/5GHz 450mbps wireless card in it, and the laptops/phones are all 2.4GHz wireless N clients, and I think the laptops can all support 300mbps

Does anyone actually achieve 70mbps+ through wireless using this router?
I can't think of any settings I can change to improve things, and given that I've tested at short and medium+ distances I can't see it being a problem with distance or having to go through lots of walls...
Would appreciate any help you can give!
10 REPLIES 10
chrispurvey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 5,369
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎13-07-2012

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

Hi there,
It might be worth trying to change your wireless channel, I'd also suggest using inSSIDer to see the best channel to use.
Details on how to do both can be found here.
rr
Newbie
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎19-07-2013

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

Thanks for the reply. I should have mentioned that I have already ensured the wireless channel is one unoccupied by neighbouring networks by using inSSIDer
Currently on channel 10, other networks that inSSIDer detects are channel 1 and 3
HairyMcbiker
All Star
Posts: 6,792
Thanks: 266
Fixes: 21
Registered: ‎16-02-2009

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

Check the other threads on the router. The wifi is useless.
PN has been told this repeatedly but still passes it off as a "working router" when multiple people have said it just will not connect when you are in a different room from it.
The signal strength from it to my android tv stick in the next room was so poor that the bt hub ACROSS the road has a higher signal strength, even the TT router next door had a stronger signal!
Get a hold of a HH2 or a HH3 from ebay or freecycle, they will perform much better.
ejs
Aspiring Hero
Posts: 5,442
Thanks: 631
Fixes: 25
Registered: ‎10-06-2010

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

inSSIDer is worse than just trying other channels - maybe you can't see any other networks on channel 11 because you can't see them past all the non-wifi noise which inssider doesn't show.
rr
Newbie
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎19-07-2013

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

Quote from: Hairy
Check the other threads on the router. The wifi is useless.
PN has been told this repeatedly but still passes it off as a "working router" when multiple people have said it just will not connect when you are in a different room from it.
The signal strength from it to my android tv stick in the next room was so poor that the bt hub ACROSS the road has a higher signal strength, even the TT router next door had a stronger signal!
Get a hold of a HH2 or a HH3 from ebay or freecycle, they will perform much better.

Thanks for this, I did strongly suspect that it is useless, however I am interested to know if anyone can achieve the speeds that actually reach their home using the supplied router. As otherwise I can't see how plusnet can justify supplying a router that cannot under any circumstances achieve 70mbps+ wireless speeds
Quote from: ejs
inSSIDer is worse than just trying other channels - maybe you can't see any other networks on channel 11 because you can't see them past all the non-wifi noise which inssider doesn't show.

Thanks, I will try other channels just in case when I get home
ejs
Aspiring Hero
Posts: 5,442
Thanks: 631
Fixes: 25
Registered: ‎10-06-2010

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

Quote from: rr
a router that cannot under any circumstances achieve 70mbps+ wireless speeds

They have been shown to achieve 70mbps+ wireless speeds under test conditions: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,110884.0.html
I have only used a 582n very briefly but I didn't see any obvious problem with the wifi signal strength, I think it was about -47dbm going though a floor/ceiling (slightly better than my old dg834g 11g router), and about -20dbm when a few cm away from my laptop.
rr
Newbie
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎19-07-2013

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

Thanks for that link. So, given that they apparently can achieve 70mbps+ in test situations, why can I get nowhere near that?
I'll try all the available channels when I get back this evening, but in the meantime, are there any configuration issues/hardware issues that mean I can't get over 35-40mbps (usually less)?
HairyMcbiker
All Star
Posts: 6,792
Thanks: 266
Fixes: 21
Registered: ‎16-02-2009

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

You may get the full speed sitting on TOP of the router, but in another room or even 10' away from it, no chance in the tests I have done with it.
I have switched to using a Netgear N300 with no issues. Others are using more expensive kit from Asus, but I don't have the money for that.
tijara33
Pro
Posts: 1,360
Thanks: 50
Fixes: 6
Registered: ‎22-06-2012

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

If you want decent wireless at any distance from the not very good PN router then you'll have to buy your own. As already mentioned, Asus make a very good range of dual band routers. Personally I'm delighted with my RT-N56U.  Roll_eyes
ejs
Aspiring Hero
Posts: 5,442
Thanks: 631
Fixes: 25
Registered: ‎10-06-2010

Re: Great wired speeds, awful wireless

I don't think anyone really knows why the 582n provides adequate wifi for some people but not others, nor has anyone managed to capture the traffic at the wifi level (which would involve wireshark on Linux or Microsoft Network Monitor on Windows, and probably a second computer to do the capturing).
You may as well upgrade to the 10.2 firmware which contains a newer wifi driver amongst other things, and enable SGI from the tweaks page: http://npr.me.uk/telnet.html#w300
There are a lot of parameters that affect wifi performance e.g. I see mine has set the 11b compatibility mode, which reduces useful throughput by about 25%:
ERP: NonERP_Present Use_Protection Barker_Preamble_Mode
There aren't any 11b devices on my network and I doubt there are any nearby. Unfortunately once set, it never gets cleared without restarting the wifi. Setting 11g only mode makes no difference because all that can do is prevent 11b devices from joining my wifi network - it doesn't disable the backwards compatibility built into the 802.11 protocols, which is there to protect anything on the same channel, not just your own network.