Technicolor TG582n FTTC - Why is WiFi So Slow?

[#1]

I have no complaints about the download speeds when using wired. But let's be honest, who nowadays doesn't have a Laptop or Tablet? We use Smart Phones, Kindles, Tablets and Laptops and relies upon aWiFi connection? 
So to my point, how awfully slow is the WiFi? I have identified what channels neighbours are using so I have changed my Router to a channel that is not used (now set to 12).
It really takes the shine off the Fibre offering by Plusnet.
I am in the next room to the Router so it is hardly a challenging distance between me and the Router.
I realise there are many topics on this subject on this forum, but I thought I would start a new one.
If anyone has any experiences, suggestions, I would be really grateful.
Andrew

[#2]

Sorry to hear you're having issues with speeds over wireless. I'm just wondering what the extent of the issue is and how speeds over wireless compare to those over Ethernet?

[#3]

Hi Adam,
Just ran a Speedtest.net test and wirelessly I get 3.91 MB/s which is really poor.
Wired, using Speedtest.net, I get 49.94MB/s
So much difference as you can see.......
Thanks
Andrew

[#4]

Quote from: _Adam_Walker_

Sorry to hear you're having issues with speeds over wireless. I'm just wondering what the extent of the issue is and how speeds over wireless compare to those over Ethernet?

Adam, My fiber is 75GB via Ethanet but only 25GB via wifi
I'm working through the channels but not found one that works yet.
It seems your Technicolor TG582n routers don't support fast wifi???
VERY disappointed.

[#5]

Using a channel that partially overlaps another channel is supposed to be worse than sharing the same channel with another network. The usual non-overlapping channels to choose from are 1, 6 and 11. Although the choice of channel is largely irrelevant if the TG582n outputs a weak signal.

[#6]

I can't confirm this until Monday, but I seem to recall a colleague of mine saying that mounting the TG582n vertically, improved the wireless signal.

[#7]

I've only joined Plusnet this week on  FTTC.
I had a Technicolor TG582n from my last ISP (O2) so knew what to expect with the wireless speed /signal .
It wasn't a big problem before as I was only getting 4 - 5 Mb but now I'm on 78Mb I wanted something a bit more reliable , when I  opened the wireless settings in to the router on Wednesday it said

Quote

Actual Speed [Mbps]:6.5

what's the point of having a 78Mb connection when the wireless is running at 6.5 Mb  I've now bought an approx. 4 year old wireless N 300Mbps Belkin 8632 off Ebay for just over £5 and I've turned off the  wireless on the TG582 and I'm using the Belkin as an access point and now get good signal all through my house.
It Puzzles me how something that's almost obsolete at 4 years old can outperform a current router being mass supplied.

[#8]

I'm seeing the same issue here. 20Mb/s on wifi, 70Mb/s on ethernet. Such a shame Plusnet are shipping such a shoddy router that completely spoils the service.

[#9]

Afternoon all,
Wile we're aware that the Technicolor TG582n isn't a premium router we do normally find that the specification will adequate for most users of the service. We're always on the look out to improve our offerings but as I'm sure you can all agree, working out a deal of this type can be a complex, time consuming and labour intensive job and would no doubt take a considerable amount of time to work out.
With wireless there is always going to be additional outside factors that will cause issues with the signal strength, this can range from other networks (as mentioned already) to wall thickness between rooms and even other forms of interference internal to the home. In these cases it can be tough to resolve the issue unless you're happy to move things around to try improving the range/speeds and even looking at adding in wireless repeaters and additional wireless access points.
Just out of interest, are these wireless tests being carried out while next to the equipment to ensure that full signal strength is acquired? In addition, what class of wireless do the devices carry that are being connected to the router to run these tests, are they b/g/n?

[#10]

Tough to resolve indeed if you exclude the option of replacing the 582n with a better router!
Strictly speaking, other wireless networks or interference will not affect the strength of the signal output by your router. The other forms of interference would affect the signal quality (signal to noise ratio).
The trouble with wireless is that it's complicated and most of the advice on the Internet about it is wrong. The usual advice is to download some program to draw pretty graphs so that you can choose the "best" channel, determined to be the channel with the fewest or weakest other wireless networks on. Unfortunately, the channel with the fewest / weakest other networks won't necessarily be the best one, it doesn't take into account other forms of interference, it doesn't take into account how heavily each other network is used, it doesn't take into account that there might be other wireless devices close to you, but the access point (router) of the network they are on could be further away.
Counter-intuitively, it might even be better to change your channel to be the same as a stronger nearby network. The thing is, if your router transmits a slightly weaker signal, that could mean its signal doesn't reach other nearby routers. But more powerful transmissions from other routers might reach yours. Before a router (or any other wireless device for that matter) transmits something, it first listens to check that nothing else is transmitting anything. If your router detects a transmission from another network, it would wait to avoid transmitting at the same time. If the other network can't detect the signal from your router, then it can't avoid talking over it, so could end up transmitting at the same time, causing a collision. Your router would have to try transmitting the packet again. If the other router could detect the signals from your router, then the other router would wait and avoid interrupting yours, and so there would be less of a problem.
Unfortunately downloading a special program to draw pretty graphs sounds more impressive than just trying the different channels.
20Mb/s is not a particularly bad wireless speed, probably around the maximum throughput an 11g device could achieve. There are significant extra overheads added when an 11n network operates in one of the various 11g compatibility modes, which results in slower throughput speeds. Having only 11n devices on your network won't necessarily avoid that, because the backwards compatibility is for everything operating on the same channel.

[#11]

Quote from: ejs

Having only 11n devices on your network won't necessarily avoid that, because the backwards compatibility is for everything operating on the same channel.

I was with you until that bit.  Surely having only 11n devices on your network means that the router will not slow down to accommodate older standards?  It would only do that if e.g. you had equipment with an 11g receiver, no?  If you only have 11n then it will transmit at the faster speeds?

[#12]

No. The 11n devices also need to allow for 11g or even older devices on other networks, but sharing the same channel.
The legacy compatibility protection mechanisms are not about having everything slow down and use the lowest common protocol and speed.
An 11g device can't understand 11n transmissions. If an 11g device listened on the channel and heard 11n an transmission, it wouldn't be able to understand it, the unintelligible signal would be registered as noise. If the 11n transmission (noise to the 11g device) was strong enough, that would mean the 11g device would determine the channel is too noisy to use, and wouldn't be able to transmit anything. Alternatively, if the 11n transmission was from some distance away, so that it is fairly weak when it reaches the 11g device, the 11g device might try to transmit over what it sees as noise - unknowingly interrupting the 11n transmission. To avoid those problems, the usual solution is for the 11n device to first transmit a small packet at an 11g or older speed, to inform the older devices that it is about to transmit something, so that the older device knows it's not noise and not to interrupt it. And then the 11n device can transmit its data and an 11n speed.
At that level, it doesn't matter if devices are on the same network SSID or not, if they're all trying to use the same channel. In summary, it's about only one device being able to transmit at a time, and everything having to listen to avoid interrupting each other.

[#13]

May not be relevant to this particular router (I have a TP-Link) but...... when I first got ADSL2+ I couldn't get the wired speed (~ 16.5Mbps) to repeat wirelessly on my "mixed" network of g and n devices-I was getting about 6Mbps ..until I looked in Advanced settings and found that the default setting was 11bgn - tried changing the setting to 11bg and immediately got a wireless speed of 16.5Mbps. Wonder if its worth trying to "mess" around with the compatibility settings on the Technicolor?

[#14]

I got my TG582n FTTC earlier in the week and I am having so many issues with the WiFi. I have tried different channels, but the maximum WiFi speed I can get is 65Mbps and it drops out all the time if I do a continual ping of the router.
Plugged my old Netgear router in and the WiFi connection is 270Mbps and I don't get any drop outs. In my opinion I think the TG582n is cheap rubbish, I will just configure my old Netgear router with the connection settings and use that.

[#15]

I don't disagree with the overall assessment of the 582n as cheap rubbish, but 270Mbps on the 2.4GHz band would be using 40MHz of bandwidth, taking up most of the available channels, which won't be particularly neighbour friendly.