Gradual Slowdown of Smart TV Connection

[#1]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone might be able to help with an issue I'm having with the WiFi connection of my LG Smart TV.

I have a PlusNet Hub Two and have connected my TV to it. At first it is fine and the connection is achieving the speeds I would expect, however after a few days/restarts the connection deteriorates to the point that it won't stream even SD video.

If I go into the TV settings, end the connection and then reconnect it seems to solve the problem. But having to this every few days is getting a bit frustrating.

I've checked in the router settings and can see that the TV is connected to the 5ghz band. I've not changed any other setting on the router.

Does anyone know what might be causing this?

Thanks!

[#2]

@jroy_998 welcome to the forum.

If I go into the TV settings, end the connection and then reconnect it seems to solve the problem.

This could suggest you have switch between 2.4 and 5GHz or 5GHz and 2.4GHz

Being connected to 5GHz signal is not necessarily a good thing.

At distance a 2.4GHz signal might be stronger than 5GHz thus giving you a faster connection. 

So when it works well are you connected to 2.4GHz?

FWIW my LG Smart TV seems to prefer 2.4GHz over 5 GHz with the resulting streaming experience not changed. 

[#3]

I did have a problem with my LG TV when I had relatively slow broadband (particularly with iPlayer). The TV would buffer some seconds (10 or 20) of data, then wait until it only had a few seconds left before requesting the next block. The slow connection took longer to download the data than there was left in the buffer - so it kept pausing, making programs unwatchable. The average data rate was well within the bandwidth of the broadband, but the bursty nature of the requests meant it couldn't cope.

It could be that its Wifi connection is just not as fast as the TV expects modern broadband to be.

Or it could be a totally different issue.

[#4]

Thanks both.

Just for info, I'm using a speedtest app on the TV rather than trying to stream (although this was all prompted by being unable to stream via iPlayer etc).

I've just checked and it is connected to the 2.4ghz frequency.

I've also tried to connect to a static IP outside the DCHP range (192.168.1.50).

It did the same thing. When first connected getting speeds of over 150mbps. Restarted a couple of times and it was down to around 50mbps. After leaving the TV off for an hour and trying again down to 1.5mbps.

It might be the frequency it jumps on to, but it just seems strange that every time it works perfect on first connection then drops after some time/restarts?

[#5]

@jroy_998 

You can check the TV connected speed viewing the event log

On the Hub if you navigate from >Home >Advanced settings >Technical log >Event log and select category 'WIFI'

Here you should see entries something like below but for the LG tv. 

13:09:09, 19 Sep.

5G Client associate from 3c:9c:0f:9b:ab:0e (IP=192.168.1.187) RSSI=-71, Rate=292Mbps, host DESKTOP

13:09:04, 19 Sep.

.

13:08:27, 19 Sep.

5G Client associate from 0e:0c:f6:d4:36:a4 (IP=192.168.1.86) RSSI=-76, Rate=260Mbps, host Pixel

From the two examples you can see

2.4 or 5 G client

RSSI= This is a negative number the stronger the number the stronger the signal

Rate= the is the connection speed between the host and hub

Another factor is congested wireless spectrum, if you have android phone there is an app 'WiFi Analyzer'. 2.4GHz can be very congested due to the range of the signal. You would need to check next to the TV location.

Using the options found in >Home >Advanced settings >Wireless Here you can change to a less used channel, only 1, 6 and 11 are available.

If the LG tv has a ethernet connection, you could try using a cable connection direct to the Hub or use powerline adapters, this would bypass any wireless issues.

What other network activity is occurring when the TV is being used, a busy upload link can also cause issues with downloads caused by bufferbloat where the slowness of the uplink causes network congestion.