[SmartCat]

Although I have a 300 Mbps plan from Act Broadband, I have always had not-so-great download speeds ranging from 40 Mbps to 60 Mbps across different rooms. That's probably because of brick walls and different floors, not to forget usage of cheap routers and wifi repeaters. Once I noticed that download speed dropped to 15 Mbps, I finally decided to lodge a complaint with Act Broadband to see if home Wifi download speeds can be improved.

I did not opt for Wifi Mesh solution because we do not move around the house holding the laptop/smartphone/tablet. These are the solutions offered by the technician:

- Ditch the old cheap Mi router and go for TP-Link Archer C6 router (price Rs. 2,600) in Room 1:



This room has a desktop with no internal Wifi antenna & was receiving wifi signals with an old USB Wifi adapter. Technician asked me to go for TP-Link Dual Band USB Adapter (price: Rs 1,200):



Result? 240 Mbps download/upload speed as measured by Ookla Speedtest:



For Room 2, the technician suggested that we connect two routers (in Room 1 & 2) together with a 50 or 60 ft long ethernet cable (Rs. 2,500) pulled from outside the home. Note: I don't have much knowledge about routers/networks. That's what I think he told me. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.



Since the older router Wifi antenna is poor, he recommended that I connect the ethernet cable to the laptop directly. But since laptops these days no longer have an ethernet port, I bought an USB to ethernet adapter (Rs. 400):



I now get 100 Mbps on this laptop, which is a significant improvement over the past. I suspect it is not close to 300 Mbps because of the cheap USB to Ethernet adapter. I guess I need to do some research and get myself a higher quality USB to Ethernet adapter or go for the same TP-Link Archer C6 Router again.



In two other rooms, we have this old TP-Link Wifi repeater.



But because of a more powerful router, I'm getting 70+ Mbps download speeds on devices connected to this Wifi Repeater. This is again fine because only the TV/smartphones/Wifi speakers/tablets that are connected to it, and data usage is not that intensive.



Total costs: Rs. 6,700!

TP-Link Archer C6 Router: Rs. 2,600
TP-Link USB Wifi Antenna: Rs. 1,200
Sounce USB to Ethernet Adapter: Rs. 400
50+ feet Ethernet cable: Rs. 2,500

Related threads:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadge...p-my-home.html (Cheap but effective DIY WiFi Mesh Setup for my home)
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadge...i-routers.html (On Wi-Fi & Routers)

[SmartCat]

Moving thread from Assembly Line to Gadgets & Computers sub-forum

[ecclipse78]

Living in a old and large multi-story home; I wasted a significant amount of time, money and resources to have WiFi available throughout the home over the last several years.

We could not pull ethernet cables as there was no provision for this internally and doing the same externally would be an eyesore.

Decided to take the plunge and invest in some of the top end Asus routers (tri-band specifically) with Mesh technology (I believe they are one of the pioneers here) a few years ago.

Happy to say that we have around 4 nodes around the whole house connected to the main router (via Mesh WiFi) and am easily able to get 200 MBPS or so on each node/ repeater (my main ISP is an ACT 400 MBPS line)

Plus Asus has a dual WAN feature which switches over to Airtel in case ACT is down and also a subscription with Trendmrico to protect your devices.

[arnieshwartz]

One of the things most people tend to overlook is the LAN port speed of the router and/or ethernet adapter in the PC / laptop. This is particularly true if you are subscribed to plans offering speeds over 100Mbps. To take advantage of >100Mbps speeds, always go for devices with Gigabit Ethernet ports. A 802.11ac dual band gigabit wireless router is the best to have when you require good performance.

The TP Link Archer C6 is an excellent choice to start with - the four external antennas definitely help with range and having AC1200 Dual-Band Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO technology definitely helps with fairly good data speeds across multiple connected devices.

If you're using Ethernet cables, do use atleast CAT5e or CAT6, for best performance throughout your home network.

It is heartening to see that the technician offered solutions that did alleviate your problems without burning a hole in your wallet. Kudos to him!

[sandeepmdas]

I use the Archer with TP-Link dual band WiFi adapter for a dedicated media PC intended for my humble home theater. I built the PC myself and initially I initially looked at motherboards with built-in WiFi. Found them rather expensive and instead I settled for a just-above-entry-level Gigabyte mobo + this adapter. It not only gives much better throughput, but the combination is also cheaper than many WiFi motherboards.

[NaXal]

Hello,

I have a custom OpenWRT based WiFi Mesh (WiFi Roaming) setup with multiple customer grade WiFi5 router at Home.

My Fiber to home plan is of 200mbps and my WiFi5 network is capable of delivering stable 350mbps throughout the house. So I get full Internet speed in 5ghz devices. However, 2.4Ghz legacy devices struggles with so much congestion & older hardware but still around 50+mbps is visible all around.

I have very few devices with 2.4Ghz and apart from Phone and tablets, which are on 5Ghz, at home, I try to run LAN to any device which supports it.

Thanks.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by arnieshwartz

One of the things most people tend to overlook is the ethernet adapter in the PC / laptop. always go for devices with Gigabit Ethernet ports.

I'm looking to replace that cheap Ethernet adapter. Any recommendations?

It is heartening to see that the technician offered solutions that did alleviate your problems without burning a hole in your wallet. Kudos to him!

He brought these devices/cables himself - so he probably made a small profit on them. But it is totally fair because he matched the Amazon price.

Originally Posted by NaXal

I have a custom OpenWRT based WiFi Mesh (WiFi Roaming) setup with multiple customer grade WiFi5 router at Home.

I have mentioned your thread in my post

My Fiber to home plan is of 200mbps and my WiFi5 network is capable of delivering stable 350mbps throughout the house.

When I connected my smartphone to the router Wifi, I got this:



Sorry for the dumb question, but how can ACT Broadband's 300 Mbps "plan" give me 350 Mbps download/upload speed?

[lxskllr]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Although I have a 300 Mbps plan from Act Broadband, I have always had not-so-great download speeds ranging from 40 Mbps to 60 Mbps across different rooms.

Hoping to learn more from the other experienced network administrators here. My 2 cents:

1. You have solved for signal coverage in your house, which is one part of the equation
2. Check what kind of buffer bloat your are getting. This is the other part of the experience which people neglect


Head to the following sites and share your scores:

1. https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat
2. https://speed.cloudflare.com/ - look at the network quality score here

From my experience & even if you get good speeds in the speed test, your real world experience will suffer if you have buffer bloat. My wife's zoom meeting used to stutter intermittently on a 200Mbps connection when someone fired up a YouTube video.

So, head into your routers QoS settings and use bandwidth limiter to 60% of your connection speed. This ensures that on one in your house is hogging the internet.

It's not about using the entire speed that you paid for but the overall experience when browsing. Similar to using the entire speedometer/top speed, when we know that in gear acceleration and handling matter more. Just an example

[Shreyans_Jain]

200mbps connection from Airtel Fiber, mated with TPLink mesh wifi. Works well enough, but the network does get disconnected momentarily and then reconnects every once in a while.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by lxskllr

2. Check what kind of buffer bloat your are getting. This is the other part of the experience which people neglect. Head to the following sites and share your scores:

Waveform gives my connection a 'D' grade for Bufferbloat and that I might face intermittent issues with "low latency gaming"



Meanwhile, cloudflare says All Izz Well.

[lxskllr]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Waveform gives my connection a 'D' grade for Bufferbloat and that I might face intermittent issues with "low latency gaming"

Meanwhile, cloudflare says All Izz Well.

Strange! It is recommended that other devices are disconnected from the network when performing this test. Might have occurred if someone in your house was using the internet when performing the tests.

Nonetheless, I would head into QoS enable bandwidth limiter to 60% - which for you would be 180/180 download/upload and perform these tests again. Worth a shot, here’s more on bufferboat and how it impacts your experience.

Or leave the settings as is, since only low latency gaming is impacted!

https://youtu.be/UICh3ScfNWI?si=PlAtXM5Q3Lyqkr1B

[Draken]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

I'm looking to replace that cheap Ethernet adapter. Any recommendations?

Before you do that check your second routers specs. It might just have 100Mbps ports. In that case you might need to change the second router as well. Ive seen routers with 2 output ports one having 1Gbps and other 100Mbps.

And the other thing I would recommend if you are upgrading your repeater is this one. Its a higher model than yours and supports EasyMesh. Archer C6 also supports Easymesh so you can have a mesh setup fairly cheap.

[NaXal]

Hello,

Originally Posted by SmartCat

I have mentioned your thread in my post

Sorry I didn't notice.

I'm looking to replace that cheap Ethernet adapter. Any recommendations?

There are many types of interface, like PCIe based or USB based.





Personally, I have seen that brand doesn't really matter in this segment. Cheaper ones work just fine. Just ensure to buy something which supports 1Gbps RJ45 LAN speeds.

This room has a desktop with no internal Wifi antenna & was receiving wifi signals with an old USB Wifi adapter.

Mind you, that front panel USB looks like a USB2. It is better to plug high speed things into USB3.

Thanks.

[mally2]

I used to have the ACT 300+ mbps connections pre Covid. Today ( since the last 2 years ) I make do with the basic 30mbps Jio Fiber plan costs me 399+tax

I have two 4K TVs that almost never get used simultaneously, one work laptop, 1 iPad and 2 iPhone, I have never felt 30 mbps is inadequate. I am easily able to stream 4K Netflix and use my phones and take work calls all simultaneously. I have learned to appreciate that anything more than 50mbps is a overkill for those who have regular lives . Unless you are hardcore gamers, crypto miner etc 30-40mbps consistent speeds are more than good enough.

[Masalawheelz]

Oh what a blessing this thread is..! that too at the right time! Could I please trouble the experts for a recommendation for a Wifi router to improve internet speeds?

I have ACT Fibernet with Storm Plan in Chennai and the speed I'm supposed to get is 400mbps. I'm a complete novice when it comes to this and my humble Mi Wifi router has been chugging along for the last 3 years, spitting out some average internet speeds of 60-70mbps.

My house is quite compact (1000sq ft - 2 BHK) and I have the router placed at a central location at 6 ft height. May I request for suggestions for a good wifi router please? Would the purchase and installation of the TP-Link Archer C6 Wifi Router be sufficient? I would be grateful for Recommendations on Amazon so that I don't order something else and make a fool of myself! I'm looking at a budget of 3-5k which I think this may be sufficient for our use of a Smart TV for streaming content, an iMac for my wife's work, and two phones.

I believe that I may not require a range extender as reach seems to be fine in all the rooms in the house.

Thank you in advance for the suggestions!

Cheers!