Wifi driving the house crazy... Need a better one

trackerman · 02-10-2014 10:52pm #1

im on Horizon with 200 mb.

Three kids,
oneiPad mini,
one iPad Air,
one iphone5,
one samsung S3 ,
one Samsung Smart TV connected to wifi.
2 PC's using N wifi

Are they happy? No chance. The wifi is crap according to all users.
Netflix hangs, pauses.
YouTube pauses and hangs

What am I to do?

Perhaps a top class external wifi router connected to the Horizon box might do the trick?
I've tried using a buffalo n router but it seems it cuts the wifi speed back to the lowest user speed.

So would a few hundred euro spent on a top rated router help things?
Any recommendations?

Thanks

FSL · 03-10-2014 9:51am

Wireless will generally run at the speed of the lowest device on the network so if any of the devices are wireless g then the rest will only run at g.

Wireless also only works in one direction at a time i.e. transmitting or receiving which also slows it. Each packet transmitted has to be acknowledged. So you have traffic moving in both directions.

Wireless is also susceptible to interference which effectively slows it down as if a packet has been corrupted it has to be resent.

As you have UPC 200mb you must live in an urban area so your neighbours are quite close and they also are likely to be running wireless networks.

Turning the wireless off on the Horizon and connecting a wireless access point may improve the signal if the horizon is particularly weak.

Download and install Inssider this will show you all the wireless networks around you, the channel they are transmitting on and their relative strengths. Choose a channel 5 away from the strongest neighbouring signal.

trackerman · 03-10-2014 11:18am

Thanks for that reply.

SSIDer shows other wifi in my area, but my one is much stronger.

Since the slowest client sets the connection speed I may try to run two WIFI servers on different channels.
One for slow clients and one for fast clients.

The horizon box also has 5ghz wifi, so ill try to activate this and use it as a third wifi server.

The problem we have at present seems to be when several clients want bandwidth at the same time. The wifi protocol serves them serially, thus reducing actual data transfer rates even further. So hopefully more wifi servers will help provide an improvement.

Thanks
Ray

ThisRegard · 03-10-2014 11:21am

Is it crap because of poor signal strength, i.e. are they all in different rooms around the house away from the router when the complain ?

trackerman · 03-10-2014 12:01pm

ThisRegard wrote: »

Is it crap because of poor signal strength, i.e. are they all in different rooms around the house away from the router when the complain ?

No signal strgenth is good in all rooms.
The problem only occurs when several users access the wifi. When only one user on the wifi then there are no drops.

Thargor · 03-10-2014 1:32pm

Sounds like the exact same problem we're having in our house OP, Horizon Box was bad enough so after loads of complaints to the landlord a UPC technician came around and bridged it to a UPC router, he said it would be great but now if more than 2 people are online it falls away to nothing, as in literally could not open a Boards.ie page, absolute nightmare. Before Horizon there could be 6 laptops and a load of phones and tablets connected with no hassle.

Mayo Yid · 04-10-2014 5:55pm

Run a cat5 cable or use homeplugs to anything static, pc's, consoles, media players and just use wifi for mobility, your wifi will work better this way. Unlike a cable that has separate pairs of cables for send and recieve at the same time, wireless uses the same frequency and only transmits or receives data to one device at a time, in one direction at a time. Horizon boxes are known as being weak, you should disable wireless and add a better wireless access point to give you better coverage

Thargor · 04-10-2014 8:44pm

I have a Cat5 crossover cable for FTPing games to my modded 360, will a crossover cable work in that scenario? I ask because Im up in the attic and Id have to drop it down through a small hole 2 floors to the router in the kitchen and the crossover is the only cable I have long enough to do it, another cable this long will cost 30 or 40 quid.

Mayo Yid · 04-10-2014 8:53pm

Thargor wrote: »

I have a Cat5 crossover cable for FTPing games to my modded 360, will a crossover cable work in that scenario? I ask because Im up in the attic and Id have to drop it down through a small hole 2 floors to the router in the kitchen and the crossover is the only cable I have long enough to do it, another cable this long will cost 30 or 40 quid.

It's not the correct cable, you're supposed to use straight through, crossover is for between two devices without a switch, but modern day devices should auto-negotiate and fix it.

You'd buy a box of cat5e cable (300m) for about 60 quid in an electrical wholesalers, another 15-20 would buy you a crimp tool and some rj45's on Ebay, then spend some time reading up and watching youtube vids and you can cable the full house.

Thargor · 04-10-2014 9:26pm

Thanks for that Ill give it a try, no idea why I didnt think of it before now tbh...

Diggerdunne · 07-10-2014 10:54am

If you have more than 3 or 4 hard wired network points you will need to purchase a hub or small 8 port switch as u will not have enough ports at the back of your horizon box, just something to keep in mind

Thargor · 07-10-2014 11:06am

Mayo Yid wrote: »

It's not the correct cable, you're supposed to use straight through, crossover is for between two devices without a switch, but modern day devices should auto-negotiate and fix it.

You'd buy a box of cat5e cable (300m) for about 60 quid in an electrical wholesalers, another 15-20 would buy you a crimp tool and some rj45's on Ebay, then spend some time reading up and watching youtube vids and you can cable the full house.

Tried the crossover cable last night, ran it from the attic down to the kitchen and plugged in, thought it wasnt going to work at first but ran Troubleshoot Problems in Windows Network and Sharing and it fixed it for me, first time that piece of sh1t has ever fixed anything. Straight away 72 mb/sec on Speedtest, should have done it weeks ago, thanks

beauf · 07-10-2014 11:27am

Hard-wiring it would be the best.

I have a horizon box but don't use it for internet. I got a TC7200 Modem from UPC and my internet goes through this. I found the wifi poor even with this, and I have it in faux bridge mode with my old router. http://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057164321/1#post89358987

I had to make sure all the devices where "N". The range does seems as good as in "G" . But its working ok apart from the usual dropout from UPC but thats got nothing to do with the Wifi. I have the TV on ethernet, and one of the computers on a powerline adapter. So perhaps thats taking all the heavy work off the wifi.

I found powerline adapters work well. Another think to consider is throttling all the devices to a limited amount so one device can't hog all the bandwidth. You could also try a Wifi repeater/extender.

I could really do with a better router. If I had time I would go the hardwired route for all TV's, computers, and consoles. Even laptops, as the speed difference for me is much better than Wifi N. Though my Wifi N speed vary a lot between devices and locations in the house.

Thargor · 07-10-2014 11:43am

I noticed my laptop had stopped hanging in all browsers which I assumed was due to its age and the fact that its been a year since I formatted and reinstalled windows, 1080p Youtube videos, neverending Reddit, big Imgur galleries etc would make it really juddery and there were plenty of Not Responding 5 second hangs. Now on the cable its like a new windows install, everything just appearing instantly after you click, worth it for that alone...

beauf · 07-10-2014 12:08pm

If if you are not doing anything on the web, I find devices off all kinds seem to be faster if they have a web connection. As if they are checking stuff in the background on the web, and if they can't find a connection it takes them a lot longer to get past the no connection, or a slow connection than to check a fast connection.

Maybe that's rubbish. But its how it feels for me.

Mayo Yid · 07-10-2014 3:33pm

beauf wrote: »

If if you are not doing anything on the web, I find devices off all kinds seem to be faster if they have a web connection. As if they are checking stuff in the background on the web, and if they can't find a connection it takes them a lot longer to get past the no connection, or a slow connection than to check a fast connection.

Maybe that's rubbish. But its how it feels for me.

No it's actually true, Wi-Fi is also much lighter on battery as your phone stops seeking out the fastest mobile access point

edanto · 21-10-2014 7:23pm

@thargor, are you still seeing those slowdowns on your WiFi when you have multiple devices connected?

A few years ago, I remember troubleshooting a call relating to connection difficulties between a motorola access point and Apple devices. The solution in that case came down the beacon interval, a setting on the access point. I would have assume that this was either changed in Apple devices, or the standard UPC AP config.... but there's a chance it might be your issue?

To test, you could try leaving all the apple devices powered off, and browse with all the non-apple devices, and see if the connection is good or bad. If that tests points to the apple devices, contact UPC support and give them a link like this http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2182877

Thargor · 21-10-2014 7:32pm

I just got so pissed off with not even being able to check my email on the laptop that I grabbed a big length of RJ45 cable and ran it down the stairs to the router, perfect speeds after that, everyone else in the house still complaining though, UPC Horizon and the other router they give out are cheap pieces of sh1t.

Frank Lee Midere · 21-10-2014 7:38pm

Maybe try and get a dual radio Wifi. Or two.

Wifi driving the house crazy... Need a better one

Comments