UPC Limited Connection during downloads

hare05

Just got the new horizon box (coming from the mishmash of eircom phone, voda 7 meg broadband and sky TV my grandmother was being overcharged for previously) and I've noticed my connection to the wifi throwing up a limited connection error about 50% of the time any program starts downloading at more than about 10mbps.

They work for a while, might hit 20 or 30 or even 50 and then it's just gone. Full signal, no data. I have to cycle the connection and then it works again for another 5 minutes or so. Online games are pretty much unplayable.

I've gone through all my firewall rules on the box and the PC, I've set the box to the clearest local channel, 802.11 g & n only, 20MHz only to avoid any issues that might arise with switching up or down as new devices join the network, etc etc.

Nothing seems to fix it. I'm at a loss.

srsly78

Set up a proper router with QoS (quality of service) to fix this. UPC only provide broadband, they won't manage your local network for you.

QoS allows you to allocate bandwidth for each user. For example, you could ensure that you always have 25% available, which is loads for games. That way people downloading won't lag you out. Games don't really use much at all, so you can happily game away whilst people download at full speed pretty much - once QoS is setup...

Also, don't use wifi if possible - use a cable. Wifi bandwidth always gets split between all users, whoever is closest will probably get the most.

hare05

I've narrowed it down a bit more. It's an issue with 802.11 N. Dropped the network to G only and it's been plain sailing for the past few hours.

Yes, I intend to use cable eventually but I need to figure out a decent path through the house for it first :pac:

As for QoS... I made sure there were no other devices on the network while I tested this. It couldn't be a QoS issue within the network as, for the majority of my tests, the network was one computer with wireless dongle and one horizon box. The computer was showing full bars on connectivity and Wifi Analyzer on my phone showed a signal strength between -60 and -65 dBm which is absolutely fine.

The issue is with wireless N between the horizon box and my TPLink dongle, and as I had no problems using the dongle previously with a Netgear router, I'm suspecting the horizon box.

Capt'n Midnight

hare05 wrote: »

The issue is with wireless N between the horizon box and my TPLink dongle, and as I had no problems using the dongle previously with a Netgear router, I'm suspecting the horizon box.

you could hang the Netgear router off the UPC box

split the traffic into N only and G only networks so the slower devices aren't taking all the time slices

hare05

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

you could hang the Netgear router off the UPC box

split the traffic into N only and G only networks so the slower devices aren't taking all the time slices

My god, that's actually genius!