Linksys E4200v.1 Guest Network Bandwidth Quest

[tinmann]

Hi, I have a Linksys E4200 and share a 30mb connection with 3 other roommates. I mostly use the 5Ghz band when everyone is home but use the 2.4Ghz band when traffic is low. We have 2 temporary guest so I set up and guest network. I'd like to know is their bandwidth limited or do they share the same bandwidth as the rest of the house. The only devices they have are cell phones but they are complaining about it being slow. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[remixedcat]

Does your router support QoS (Quality of Service) ??

 

[jlake]

Most likely you have interference. Set 2.4 Ghz channel width to "20 MHz only". Change the 2.4 Ghz channel. Use something like inSSIDer

Probably wouldn't hurt if you tried guest network yourself to see if it's slow.

As far as I know, the speed is not limited on guest network on E4200v1.

 

[L&LD]

No handheld device has the speed or range of a laptop and even a laptop may get better performance when it is plugged in (depending on the power settings it uses).

If setting the channel width to 20MHz on the 2.4GHz band or trying different channels with those specific clients doesn't fix their complaints; then the only thing left is to change the device they're using.

What is their complaint specifically? Does an Ookla speedtest show slow speeds on their devices (this is the device itself then, as mentioned above) or are there other issues that they complain of slow speeds?

When they say it's slow; what are you doing on the 5GHz band? If you're using all the ISP's bandwidth; yes it will limit their devices further.

 

[azazel1024]

Everyone shares the same wireless bandwidth, just like everyone shares the same WAN (internet) bandwidth. If you have yourself, plus 3 roommates and 2 guests all using it pretty heavily, 30Mbps isn't going to work out well for anyone.

30/6=5Mbps max.

QoS only works so well. Most routers QoS generally ain't to great, its only recently that some router manufacturers are starting to actively address their crap WAN QoS.

Same goes with the wireless end of things, wireless bandwidth sharing only works so well. If you have 4-5 years on at once doing something bandwidth intenstive, odds are good that the router isn't going to allocated bandwidth very well between the devices...though in this case you are likely looking at poor WAN bandwidth allocation and in general just trying to share a 30Mbps connection...which depending on the connection type and time of day, probably isn't getting 30Mbps, with 6 people and stuck with sub 1MB/sec per user over the internet.

If you want, you probably can monkey around with the QoS/bandwidth settings on your router. Some will let you choose bandwidth allocated to specific users, some can set it for each user globally and some can set it seperately from the guest and regular SSIDs. Downside, unless it'll let you set specific limits on specific users, you are capping all users to that set bandwidth, even if there are no other current users.

So if you set a global 5Mbps limit to prevent anyone from hogging more than their fair share...if there are only 2 people at home using it, they are still going to be stuck at 5Mbps.

If it proves to be more of a wireless issue rather than WAN/internet speed issue, unless you need to segregate the users from local network resources (server(s) you/your roommates have setup), I'd get rid of the guest SSID and let them connect to the main one. Each SSID uses up a small amount of wireless bandwidth (well, airtime) broadcasting Beacons. It isn't a whole ton, but if the complaint proves to be with wireless speeds, then cutting out the guest network might at least see a few percent increase in available wireless bandwidth for everyone (it'll do nothing for internet speeds, which are probably the issue here).