The more devices I connect to my router, the slower the internet gets.

[spider]

Hi All,

Perhaps I should have put this under 'General Wireless Discussion' - although I am happy to spend money to improve my situation!

TL;DR;
AC66U - lots of wireless clients - with one client added internet is super fast; streaming is great - the more clients I add the slower the internet gets; streaming video/audio is shocking; my friends laugh at me; their phones stream better.

Followed lots of articles, especially the "How to Improve Network Performance" & "How to Fix your Wireless Network" series and followed all advice

Just seems my problem seems to revolve around the more devices I add to the WiFi the slower everything gets.

Perhaps I'll just buy a GT-AC5300 and hope all my problems disappear...


I'm forever struggling with slow internet speed at home.

As far as I can tell the internet just gets slower and slower as I add more devices to the router - even if they are not actively being used but of course it's even worse if a few of them are being used at the same time

We have fibre broadband and speed tests show it is fast - at least, fast enough for us!

• If we're streaming a movie on the firestick it's always buffering - even when we are only actively watching the firestick.
• I have the same issue with streaming audio to the chromecast audios - the music is forever juttering, buffering, it's terrible.
• Needless to say, if we're streaming music or streaming video and one of us even but looks at our phone the buffering becomes unbearable.

Friends that come over always comment how slow our internet is! It's pretty embarassing when you have a party, you're streaming music but it's forever jittering along and one of your friends saves the day by streaming music via his 4G mobile phone flawlessly instead.

I have read & re-read the 'LAN & WAN Basics' & 'Wireless Basics' on SNB (especially the "How to Improve Network Performance" & "How to Fix your Wireless Network" series)
I have applied my new found knowledge to our network several times over but it just seems to be the case that the more devices I connect to the router the slower the internet gets.

• I've picked the least crowded non-overlapping channel for 2.4GHz & 5GHz
• We've got solid internal walls and the chimney stack affects wifi reception one corner of the house (the office...) - I've set up an access point using an AC51U here but most of the equipment in here is wired anyway
• I've place my wireless router away from interfering devices, it's placed high on top of a wooden bookshelf, it's in the open, it has a good airflow.
• I've ambled round the house checking my signal attenuation and wireless throughput and see no cause for concerns
• I'm running the latest merlin software on the AC66u and using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz channels.

I got sick of this and started from scratch - factory reset the routers - put the latest merlin on again and started adding my wireless devices one by one.
The first device added, blazingly fast internet but the more devices I started to add, the slower everything becomes - even when I am only actively using one!

Network Hardware
BT Wall Socket --> (DSL) BT Openreach Modem
BT Openreach Modem (LAN1) --> (WAN) Asus AC66u
Asus AC66U (LAN1) --> (PORT1) Netgear GS205 {1} 5 Port Gigabit Switch
Netgear GS205 {1} (PORT2) --> TP-Link TL-PA9020P {1} AV2000 Powerline Adapter
Netgear GS205 {1} (PORT3) --> Humax Freesat Box
Netgear GS205 {1} (PORT4) --> British Gas Hive Hub
Netgear GS205 {1} (PORT5) --> Philips Hue Bridge
TP-Link TL-PA9020P {2} --> (PORT1) Netgear GS205 {2} 5 Port Gigabit Switch
Netgear GS205 {2} (PORT2) --> Asus AC51U
Netgear GS205 {2} (PORT3) --> Desktop {1}
Netgear GS205 {2} (PORT4) --> Desktop {2}

Wireless Router: Asus AC66U --> WIFI [2.4GHz SSID: COBWEB] [5GHz SSID: COBWEB_5]
Access Point: Asus AC51U --> WIFI [2.4GHz SSID: COBWEB] [5GHz SSID: COBWEB_5]

Wired Devices
1*Homeserver
2*Desktops
1*Philips Hue Hub
1*Hive Hub
1*Humax Box

Wireless Devices
1*MFP
2*Laptops
2*Smartphones
2*Firesticks
1*Chomecast
4*Chromecast Audios
3*IP Cameras

Where do I go from here?

So I have been reading more articles, trying to work out what I can acheive with the gear I have, looking at what I could acheive with additional gear, looking at what I could acheive with replacement gear and I think I have taken on board these points.

Starting with the most shiney and expensive options first...

* MU-MIMO looks to be a good upgrade for the future, I don't have any MU-MIMO clients at present but it appears MU-MIMO could help my SU-MIMO network according to the "MU-MIMO vs. XStream" article by freeing up airtime

* Buying into a 'Mesh Wifi System' could help by improving signal strength across the home (although I don't actually feel like I have a problem here) as well as some wifi systems (like orbi) also providing MU-MIMO capability, although I'm not sure how this differs from simply wiring in additional access points throughout the home. From a newbie point of view it feels like a consumer mesh network is suited to someone who wants to set-it-and-forget-it but a router + multiple wireless access points (not repeaters!) would offer more control and better future expansion. I feel if I stick with the Router + AP route I can replace routers (repurposing the old one), add new APs, dedicate older gear to older clients, etc. Where as with mesh I can imagine in a few years time wanting to replace the mesh router and all it's satellites with newer varieties which I imagine would get even more expensive than upgrading bits one at a time... I could be wrong...

* I haven't yet checked but following on from reading the "How Well Do AC Routers Handle Mixed Networks?" article I expect my network consists of a whole bunch of clients of various classes - I have another old N router I could turn into an access point for older clients to stop them throttling my AC clients bt equally I guess that's yet another device cluttering the airways and too many APs coiuld have a negative effect in itself!

Can anybody tell, I'm totally lost?

TL;DR;
Perhaps I'll just buy an Asus GT-AC5300 and hope all my problems go away...

 

[thiggins]

Let's clarify. If you use WIRED devices, is your thread title true?

ASUS has some pretty good utilities on the router to show how much bandwidth each device is consuming. What is that telling you about bandwidth consumption?

 

[MichaelCG]

Are the IP cameras always active and streaming?

Are the performance issues while connected to the AC66 or the AC51?

 

[System Error Message]

well considering that windows and many other mainstream OSes are spyware and that many software now also spy on you its no surprise there.
Connect the devices 1 by one, make sure to run the traffic monitor on the router to see what is using up the bandwidth and find out what is using it.

If you have malware that can also be the case. I usually have way more devices with insufficient WAN bandwidth yet dont run into contention issues.

 

[avtella]

It may not be the router’s fault. Maybe one of the “inactive” devices is syncing, maybe spyware or something else, plus what’s your ISP DL/UL speeds? If you have very low UL and it is saturated (ie Cameras syncing to cloud) it can affect DL as well. I had 40/2 VDSL (40/5 now) and when my 3 Arlo Pros Cams would go online it would cause massive latency spikes thanks to my upload which was like 1.5-1.8 sustained, QoS solved that issue. Have you tried QoS? I’d look at all those before replacing the AC68U only for you to still have the issue, because it’s a fairly good unit. Also MU-MIMO in Broadcom devices wasn’t very mature vs Qualcomm from what I have seen. I’d not worry too much about MU-MIMO though, the AC68U is still very good even if doesn’t have that feature.

 

[spider]

I have found the setting to monitor per IP so am keeping an eye on that now - a handy feature to know about. I don't see anything out of the ordinary (to my untrained eye).

The occasional activity from my various IoT devices (Hive, Philips Hue).

Majority of activity from the (wired) PC I was streaming Spotify at the time to test from a browser and to 2 (wireless) chromecast audios

Typical web browsing activity from the laptop I am using to configure the router, google for answers, and general web surfing in between.

Even with just these devices connected I had a hell o a lot of juttering about from the music occasionally struggling and occasionally my browser on my laptop or phone seems to just hang at times and it's not the PC or phone as if I connect to 4G on either.... they work flawlessly.

I'm confident I am free of viruses and spyware, in fact the laptop and the desktop PC have recently just had a fresh image put onto them.

A speed test from speedtest.net shows my download at 70Mbps and upload at 20Mbps.

On the traffic monitoring tab, for all devices, in real time.

From memory, the max reception traffic peaked at about 150KB/s and averaged around 20KB/s and transmission was a lot lower as you'd expect.

The thing I can't understand is 150KB/s is about 1.2Mbps - and with an available download speed of 70mbps... and the AC66u has a WAN throughput limit nearing 800Mbps why on earth would even browsing the net struggle at times when I'm not even encroaching that limit at all.

I have enabled QoS to see if this helps, but I don't understand why the traffic monitor figures are so low - they don't even seem high enough for QoS to come into it?

I did find a few Cat5 ethernet cables in the mix, and have replaced with cat5e to get the full 1000Mbps LAN but even with Cat5 there is an available 100Mbps which I'm not even close to using with what is indicated in traffic monitoring.

I guess it's just a case of me setting aside several hours a week until I work it all out! It's amazing how all these big numbers mean nothing unless you start to really get to grips with networking - it seems there is no such thing as plug and play!

I'm learning, that's the main thing.

I hope I can get it all sorted eventually and make everybody jealous who uses my wifi...

 

[thiggins]

There sure is something wrong. Music streams are very low bandwidth and should never cause problems.

If you just run Spotify on your Ethernet connected machine, do you still have problems? If you stream video, again only to Ethernet, do you still have problems?

Priority-based QoS will prioritize traffic regardless of bandwidth level.

Did you try power cycling your modem?

Take SEM's suggestion and shut off AP and router radios an run heavy traffic wired only. Then add wireless devices back, starting with those in range of just the router radio.

By the way, you do have the APs set to different channels, right?

 

[spider]

I certainly do have the channels set differently

2.4GHz: AC66U @ 6 & AC51U @ 11
5GHz: AC66U @ 100 [DFS] & AC51U @ 48

I'm forever power cycling my modem in anger also power cycled in the twilight hours in case I'd fair better rebooting when the rest of the UK is offline.

I'll go wired only for a while and see how I fair, keeping a record from traffic monitor (globally and per IP)

Then start reintroducing wireless per device using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz MAC filter option.

Cheers