Which WiFi router has builtin internet speed checker? Or supports 3rd party firmware which has.

[budgetgamer]

Hi,

Which WiFi router has builtin internet speed tester? Or supports 3rd party firmware which has.

I was able to use Xiaomi Mi 3C and it had a builtin internet speed checker, which allowed users to see if they really were getting as much speed as they were promised by the ISP. But I didn't like it for other reasons so I had to return it.

I'm unable find any other WiFi router which has a similar feature? Are there any WiFi routers with such feature or do they support a 3rd party firmware which has such a feature?

Thanks

 

[Klueless]

Just curious. What's the advantage over just using one of the many Internet Speed Tests that are readily available for PCs, iPhones, Anroids, etc?

 

[budgetgamer]

Hi, thank you for your question. Where I come from, ISPs indulge in a lot of chicanery, they reduce the speed and when customers complain, they forcefully try to establish the cause of the slow speed problem in customers devices, like the device is not powerful enough to get it, or say something like cache, or WiFi causes slow speed, or firewall causes slow speed, or there is a virus which is causing slow speed, or there is something else in the background which is consuming bandwidth and therefore causing slow speed, etc. But having a built-in speed checker in a router will not give ISPs this way of taking customers for a ride and cheating. This will save me from having to rebut them.

 

[Klueless]

Good points. Thanks for taking the time. I've run into the same problems with various ISPs. Could be chicanery but, often, I think it's inept help desks, help desks that are burnt out by inept customers and/or help desks that are measured by inappropriate metrics. In any case you are so right. If they don't quickly surface a problem then it must be our fault.

Myself, I'm left with the old fashioned but tedious approach of testing with a PC attached directly to the modem and then, maybe, a 2nd PC.

Short of that my router tells me if anyone else is on my LAN so I can verify I'm testing over a quiescent network and its built-in traffic monitor allows me to re-verify that.

When users complain about "slow Internet" traffic monitor is the first place I check. If we have low utilization I begin to suspect the ISP.

Intermittent problems are the worst.

I've had great luck with a product called "Ping Plotter". It charts the response times of every device between you and your target (e.g., google.com). More than once I've been able to tell the ISP exactly which of their routers was failing. (On the flip side it's also shown me that the problem was me once or twice : -)

And once I used "namebench" to show them they had a flaky name server.

 

[budgetgamer]

Thank you for your detailed, informative and helpful reply. I didn't even know about "Ping Plotter" and "namebench", I'll definitely make them a part of my "slow speed problem" diagnostic tools. A lot of thanks for that.

I come from India, it has been know that ISPs here have to buy their bandwidth from others, and most of the time, the bandwidth they buy wouldn't be sufficient to supply to all the customers at the speeds they advertise, so they resort to these kind of dirty tricks to keep their more knowledgeable or well-to-do customers happy by reducing speeds of other customers.

I previously had Tikona, which supplied internet through WiFi and I never got the speed they advertised, and when I complained against slow speed, their technician will come, and when this technician was in our place, the speed would go back to what was advertised but as soon as he left, the slow speed problem would come again.

The same thing happened with few other ISPs, and when I call their customer care, they would suggest irritating things, like clear your browser cache, etc. I think they realize that most customers can't do much when their speed is reduced. And they get emboldened that they can get away with it. Having a built-in speed test in router would allow me to check if their line is providing the speed promised by then, and cut off their suggestions that my computer is slow and therefore is not able to utilize, etc. If smartphone is capable of processing a 100Mbps connection, my PC should be more than sufficient.

 

[Klueless]

Now I understand. I do wish you the best in your battle for truth ... justice ... honesty

One of our problems varied. Slow to no Internet for minutes, hours and, occasionally, all day. By the time we got a hold of anyone the problem was gone. Whenever they came out there was, of course, no problem.

This is a sample of one of the Ping Plotter charts that got their attention.

It was for a small slice of time but. coupled with our history, it was compelling and it suggested the problem was with their router. They fixed it and we've been problem free for two years now.

At another location, similar problem. ISP came down several times and couldn't find anything. I just happened to be there when everything (TVs, laptops, tablets) "stopped". I did a ping to something and it failed to resolve the name. I then pinged an Internet address and it worked. Then I pinged the address of the vendor's name server and it replied.

Since no one else (including me) was "working" yet I changed my laptop to use a different name server and I was then the only one in the house working. Since I was now suspecting the name server I ran "namebench" and compared the ISP's name server against a few others. That showed the ISP's name server was failing (even though it was answering pings just fine).

A line test wouldn't show that kind of a problem.

 

[budgetgamer]

Thanks for your reply, Klueless. It's really great to interact with such a knowledgeable, helpful and polite user.

I'm experiencing a strange problem, maybe you can shed some light.

We have TP-Link WR841N router and TP-Link WN822N WiFi adapter, and I multi-boot with Linux and Windows 7. My Linux has the WiFi adapter's drivers but for some reason it can't use it and I know that TP-Link's WiFi adapter isn't being used in Linux because it doesn't light up in Linux.

So I'm only using the TP-Link WiFi adapter in Windows 7, initially with this adapter I was getting maximum speed provided by ISP for upload and download. But since past two weeks, when I boot into Windows 7 and connect to the WiFi network, the first thing I do is test the speed(because I'm hoping of making a living out of streaming games), so in the speed test I only get close to maximum download speed but upload speed is below 1Mbps, when I first experienced this slow upload speed problem, I suspected my ISP was responsible and I was at the receiving end of a terse and curt conversation from my ISP's technician, as a helpful hint he suggested our router heated up because of which we were getting slow upload speed, I didn't think this could be possible, if the router heating up was causing this problem, shouldn't download speed also be affected? And even after resetting the router, the slow upload speed problem wasn't resolved. So I used a different WiFi adapter, it's a generic one without any antenna, and with this generic WiFi adapter I was getting around 8Mbps upload and download with 1ms ping on speedtest.net.

So I suspected maybe the ISP was using MAC filtering to impose this slow speed on TP-Link WiFi adapter and I used a MAC address changing software to change the MAC address of TP-Link WiFi adapter and to my surprise, both my upload and download speed increased to close to maximum provided by the ISP. I don't know how, but I thought as MAC addressing software was disabling and enabling the TP-Link WiFi adapter, maybe it was resetting something which was allowing it to get maximum speed. So instead of changing MAC address, whenever I first get into Windows 7, I check the speed, when I don't get maximum upload speed but get maximum download speed, I disable and re-enable the TP-Link WiFi adapter and this resolves the problem and I get close to maximum upload and download speeds. But even with this, my ping is still above 1ms, earlier, before I started encountering this problem I was getting 1ms ping with TP-Link WiFi adapter too. What is this problem? Why is it only affecting the upload speed and not the download speed?

 

[Klueless]

Thanks for your reply, Klueless. It's really great to interact with such a knowledgeable, helpful and polite user.

Aw gee thanks my new friend but I'm none of those things. I really hate to let you down but this is way over my head.

Making a living streaming games? How does that work?

 

[budgetgamer]

Aw gee thanks my new friend but I'm none of those things. I really hate to let you down but this is way over my head.

Making a living streaming games? How does that work?

I don't know. I've just started streaming. People like theRadBrad, etc earn their livelihood from streaming.

But you can't shed any light on the network problem I'm experiencing which I mentioned in my post?