Wi-Fi Ping Spikes: Causes and Fixes

[thiggins]

Wi-Fi ping spikes aren't always caused by a poor connection. Your router settings could be to blame. Read on SmallNetBuilder.

 

[L&LD]

Great article Tim. Curious who Dennis Bland is though? Was he the author of the article, or you?

 

[thiggins]

That's explained in the article. His bio is included at the bottom

 

[L&LD]

Oops! Sorry, I saw your name at the top of the article, skipped the intro, and just saw the bio at the bottom. Thanks.

 

[theirongiant]

This was a great article. One of the suggested features to check — automatic channel selection — was enabled on my AX88U. I was having intermittent severe latency on the 2.4GHz channel: we're talking several seconds where packets would not go through, followed by a flood of extremely late packets (5+ seconds). Occasionally devices would drop off the network entirely, necessitating a reboot of the device or the router to resolve.

The 2.4GHz network is *only* used for Smart Home devices (IoT) that don't support 5GHz.

To increase network stability I set a fixed channel, reduced the bandwidth to 20MHz, and limited the protocol to 802.11g/n only (no 11b). These changes have reduced a lot of the random dropouts and latency spikes. My Twinkly Christmas lights are much more responsive now!

I have Smart Connect enabled for now, but I plan to turn it off soon.

 

[tgl]

Hey ... the link shown at the top of this thread is giving me "Page not found" ... could we get that article back please?

 

[tgl]

... ah, a bit of searching finds it here now.

 

[thiggins]

Sorry about that. Link has been fixed.