My parents get 200mbps on their phones but only 10mbps on laptop.

[Vadevious]

So I helped my parents get Virgin internet as they were getting some awful speeds with BT.

Anyway here's where the problem lies - they get 200mbit+ in the living room where the router is no problem during the day. The same thing upstairs in the bedroom. The problem appears during the night at peak time - it can drop to as low as 2mbit in the bedroom and ~10mbit in the living room. BUT here's the very odd thing: this only happens on a laptop. Their phones still get 200mbit+ during the evening both in the living room and up in the bedroom but for some reason the laptop does not.

I've gotten a dongle for the laptop that supports 600mbit and tried both 2.4 and 5ghz channels to see if it would improve it - it does not. It's really weird to be honest and I don't really know where to go from here as it doesn't make much sense? And no, obviously they aren't testing the speed with their phone's data connection instead of wifi.

Any ideas?

[g0akc]

What's the make and model of the laptop?  Which operating system?  How old is it?

You see the same issue with both the laptop's own inbuilt wifi and the dongle?

Are the wifi drivers up to date?

Have you tried using a wifi analyser app (under Windows, another operating system or another device) - many are free and they're simple to use.  Is a neighbour using the same or overlapping channels?  What signal strengths?

Which channels on 2.4 and 5GHz are you using?  Have you tried another channel within those bands, avoiding overlap?

[Vadevious]

This is the laptop, I got it recently as a refurb for them as the previous one was pretty old: https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refurbished-hp-15s-eq1510sa-amd-ryzen-5-4500u-8gb-256gb-15.6-inch-wi... The dongle I'm using is from the old one, the point was to hope for a better signal than the built-in wifi card. Windows 10, age of the model being built is only a couple years I think.

Yes the issue is the same with both built-in wifi & dongle & yes the drivers are up to date.

I have not tried a wifi analyzer app - will have a go with this but it's just difficult with my parents being half an hour away & the problem only presenting itself at night. I've tried both 2.4hz and 5hz channels, I have not tried another channel within those bands as I don't recall seeing any available while connecting with the dongle software. Regardless, I would have thought it would do its' best to connect to the best signal?

Do you think your suggestions would really make any difference if the speed is blazing fast during the day? It seems strange that during peak only the laptop is slow though.

[g0akc · Accepted solution]

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@Vadevious wrote:

 I've tried both 2.4hz and 5hz channels, I have not tried another channel within those bands as I don't recall seeing any available while connecting with the dongle software. Regardless, I would have thought it would do its' best to connect to the best signal?

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2.4GHz and 5GHz are not channels - they are 'frequency bands' - within each of them there are a number of channels to try - in theory the hub should pick the best, but it doesn't always get it right.

You wouldn't see the channels when installing the dongle software - you change the channels in the hub settings - and to set one manually you need to take it off auto.  Keep to say 1, 6 or 11 on 2.4GHz to avoid overlapping.

I would also look at 'splitting the bands' whilst I was at it - giving the 2.4 and 5GHz slightly different names - say with a 2 and a 5 at the end, rather than both bands using the same SSID (Network Name).

[g0akc]

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@Vadevious wrote:

Do you think your suggestions would really make any difference if the speed is blazing fast during the day? It seems strange that during peak only the laptop is slow though.

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Well, if I didn't think they might make a difference I wouldn't have suggested them, would I !

[Vadevious]

Sorry, that was just a writing mess-up - I meant that I didn't try any other channels within those bands. Iirc I set (which I assume now was the default set by the hub) to Channel 11 and 44 respectively. 

Thanks for the rest of the advice also, I'm certainly armed with lots of things to try now.

No offence was meant asking if some of the suggestions would work, I simply can't understand why they would work when the phones work completely fine regardless of it being on or off-peak. That's the bit that confused me - especially since now that you've mentioned that channels are set in stone by the router, that would mean the phones were on the same channel/band during testing and thus should have also seen the same drop in connectivity, no?

[g0akc]

 No problem.

these things are often a case of trial and error and working logically through it. Don’t always make initial sense!

it may be congestion/clashes from a neighbour who use wireless much more on the evening, with the mobiles better at dealing with it through more compatible chip sets/drivers?

[g0akc]

Also, how are you measuring the speeds - on the phones and on the laptop ?  Which speed test service are you using?

The laptop appears to be relatively modern.  I would remove the dongle, use the internal Wi-Fi and start going over the things I've mentioned and go from there.

Do check that those drivers are the latest - with the laptop or chipset manufacturers website. 

It looks like it's this one (the WLAN chipset);

https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/rtl8821ce-software

[Vadevious]

I'm using fast.com most of the time, but when this issue happened I also tried the other typical ones (google and also Ookla, as a last resort). I did update all the drivers but the main thing of note is that this was also a problem on the previous laptop... They probably wouldn't have noticed their slow internet speed if it wasn't for them complaining to me that they can't watch my Plex library in the evening due to constant buffering and for ages I thought it was my server until I thought to do a test...

[jbrennand]

To do a speedtest properly they need to do it this way.,....

________________________________________________

As you expect >100Mbps then connect a 1GB enabled computer/laptop, with up to date drivers, via a NEW and working Cat5e/6a ethernet cable, directly to the Hub which you have put into “modem mode”
(https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-hub-modem-mode ).
This ensures that NO other devices are connected that may limit speeds.

Test speeds at https://speedtest.samknows.com/ - try on 2 different browsers.

If they are still low – boot you laptop into (windows) safe+networking mode to disable any potentially interfering software - and try again.

There are many posts on here (I have a list of ~30!) where QoS software, unknown/flaky software, old network card drivers, corrupted browsers, bad cables or other connected devices are limiting speeds on tests.

Report back what that gets.