M500 speed slower than M100??

[Chriskoncewicz]

Good morning,

I upgraded from M100 to M500 at the weekend; I know the upgrade has gone through because my upload speeds have gone up from ~10Mbps to ~35Mbps as expected. However, I used to be able to (at least speed test) at 100+Mbps when on the M100 package - on an iPhone 13 or brand new laptop, sat right next to the router - but since the upgrade, I haven't had more than around ~80Mbps.

I tried looking at settings in Hub 3 and it reports a downstream connection rate that appears to be correct, but the download rate doesn't come close. The Virgin automated checker (problem shooting) wanted to reset my router as 'a couple of settings have changed' but that's only the SSID, and I don't really want to reconnect all my devices for the sake of trying something. Plus, it was faster before the upgrade with otherwise identical settings. 

Any suggestions? I have seen a variety of other posts relating to a similar issue but no definite answer. 

[jbrennand]

You are probably connecting on the slower 2.4 GHz wifi band - you can force it onto the 5GHz band by renaming and separating the bands to have separate SSID's - but you will need to reconnect everything.

If you want to do it - here's how...
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Go into the Hub’s settings. Type in  http://192.168.0.1  into your web browser’s url box and login with settings password on the Hub's base sticker (or your own if you changed it). Then in Advanced>wireless signal >smart wifi - tick the disable “channel optimisation” box or “Smart Wifi” box and save settings.  May be different pathways and wording on the 3 Hub types
Then, go to advanced>wireless signal>security, rename the 2.4 & 5 GHz network ssid's.  Just type over to change 'em to whatever you like and something that will differentiate them (e.g - Billybob2 & Billybob5) Try to avoid spaces and periods in the SSID names as they can cause issues with certain devices. Use the same password for simplicity,  Then, apply settings and restart the Hub.  Your 2 wifi networks will now be clearly separated - and you can then select the network you want each device to connect to… individually from the "available networks" list on each of your devices. 

Note all your wifi devices will need re-connecting to the new SSID's and passwords.
All things being equal, 5 GHz is always better/faster and subject to less congestion/interference (and is better for iDevice speeds than the 2.4 one - although the 2.4 one has the better "range" and will be needed when the 5 GHz drops out of range and some older/cheaper/dumber devices can only use this one. 

You should also use a wifi analyser App (or Airport Utility on iOS) to check which 2.4 channels are being heavily used around you and move yours to one of numbers 1,6,11 that is least so, but it wont help if there is other interference.

See if these changes help - you will lose any “seamless roaming” benefits but it may not matter and you can always change the settings back by doing a " pinhole factory reset " if you prefer the way it was - or it doesn’t help.

[Chriskoncewicz]

Hi John,

Thanks for the suggestions, but I already run 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands separately, so I know I'm connected via 5GHz. I get a slightly lower transfer rate on the 2.4GHz band as expected. I am around two - three feet away from the router when trying this, so it isn't a range issue. 😞

Chris

[legacy1]

It was the rate limiter on 100Mb slowing traffic down to go faster but upping the speed mean traffic gets to the wifi faster buffers as the slow wifi tries to send the traffic to your device.

You can either ask for a new hub 4/5 go back to 100M or look at a better wireless router with 1Gb ports and use the hub in modem mode

[Carley_S]

Hi @Chriskoncewicz

Welcome back to community!
Sorry to hear you're having speed issues at this time. I have checked our systems and can see no issues with your service and no issues in the area that might be causing any concerns. 

Are these issues only over a WiFi connection? Do you have the ability to run a wired speed test at all to see what speeds you have at the router and to the device. You can do this via our Sam Knows speeds test site here.