Does modem range decrease with time

M

meetdilip

Adept
I have an ONT - router - repeater setup with a 50 Mbps connection. It used to do well with page loading and downloads at the time when it was just a 10 Mbps connection. My hardware is almost 3 years old. But recently, I am having issues with page loading. Download however seems fine.

I changed to Cloudflare DNS and now using Google DNS. Will it be a hardware fault that I am getting delay in page loading ? Will changing the hardware work ? Thanks.
 
I changed the repeater position to a room closer to the router. Speed improved from 4 Mbps to 10 Mbps now. I am thinking about using a LAN cable to connect my PC by avoiding repeater. Need to do some trial and error and find out what works the best.
 
meetdilip said:
I have an ONT - router - repeater setup with a 50 Mbps connection. It used to do well with page loading and downloads at the time when it was just a 10 Mbps connection. My hardware is almost 3 years old. But recently, I am having issues with page loading. Download however seems fine.

I changed to Cloudflare DNS and now using Google DNS. Will it be a hardware fault that I am getting delay in page loading ? Will changing the hardware work ? Thanks.
Click to expand...
You would be using a channel on the 2.4ghz and it is possible that your neighbourhood wireless spectrum would have got more crowded over the years causing the noise on the channel to go up
check the signal to noise ratio on your device (signal in db minus noise in db) - very likely it will be low
You can scan the spectrum to see if any of the 2.4gig channels have low noise although the long term solution would be to switch to 5ghz or wired
 
meetdilip said:
Where to look for SNR in an iBall router ?

There is only a couple of SSIDs around my place. Will it cost congestion ? Thanks.
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You can check SnR on the end user device - google for the right software for your platform
No idea where on an iball router can you view it

And yes, the couple of SSIDs you can see within your house will increase congestion on the band that they are on as well as partly on the adjacent bands
 
meetdilip said:
You mean I can check it from my PC through a software ?
Click to expand...

Open a browser on your PC and connect to your iBall router's IP address. Logon. Go to the Status page to see if it shows the SNR information. This might be a bit different based on the particular iBall router you are using.
 
meetdilip said:
I changed the repeater position to a room closer to the router. Speed improved from 4 Mbps to 10 Mbps now. I am thinking about using a LAN cable to connect my PC by avoiding repeater. Need to do some trial and error and find out what works the best.
Click to expand...
I made this point years back of moving repeater closer to router for the simple reason than half of a good signal gave more than a weaker signal. So your findings are bearing me out.

If you can connect that repeater to the router with a cable (in effect turning it into an access point) you won't have to deal with a halving of bandwidth that comes with using a repeater.

Your PC should be more sensitive to a wifi signal than a phone. Its got more power for amplification. I'm wondering whether the problem is with the repeater than the main router.
 
Thanks all for the replies

I changed the whole deployment. Moved ONT to the next room and eliminated the repeater. Even with open doors and windows I get around 15 Mbps out of 50 Mbps in my room. I get 3 out of 4 for Wifi signal, but speed is just too low.

Will it help if I use a repeater in the middle ? How much loss does repeater have ?

I am totally confused now. I have a standard wifi router and bars signal, but speed is this low

I will check the SNR and update here
 
I tried WiFi analyser on my phone. The curve is between -70 and -80 (signal strength dbm) and 3.5-8.5 ( wifi channels )

on Ch6 it is -73dbm , 2437 MHz
 
Any idea why speed drops this low ? At one page in the router, it is listed 3 devices connected. Two of them with bandwidth 20 M and another with bandwidth 40M.
 
meetdilip said:
You mean I can check it from my PC through a software ?
Click to expand...
if your PC is your main device then use a wifi app for your PC. What OS are you on ? on windows there is also wifi analyzer from the store[DOUBLEPOST=1536927693][/DOUBLEPOST]
meetdilip said:
I tried WiFi analyser on my phone. The curve is between -70 and -80 (signal strength dbm) and 3.5-8.5 ( wifi channels )

on Ch6 it is -73dbm , 2437 MHz
Click to expand...
How much is it on the PC at the same distance
 
I have modified the deployment. Brought the router as close as possible to my room thorugh LAN cable from ONT. It is now just outside the door with 3/4 bars of wifi signal. There is no repeater in use now. Out of 50, I get around 20 Mbps on speedtest.net. Page loading is still pathetic

blr_p said:
What OS are you on ? on windows there is also wifi analyzer from the store
Click to expand...

I installed ( by Matt Hafner ) on Windows 10. At times, it moves to 60 db. Otherwise, it shows zero as shown below

wifi analyzer.jpg


On mobile it shows -57 dbm CH6 2437 MHz just close to the laptop[DOUBLEPOST=1537073673][/DOUBLEPOST]
superczar said:
-70/80 is too low to get a reliable connection
Click to expand...

What can be done ?

Edit :

Strange ! When tried on mobile I get 45 Mbps up and down just close to the laptop running Windows 10. I used the speedtest app.
 
Last edited:
meetdilip said:
I have modified the deployment. Brought the router as close as possible to my room thorugh LAN cable from ONT. It is now just outside the door with 3/4 bars of wifi signal. There is no repeater in use now. Out of 50, I get around 20 Mbps on speedtest.net. Page loading is still pathetic
Click to expand...
Am wondering whether there is packet loss somewhere.

Can you do a ping test say 50 pings from the laptop and same from the phone.

How much packet loss do you see if any ?
 
Like this ?

ping google.com

Pinging google.com [216.58.196.174] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.58.196.174: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.196.174: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.196.174: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.196.174: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 216.58.196.174:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 16ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 17ms
Click to expand...

I am not sure how to do it from mobile
 
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