Is Router slowing down my device, and does it still work okay when I turn it off and on again?
Is Router slowing down my device, and does it still work okay when I turn it off and on again?
Hi, I got an Alcatel LINKHUB HH71 LTE cat7 router and plugged in a few phones and a laptop to Wi-Fi (I can't use ethernet for the laptop). The problem is this: when phones turn on or restart, everything works fine. But when I start my laptop, download speeds drop down to just 0.5MB/s and stay that way until I restart the router again, after which full speed returns. What's wrong here? Do I need to check anything on the router? Not too long ago it was reset to default and I don't think I set anything that would limit things (or at least I can't remember). Is this a hardware defect where only one device is getting slow? Or maybe it's the Wi-Fi card on my laptop, which is a Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe adapter?
Welcome to the forums! Newcomers, this problem might just be your router. I looked around and see that there are basically no firmware versions or updates listed on their support page (which is a bit hard if you are new to networking). You could try updating the firmware using the router's built-in menu, though. Maybe check if your laptop needs an update for its BIOS too. If you manually remove the WiFi adapter drivers and then reinstall them with the latest ones from the laptop's support site using an admin right-click on the installer (like "Run as Administrator"), it might help. But I doubt that fixes it because of your specific setup. Try swapping out with a different ethernet cable too. If the problem disappears when you use another router instead of this Alcatel one, then you've found the cause!
The phone has an ethernet port. How fast do you go with a wired link?
Hey, thanks for the replies! I got super busy on the weekend so I didn't get a chance to test it right away. But now I did and it works just fine as expected. I check updates regularly, and even checked once more to make sure everything is up to date. When I look at my router's menu to see if there are new versions, it says that the latest version is already installed. I've tried reinstalling drivers a few times but nothing has helped much. Even though I plugged in another Alcatel router and connected it using my second router's Wi-Fi, everything worked okay with that one. Why does this Alcatel laptop Wi-Fi card hate me so much? Maybe something is stuck or getting reset by the system. Any ideas on how to fix this without changing the router or switching through other routers to access the network?