Just got my Fiber. Is this really fast enough for me? It feels a bit slow to me right now.
Just got my Fiber. Is this really fast enough for me? It feels a bit slow to me right now.
So, we've had 4G internet for a year now. We finally got fiber about two months ago. I'm being more relaxed with my internet speed limits. But sometimes this new fiber feels pretty slow at times. I need to figure out where the problem is and find a good way to test if I really get 1 Gb/s that I pay for. With my current setup, the fiber goes straight into a Watchguard T20 Firewall, which acts as my router. Then it runs into a gigabit switch, connects to a Cisco AP, and finally hits several of my 151AXM extenders around the house. All these devices use Wifi 6 technology. In theory, everything should work at gigabit speeds because there shouldn't be any bottlenecks between the modem and all the other devices. I assume wifi 6 will make things even faster, but in reality, it's probably not going to help much anyway since we live way out in the middle of nowhere. That's why we got fiber in the first place just for speed. I can't see any neighbors' houses or their WiFi networks inside or outside my house, so there is no interference. However, right now, while backing up some files on a desktop computer with a Wifi 6 USB internet card, the upload was stuck at about 300 GB/s. When I checked the resource manager software, it said my upload speed was only using about 150 Mb/s. I pay for both 1 Gb/s down and 1 Gb/s up. While these files were uploading, browsing the web was terrible; I had to refresh many pages just to get them to load. It seemed like this 150 Mb/s limit completely choked my uploads, stopping my PC from asking websites for data. Before I call the ISP to ask why they're giving me only half speed despite what I pay for, I need at least one hundred percent sure thing. The best way to check is to unplug everything from the modem and plug in just one device to run a test. But I also need to make sure that this test is 100% legit. So, which tool do you recommend? My laptop is okay specs-wise but doesn't have its own built-in internet card. Most laptops today don't have these anymore. Instead, my HP x360 has a USB internet card attached. But having to run the test on that USB part makes me nervous because it's not 100% accurate. My desktop is also pretty decent but would be hard to move around just for this check. I was wondering if a Raspberry Pi might work, since it has its own built-in network card. But I'm worried about how accurate and how fast that device actually performs.
So, after typing this, I got to thinking, maybe I could run a speed test directly from the watchguard. I don't think I can. I was thinking it has a linux backend.... maybe it does. But, when I telnet to it, it has a firewall, cisco, type cli... I don't think there's any way to access any kind of linux/unix backend to the box that I could run a speed test from. But, as I'm messing around in telnet, my uploads are still going. My typing into telnet is super delayed. So, right there tells me that the bottleneck is my home wifi or home internet. I really don't have a good way to run a network cable from my PC to my firewall. they're on opposite sides of the house in a finished house. I mean I guess I could. But, I think it seems like more time and energy than I want to put into this solution. Our bedroom underneath it is a finished basement. Above it is the attic. I guess I could fish the wire up the walls because the modem is in the room a few rooms away upper floor too. Although I'd have to somehow get it across the vaulted ceiling.... Oh, and for some stupid reason, I think all of the interior walls in this house are insulated which makes fishing wires fun. (Already had to run an electrical wire in one interior wall and was suprised to find out it was insulated...)
Windows says my wifi speed is going up and down at 573 megabits per second. That's what the computer thinks I can actually get, even though I'm not sure how they figure that out. It seems like it doesn't think the connection is strong enough for one gigabit per second, but fifty-seven three megabits a minute isn't too bad compared to getting nothing at all!
The connection between your computer and router using WiFi is totally different from what happens when you use Ethernet cables. You can only really check if it works by testing with a Cat5e cable from your PC straight to the router; that's how we know for sure about the real thing.
You have insulation inside your walls, which stops sound and blocks heat too. This helps stop your Wi-Fi from leaking out. If you have coax cables in the remote room near the router, maybe you should consider MoCa instead of just running more wire. Running any kind of wifi extender will make your speed drop a lot. I see cisco started selling these units and they are just as bad as the cheapest consumer models. The signals between your devices and the main AP get in the way of each other. In addition you are now using twice the radio bandwidth. Also, wifi6 is mostly marketing fluff because almost nobody sees much improvement over wifi5(802.11ac). Your system like most only runs 80mhz. Using 160mhz gives wifi6 some speed but it's hard to do because of rules about radar interference so many devices don't offer that feature. Most end devices also don't support 160mhz and you need both to get the speed up. The second feature of wifi6 is using qam1024. This very dense data encoding only works in the same room as the router. In most cases you get about 300mbps on wifi6 at normal distances but it will be much less if you use repeaters.
So, I just remembered I bought one of these a while ago and it was just sitting in my closet. This is the Beelink U59 Mini PC with an Intel Celeron processor that's good for office mini computers. It comes with 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD as options, plus support for three screens. I have dual Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on it. The model has 4 cores, supports Windows 11 Pro, and includes options like 8 or 16 GB of RAM and different hard drive sizes depending on what you choose. It uses HDMI and Type-C ports to show three displays at once, making it great for work. This PC can also wake up automatically when needed, which helps bring my life a bit more... I just connected it. It's running Windows 11 Pro right now. The specs are: 2 GHz processor, 4 cores, 8 GB RAM, and an m.2 SSD with 256 or 500 GB of storage. This device also has a gigabit network card. I hooked it up to my modem through the switch, which then goes to the firebox and the fiber optic modem. I haven't decided if I should bypass the firewall yet... but according to the firewall report, my whole home network speed is tiny at the moment—only about 15 Mbps going down. To check the real internet speed, I ran a test using the Windows app from the Microsoft store.
So, just finished testing everything. My ISP says they give me full 1 Gb/s going both ways. When only my PC was connected to the modem, I got super fast speeds—about 900 Mb/s on both sides. Then I plugged in a firewall and connected my PC to a switch instead of directly to the modem. Now I'm testing again and getting much slower numbers: about 264 Mbps down and 390 Mbps up. After that, I unplugged my cable and switched things over to use WiFi. That gave me around 86 Mbps down and 85 Mbps up. Looking back, I should have tried a test on the LAN side of the firewall without even connecting the switch. But you know how it is when you turn off your internet at home... nobody knows what to do with themselves. I guess I've put everyone in my family through enough pain for one day already. Maybe I'll try this other test tomorrow.