r/wifi

To try to make the explanation simple, if my phone (Pixel 10 Pro XL) is connected to my WiFi network, the speed drops by about 7-10x across all devices, this only happened maybe last couple weeks after having the phone on the network prior with no major changes for about 4 months.

Spectrum Gig, all Spectrum hardware. My first tests in fact were with speedtest, but at the time of initial troubleshooting it was drastic/repeatable enough for comparison at least (I did try iperf tonight, more below). Therefore I do not care about actual speeds, just the comparison with the phone being connected. But just to show how repeatable it is, I can turn WiFi off on the phone mid speedtest on the laptop, and the speed instantly jumps up.

Ethernet to router when I first was troubleshooting was ~600Mbps on a laptop. At that time of testing with phone disconnected, same laptop was ~350Mbps on WiFi. WITH phone connected, dropped to ~50Mbps.

I have no idea if I did this correct, but did try iperf between my PC (tp-link PCIe adapter) and same laptop as before. Phone connected was 11Mbps, phone disconnected was 48Mbps. Again no idea how relevant those numbers are or if I ran it correctly (set laptop as server, on PC connected to laptop IP).

It took some troubleshooting to figure out it was my phone (just noticed low overall speed at first). I tried simple things like restarting modem and router, restarting phone, forgetting network and re-connecting. I tried disconnecting other devices to see if it was some kind of device limit, no change.

There are no large updates happening or syncing through the phone, especially the behavior happening this long. I even tried changing my Spotify off of lossless quality just as a random thought. I suppose next logical troubleshooting would be to reset the phone, but I'd like to avoid that (it's only a little over 4 months old)

I would guess it'd be something phone related, so I started searching there without much luck. I figured posting on a network sub might be my best bet. Let me know if I need to clarify anything or need more info. TIA!

So I currently am using my netgear nighthawk ac1750 router and a Motorola mb7621 modem. I ran direct cable to Xbox series x. When I do a speed check it comes back 200mbps. When I do a speed check on my iPhone SE using WiFi it says 400mbps. Any ideas why the wired speeds are slower than WiFi?Cable I am using is cat 6.

I’m staying at a hotel for an extended period and wanted to connect my ps5 to the hotel WiFi. It was working for a couple of weeks but now no matter what I do I can’t get a portal to open to connect to the WiFi. I can’t access the browser to open a portal at all, should I bite the bullet and get like a router or something or is there a workaround?

Hi, 

I have an Asus BT8 consisting of 3 nodes with an Ethernet backhaul at 2.5Gbps.

I have two SSIDs at home. The first for all phones, tablets, laptops, etc., and the second specifically for IoT, which is running on a separate VLAN with no access to the home network.

The home network runs all 3 bands on the same SSID, and the IoT network only runs a 2.4GHz. The reason why the main network still needs the 2.4 is because we have an old printer with only 2.4 capabilities. 

5GHz band is relatively clean, and 6GHz is literally empty.

Everything works just fine, except the two iPhone 17s I have struggle really badly to roam through the mesh. They both get stuck to a specific node, and even if I turn on/off Wi-Fi on the phones, they only connect to the node they were connected to before despite having a much stronger signal on some other.

As per some other recommendations, I disabled MLO and, just in case, so the Wi-Fi7 (none of the devices at home support Wi-Fi7 anyway). I also configured Roaming Assistance so if signal drops below -65dB, the clients will try to connect to another node. 

This change seemed to fix the roaming issue for a while, but since yesterday, I am back to square one. The Mac I am writing from now is connected just fine to the 6GHz band, and the RSSI is at -47dB. The iPhone literally right beside this very Mac still attempts to connect to the farthest mesh node in the house (the one which it was previously connected to) and will try to connect to that node unless I change the Private WiFi Address to something different, which effectively changes its MAC Address.

The router is running the latest firmware, and iPhones are running either iOS 26.4.1 or 26.5 beta with the same results.

At this point, I don't know what else to do to get this working as it should, and any advice from the experts would be greatly appreciated. 

I have a PC that doesnt have a wifi card, and I tried to install it but failed miserably, and I have been using since then a TP- Link usb wifi extender. However, the connections has slowly degraded up to almost being unusable. Im talking 10-16 hours to download a couple gigabytes. Is there any way to have rapid wifi connection without having to get a 30 meter cable across my house? I can provide further information about my PC if needed. Thanks!

So, moved into my first apartment. 996sq ft 2 bed 2 bath.

Recently, the TP-Link Deco BE11000 Wifi 7 Tri-Band Mesh Home Router 3 Pack went on clearance at Costco for 99.97, so I bought it and separated the routers to have 2 of them (one for each bedroom) and then sold the 3rd for the 100 I paid, basically getting the first 2 routers for free

I have lots of probably stupid questions, as I’ve never done anything WiFi besides use a lot of it when I was living with my parents, but they had cheap WiFi so I wanted to get what I hope is the good stuff (for the price)

I have Xfinity’s 1gb WiFi 6e (supposedly) modem in my living room, and wanna have it reach the 2 bedrooms on the other side of the apartment

However, I was annoyed to find out that I need the routers to connect to my modem via Ethernet, so here I am figuring out what Ethernet would be best to buy for my gear.

I try to plan for the future, and intend on having both of these devices for the next 5 years (thanks to Xfinity 5 year price guarantee)

So, my questions are:

- What ethernet cables do I need to get?

- Are these good routers?

- Tips for routing the ethernet cables along the trim of the walls/doorframes for a minimalist look?

- Any other tips/suggestions that I’m missing and could use?

My Asus GT AX11000 tops out at around 1.3 and can't get any higher than that. I'm assuming to take full advantage of any modern router and your internet speeds you're paying for, you'd need to go wired only.

Got one in my garage and I need Ethernet to 2 computers in there. If I plug a switch into my extender, will that work? (I'm not running cable all through my house)

I have three Netgear WAC720 AP in my house that are configured in NG's "Ensemble" mode. These have an option to use 2 external antenna for 2.5GHz & 5GHz.

I've been having problems using the internal antenna with coverage and dead spots as a client (laptop, cell phone -etc) are walking around the house and clients that will be connected while being in one spot and suddenly disconnect.

I bought some cheap Amazon 2.4GHz / 5GHz antenna (about 4" long) and they didn't work any better than when using the internal antennas.

Anyone want to recommend a good 2.4GHz / 5GHz antenna. If so, can you provide a link?

Granted, the WAC720 is an antique and there has been no new SW release in at least 6 years (V3.9.1.0). So the problem may not be correctable with a better antenna. But, I'd like to try.

I’ve just had FTTP installed (1 Gbps) and I’m trying to decide the best place to position my router in my second living room.

The setup I’m currently considering is placing the router on a small wall shelf about 30 cm to the left of a 65-inch modern LED TV. The shelf would be mounted roughly 160–180 cm from the floor. This would result in a fairly central location.

The Ethernet cable has been ran through the wall by the engineer. To make this setup work, I’d need a 5 m Cat6 Ethernet cable (to give plenty of slack) plus an RJ45 coupler.

Otherwise, I’d have to keep the router much further to the right side of the property and lower down (around 120 cm max, I suspect it would end up lower than this for convenience), which doesn’t feel ideal for positioning.

I’d consider myself inexperienced with networking setups, so I’d still be interested in hearing other people’s thoughts on whether this placement makes sense in practice.

UK based if that is relevant. Please let me know if this post is not suitable for this subreddit.

I live with my wife, she insists she has the Wi-Fi account in her name only, won’t let us share an account.

I don’t have a VPN etc.

Can she see what apps and websites I use?

I’m not doing anything wrong, but I also like to have some sort of privacy.

My router randomly kicked my devices (apple) off of it last night and said I had an incorrect password. Thought my husband was playing a prank on me but he was disconnected and confused as well.

I factory reset and re-setup everything, new password, but now we’re struggling with staying connected. It’ll drop mid game or video and it’s getting annoying :p

Was never like this before last night!!! Is this issue related to the password changing or do we randomly just have shotty WiFi now??

So in my garden office I have a wifi booster that has an ethernet cable to the main router. Im getting good speed tests 300-500Mbps download & 30-50Mbps upload but its almost like everything is on go slow mode. Webpages will take about 60 seconds to load and some things just wont load, but then other times its like everything is fine.

Its almost as if it drops in and out, its the same in the house.

Ive tried running two laptops with different DNS but the same issues occur. And ive tried with and without a VPN

Is this likely to be an issue with the router itself?