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Slow Speeds Over Wi-Fi

Andrzej_Ottawa
I've been here awhile

Hello  all,

I signed for 1.5Gb Rogers internet and got a Gen 2 modem (EasyConnect09940).  I cannot use wired  internet connection, and use through the house wireless connection.  The speed measured with Rogers are 230 to 290 Mb download and 50 Mb upload, with ping 12ms, despite I pay for 1.5Gb. Our son is playing online games and is constantly complaining about the internet speed.  Is it possible we get better wireless internet connection (closer to what we pay) throughout the house with another modem, or I should consider another provider or solution.  Could you please advise/recommend.  Thank you.

 

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7 REPLIES 7

Re: Slow Speeds Over Wi-Fi

57
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

@Andrzej_Ottawa  WiFi speeds are specific to your home, your devices, distance from the gateway, your home layout (walls, ducting, etc), interference from neighbours, etc.  The max WiFi speeds without going to WiFi 6 are probably around 5-600 Mbps, so your speed is fairly "normal".  How close is your device to the gateway when you are testing?  You can check the WiFi connection to each of the devices using the Home Connect app on one of the devices.

 

Here are several helpful links:

 

https://www.rogers.com/internet/wifi

 

Test your WiFi speeds using the following link. What you can do is perform the test at the same time on more than one device and add up the speeds from those devices to see your overall performance.  As you can see from this link, very high speeds are rarely required. The only reason to have such high speeds is if there are many people in the home all using their devices at the same time.  The speed to a single device is rarely relevant

 

https://www.rogers.com/support/internet/basic-internet-speedtest

 

Here's a thread concerning speeds on the 1.5 Gbps plan, starting at the following post:

 

https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Internet/Slow-Speeds/m-p/510588#M75402

 

Re: Slow Speeds Over Wi-Fi

Andrzej_Ottawa
I've been here awhile

To 57:  thanks for the reply and explanation.  I understand how wifi works and that there may be some signal loses with distance and obstacles between the router/modem and the computer location.  However, I measured the internet speed at the router/modem by connecting it with a cable and it shows 940Mb, still not the paid 1.5Gb.  I have a feeling Rogers is not providing me with 1.5Gb, or the router/modem is not properly setup. My original idea was to replace the Rogers router/modem with Gen3 in hope for a stronger signal and faster internet at the receiving end, or discuss with Rogers upgrading the service to higher speed than 1.5Gb in order to get better speed inside the house, as 230Mb we get is unacceptable for the use we need here.  Can you please comment; thank you.

Re: Slow Speeds Over Wi-Fi

@Andrzej_Ottawa if you're maxing out at 940 Mb/s, that indicates that the test pc/laptop is only able to support 1 Gb/s as a raw data throughput.  That might be because the port on the device is only able to support 1 Gb/s raw data rate, or, if it happens to be a multi-gig port, capable of supporting 2.5, 5 or 10 Gb/s, you have it connected to the modem's port 1 to 3.  Port 4 on the modem is a multi-gig port which will support 1 or 2.5 Gb/s.  It will sync with the connected device port at what ever data rates the two ports can agree on.  With a device that only supports 1 Gb/s, you will end up with 940 Mb/s as a max data throughput when you take the ethernet overhead into consideration.  

 

If you only have devices capable of running 1 Gb/s, you have to use multiple devices to run a simultaneous speedtest with the nearest Rogers server, preferably not a wireless server, as shown on the speedtest site.  When you're on the speedtest site, change the server and type in Rogers in the entry window.  That will show all of the Rogers servers and Rogers Wireless servers.  Select the non-wireless server that is nearest to your home location.  When you run a simultaneous speedtest with two or more ethernet connected devices, you should see an aggregate data rate at or over 1.5 Gb/s.  The problem that we've seen in the past, going way back when to the day that Rogers first introduced data rates over 100 Mb/s, is that the customer devices don't support the higher data rate that the customer has signed up for, or that the ethernet cabling in the house is not connected properly to support 1 Gb/s.  With multi-gig ethernet ports on modems, routers, switches and end devices, its now possible to run higher data rates over that gigabit cabling.  That's due to a change in the waveform used to support the higher ethernet data rates. Those data rates include 2.5, 5, and 10 Gb/s.   It comes down a matter of money, the more you spend, the faster the data rates over your house cabling, with no change in the house cabling itself.  

 

As for the slow wifi performance, are your wifi devices capable of running 802.11ax, or are they old enough that they only support 802.11ac or 802.11n which is very old now?  That makes a considerable difference.  You probably have to review the specs for every wifi device that you're concerned about in order to know if they support the slower 802.11 n/ac or faster 802.11ax waveform and data encoding schemes.

 

Where is the modem located, in the basement, main floor or second floor?  I'm assuming that you're in a house.

 

Are you familiar with the MCS Index, located here:  https://mcsindex.com/   

 

Can you expand on the inability to use ethernet throughout the house? 

 

Is the house old enough that it doesn't have ethernet cabling run throughout the house?  

 

Have you check behind the wallplates and downstairs to determine if there is ethernet cabling present but not in use?  That does happen as house builders for the most part might install structured cabling but, won't call someone in to install the necessary connectors and wallplates. 

 

Do you happen to have house telephone cabling and if so is it Cat 3 (usually brown in colour) or is it Cat 5 or Cat 5e which is usually blue in colour.  If so, and you're not using or have no plans to use a house telephone system, you can repurpose the Cat 5 or 5e cabling to run ethernet throughout the house by changing the end connectors to ethernet connectors.  You can check behind a wallplate with a telephone port or have a look in the basement to determine what cable type is installed.  If you have blue ethernet cabling, you can check the cable type that is printed on the cable jacket, which will include the manufacturers data and cable type (Cat 5 or Cat 5e).

 

Do you have Rogers pods installed an in use, or do you have the modem only and possibly the tv set top boxes?

 

I will comment on this situation further, but, its late at night, so, that will be tomorrows project.  Some answers to the above questions will help if you have the time.  

 

At the present time, I wouldn't look for upgraded service for faster data rates without thoroughly examining your wifi device capabilities and looking at the modem location and wifi settings.  The wifi settings alone will say a lot about the current situation.  

 

This situation will most likely be the same no matter what company provides your internet services.  The exception here is if you're on a neighbourhood node or Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) that is heavily loaded, where you can observe slower data rates early in the morning when the business world starts rolling, in the afternoon when the kids return from school and later in the evening when everyone is home, streaming, gaming, etc, etc.  Those high load times also result in decreased data rates, and increased latency which is not good for gaming.  

 

I'm not a gamer, but, just to point this out, the issue in gaming is latency, not bandwidth (data rate).  On top of the cable system latency, Wifi adds to that latency simply due to how wifi works, which is, every device on a wifi channel has a random opportunity to transmit its data.  That includes modems, routers and wifi connected devices.  That won't change unless you move to, or live on a acreage, where your neighbours are few and far between and there is much less competition for transmit time and opportunities or, unless you move a separate router and end device with Wifi 6e which uses 6 Ghz frequencies instead of the historical 2.4 and 5 Ghz frequencies.  Getting back to my original statement, it should be well known in the gaming community that fibre, DSL/VDSL, and then DOCSIS cable (Rogers cable) are the pecking order in terms of latency.  Fibre and DSL/VDSL could be a toss up as to which one provides lower and stable latency.  DOCSIS cable uses transmit slot times on the downstream and upstream side.  There will be more latency added on the upstream time slots due to a polling and transmit slot time assignment scheme by the CMTS.  That will add latency and cause a variation in the time between slot times due to the upload requirements of all of the modems connected to the CMTS.  The CMTS polls the connected modems, determines which modems have upload requirements and assigns transmit slot times to the connected modems.  So, the timing between transmit slot times won't be cast in concrete.  It will change as the upload requirements continuously change for all of the connected modems.  And .... just to point out, cable systems were designed in the 1950s (?), and were not designed for high data uploads, so, cable systems are constrained in terms of their data upload rates, which does add to the system latency.  Fibre was designed for data transmission, in both directions. 

 

Gaming over wifi should probably be considered as game over, literally.  There is just too much variation in the time between wifi transmit slots to consider wifi gaming as stable and reliable.  That should be a last choice option, and one that is poor at best.  You could be the best gamer around, but, if you're gaming over wifi, you're not going to do as well as you could compared to ethernet gaming, with consideration given to the internet type (fibre, DSL/VDSL, or DOCSIS cable).  

 

Just to note, there is a low latency extension written into the DOCSIS spec now, but, I suspect that it will be several years before Rogers ever implements it, if ever.  

 

Beyond that there is also the discussion on peering with other ISPs / internet operators and routing to and from distant servers (gaming servers included).  Both of those should be near and dear to a gamers heart, but, there has never ever been a discussion here on the forum concerning those issues.  The moderators used to run "Ask the expert" sessions in the past with other Rogers staff members brought in to discuss a topical "topic" of the day.  Peering and routing has never been entertained in those sessions and I have pointed out the interest that gamers would have in those topics.  Overall, Rogers doesn't seem to be too interested in the gaming community.  Too bad as gamers seem to be willing to spend the money to support their gaming.  I consider that to be a lost business opportunity. 

Re: Slow Speeds Over Wi-Fi


@Andrzej_Ottawa wrote:

To 57:  ...I measured the internet speed at the router/modem by connecting it with a cable and it shows 940Mb, still not the paid 1.5Gb.  Can you please comment; thank you.


If you read the last link  in my previous post, the explanation is there. As mentioned by @Datalink , it's very likely that your equipment is the limiting factor and not capable of speeds over 1 Gbps.  Again, you can test several pieces of equipment at the same time and see if you get over 1 Gbps.  Also, make sure your cable is plugged into the 2.5 Gbps port on the modem (#4, bottom right, orange line).  Please read the posts in last link in my previous post.  It's all discussed there.  Link again below:

 

https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Internet/Slow-Speeds/m-p/510588#M75402

Re: Slow Speeds Over Wi-Fi

Here's an excellent article explaining latency, which can be much more important to gamers than bandwidth.

 

https://www.reviews.org/internet-service/what-is-internet-latency/

 

Near the bottom of the article is a link where you can test your speed and latency - link below.

 

https://www.reviews.org/internet-speed-test/

 

As an FYI, even though I pay for 500 Mbps, over several tests I got 1.3-1.4 Gbps down and 3-4ms latency at this website, which may be a bit optimistic.  I have a Mac Mini M2, with Ethernet 10 capability.  Rogers has Speedboost which provides most customers with more bandwidth than they pay for.  Those with 1.5 Gbps plans, often get 1.8-1.9 Gbps, provided their equipment can handle it.

Re: Slow Speeds Over Wi-Fi

@Andrzej_Ottawa have a look at the following 2022 Shaw thread, which looks similar to what you're experiencing;

 

https://support.shaw.ca/t5/internet-discussions/xb7-wifi-issues-on-1gbps-connection/td-p/49281

 

This is an old thread, but, it makes me wonder what your modem's wifi settings are?

 

The problem with Rogers wifi, as seen through your results, is that Comcast / Rogers believe that their smarter than you are when it comes to wifi settings.  Rogers appears to be in total control of your wifi, in terms of the 802.11x/x/x/x settings, wifi channels and bandwidth.  You're allowed to set / change the network name ....  So, if the default setting for your 5 Ghz wifi network is in the 36 to 48 channel range (lowest power output in Canada) and the bandwidth is set for a maximum of 40 Mhz, then your wifi speedtest results with a laptop make sense as the bandwidth setting would limit the maximum connect data rate to 400 Mb/s for a two antenna laptop, which is a normal configuration for a laptop.  I'm making an assumption that you're using a laptop which runs 802.11 ac.  That 400 Mb/s connect data rate would translate to 333 Mb/s data rate as seen on a speedtest, when you take the error correction bits into account.  From the sounds of it, you're not hitting the maximum data rate for a two antenna laptop.  

 

If you were able to provide more data, as requested above, we would have a better chance of figuring this out.  

Re: Slow Speeds Over Wi-Fi

Sanja74
I've been here awhile
They are doing this to me now, for 5 months
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