I used to enjoy video games. It was so simple put the cartridge/disc in and you were playing a fun game in a matter of seconds and you had like 4 buttons.
Now you have to download stuff for like 3 days and have a bazillion buttons and the games are so freaking difficult.
So now I hate video games!!

You you used to plug your computer into a phone jack then onto an Ethernet port and you were just simply rolling. Granted not very fast but it just worked.

Then WiFi came a long and I jumped on the Apple Airport train and it was so simple! Just plug in the cords and click a
Few buttons and boom you had wifi where you needed it no fuss no muss.
Had some blazing 10mbps and life was good.
Then they quit supporting Airport and I switched to ASUS that you all suggested and I was rolling after about a week of fixing settings. It’s been going strong ever since.
A few months back Spectrum jacked my 10mbps internet cost up from $20 to $80 a month.
I said no way!!! They said cool 50mbps for $30 or 500mbps for $80. I have no need for that speed so I went with the 50 mbps.
I was constantly seeing around 100mbps on my wired devices and between 25 and 50 on my wireless devices.

Well today internet just quit working looked at the outage map and had one near by. Kids were pissed but ohh well.
Later in the evening still no worky I looked at the map and it said it was fixed.
I chatted with the Spectrum lady and she said I have an unauthorized modem and that looks to me my problem because I have the 500mbps plan.
Well, I’ve had my Motorola Surfboard modem for a long time 10 years actually thanks to the suggestion here.
She said it’s only rated for 60mbps and it’s likely burned itself up running at faster speeds for a few months now and she is confused why I was not told to get a different modem.
So I went to the Spectrum store and got a modem hooked it up, activated it, rebooted my ASUS router, and access point.
I am sitting in the same room as my wireless router and all I am getting is 25-30mbps and that’s about par for the course for all my wireless devices and all my wired devices are only seeing 90-100mbps.

I looked at my Spectrum App account in for and it clearly says 500 mbps!!! ASUS says my wireless router is cable of 1600mbps and all the wired ports are Gigabit.

I hate all this crap!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I would gladly be back in the 80s and 90s technologically!

I look at the Rivians and I am like man those are way cool I want one. Then I think with my luck with electronics I’d be lucky to get it out of the freaking driveway!!!!!!

I always ask people if they have teletype.

 
I used TTY to communicate with my Dad after he lost his hearing in 1975. I had a compact device with a keyboard. His first TTY was provided for free by a deaf association. It was an old machine that used to be in a newsroom. Rubber cups where you place the telephone handset. Monster large. He later upgraded to the modern one like mine.

Did you reuse those same 10+ year old ethernet cables with your new modem and router?

If so, switch to the new cables that came with your modem and router. Older CAT 5 cables can only carry up to about 100 mbps. Which would explain why your speeds are topping out at 90-100, despite the connection and hardware being capable of handling faster.

Good point.
However most are in the walls so I guess I am limited to 100mbps wired.

Does not explain the 25mbps wireless.

Your modem died of old age, not because it was running faster than designed. That’s just not how they work.

What’s the ASUS’s model number? At 25-30mbps in the same room, either the settings aren’t right or it’s defective. I haven’t had WiFi speeds that low in 15 years.

Your 100mbps wired problem sounds like a poor connector causing the switch to fall back to 100mbps. It could be a problem with the settings on your client or your ASUS. At 10 years old, the wiring in your walls is likely CAT5e. Pull one of the plates off the wall and read what’s on the wire’s insulation to verify. Even if it is only CAT5, CAT5 is capable of 1000BASE-T which requires four twisted pairs at 62.5Mhz, well within CAT5’s 100Mhz rating.

What clients are you using that you see only 100mbps with?

I hope everything works out for you. I did want to mention you own the forum with the most threads started. Seems like a new thread everyday

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
Your modem died of old age, not because it was running faster than designed. That’s just not how they work.

What’s the ASUS’s model number? At 25-30mbps in the same room, either the settings aren’t right or it’s defective. I haven’t had WiFi speeds that low in 15 years.

Your 100mbps wired problem sounds like a poor connector causing the switch to fall back to 100mbps. It could be a problem with the settings on your client or your ASUS. At 10 years old, the wiring in your walls is likely CAT5e. Pull one of the plates off the wall and read what’s on the wire’s insulation to verify. Even if it is only CAT5, CAT5 is capable of 1000BASE-T which requires four twisted pairs at 62.5Mhz, well within CAT5’s 100Mhz rating.

What clients are you using that you see only 100mbps with?

ASUS RT-AC1900P main WiFi and RT-N12D1 as access point.

The Ethernet runs are original to the house like 18 years old so likely just cat5 they all had phone connectors and we swapped them to cat5 connectors when we moved in 10 years ago. So we hat is likely why I am limited to 100mbps. Did not think about that.

2 PCs, Vizio TV, Amazon Fire TV, and XBOX One S are all hardwired.

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
I hope everything works out for you. I did want to mention you own the forum with the most threads started. Seems like a new thread everyday

That’s what you people get for being so resourceful. If I don’t know the answer to a question or how to do something this is the place I turn to.
And since it seems like I am fixing or replacing something that is broken on the daily, well here I am.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
I hope everything works out for you. I did want to mention you own the forum with the most threads started. Seems like a new thread everyday

That’s what you people get for being so resourceful. If I don’t know the answer to a question or how to do something this is the place I turn to.
And since it seems like I am fixing or replacing something that is broken on the daily, well here I am.

Same here. My dad is my usual first resource, with you folks a close 2nd

quote:

ASUS RT-AC1900P main WiFi and RT-N12D1 as access point.

The Ethernet runs are original to the house like 18 years old so likely just cat5 they all had phone connectors and we swapped them to cat5 connectors when we moved in 10 years ago. So we hat is likely why I am limited to 100mbps. Did not think about that.

2 PCs, Vizio TV, Amazon Fire TV, and XBOX One S are all hardwired.

The RT-AC1900P is a slightly updated version on the RT-AC68U. It has a 1.4Ghz processor instead of a 1.0Ghz processor. I mention it because I have an RT-AC66U, brand new in the box, which is barely a step down from the RT-AC68U. I’ll be using once the fiber gets buried from the pole at the road to our house up here in MI.

What matters though is: your gear is capable of much faster WiFi speeds. Also, your Ethernet cabling may also be capable of faster speeds.

Here’s what I would do:

I’d pull the power plug on the WAP and ignore it until you’ve checked everything else.

I use Ookla’s Speedtest.net on my computers and their app on my iPhones and android tablet.

Then:
1. Start at the beginning. If the cable modem has a built-in switch, plug your PC directly into that switch and check your speeds. Use a patch cable, not the house wiring. If you aren’t getting fairly close to the 500mbps service you are paying for, then check the network adapter settings on your PC, be sure your PC has a Gigabit Ethernet port, and/or try another patch cable. Maybe update the PC’s network adapter drivers.

2. Plug your RT-AC1900P directly into the cable modem with the same patch cable, plug your PC into the RT-AC1900P and check your speed. Again, it should be close to what you are paying for. If not, you’ll have to change some settings on the modem or the ASUS.

3. If your PC is getting good speeds wired, then this is the point I would check your speeds using the ASUS’s WiFi. Both the 2.4 and 5.0 ghz bands. On the ASUS, set up a separate SSID for each band. I have 500mbps cable internet in Florida. In the same room as my WAP on my iPhone 12 Pro, I get around 150mbps on the 2.4ghz band and 450mbps on the 5.0ghz band. You should be getting about the same.

I’m going to stop here because if you’re not getting good WiFi speeds at this point, there’s about 10 different things to check and not worth going further until it’s solved.

Just to emphasize, you are not using the house wiring yet.

I’ll update when I get a chance to fiddle faddle with all that, which won’t be tonight since I have to put new brakes on the wife’s Suburban.

However, I did just test the 5ghz on my phone and I got 309mbps followed by a 170mbps but on the 2nd time it said my internet was unstable.

I am in the basement and the main router is 2 floors up. I have the access point in the basement but I don’think it is capable of 5ghz transmission.

Honestly, I have never fooled with the 5ghz thing. Don’t really know the difference and up until the other day I only had 10 or 50 mbps service or so I thought and was seeing those numbers.

quote:

However, I did just test the 5ghz on my phone and I got 309mbps followed by a 170mbps but on the 2nd time it said my internet was unstable.

An improvement already!

It also changes what I’d start looking at. Obviously, the connection between your modem and RT-AC1900P is more than 100mbps, so plug your PC into one of the Ethernet ports there and check the speed.

Are the cable modem and RT-AC1900P connected using the house Ethernet cabling?

As for 2.4ghz vs 5ghz, the short answer is 2.4ghz can carry less information but go through walls and stuff better than 5ghz.

That 1900 in your ASUS’s model number is the theoretical highest speeds of both bands combined it is capable of. It breaks down as 600mbps on the 2.4ghz band and 1300mbps on the 5ghz band.

The longer answer is that the 2.4ghz band has 11 channels, but because the frequency bands adjacent channels use overlap there are only three channels with no overlapping: 1, 6, 11. The closer you live to your neighbors, the more you are competing with each other for those channels. Plus there’s other crap using those frequencies as well. Not a problem if you live in the sticks, but could be a problem if you live in an apartment building for example.

The 5ghz band was adopted to alleviate some of that in a number of ways. One, there’s not a lot of other crap using those frequencies. Two, there’s more channels with greater separation. Three, because the signals don’t travel as far, you can be closer to your neighbors before your signals start competing with each other than you can with the 2.4ghz band.

Then there’s the really long answer that nobody’s got time for.

Would Black be better off changing to a mesh router system, given the physical distances (basement to 2 floors up) at his place? Once I switched (I use eero) I've never had a weak signal or drop-out.

His current router is mesh capable, but without having an understanding of his existing setup’s limitations, using the mesh capability could compound the problem rather than solve it. His equipment is capable of delivering much better speeds than he’s seeing.

Starting at the beginning and following a deliberate methodical troubleshooting plan really works.

Just today, my dad called me and said his new phone wasn’t connected to his hearing aids with Bluetooth. I spent a half and hour telling him what to check step by step. He has a flip phone so he had to hang up to check the settings and call me back. I finally asked “Dad, I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but are your hearing aids turned on?” He wasn’t wearing them. He spent four hours this morning thinking his phone’s Bluetooth wasn’t working. Shame on me for skipping “Is it plugged up in?”

The hate rages on!!!!!!
I have not gotten to fully test trappers suggestions.
However I have the crappiest piece of crap PC possible wires in the basement.
It is consistently running Speedtest around 250mbps
All my other wired connections are stuck in the 90s.
If I connect wirelessly on the 5ghz network, I’ll be up in the 350s and the next test right afterwards won’t break 50mbps!

XBOX is wired and it won’t go over 100mbps.
One has to physically disconnect the Ethernet cable from the XBOX to use WiFi and it is buried in the entertainment center and too much of a pain to get to to unplug.

Which leads me to another hate of modern electronics.
The boy got some birthday cash so he bought Madden 22 and NBA LIVE 18.
Now we have to sit here for hours waiting for it to download just to play.
I hate this crap!!!!!!!!

I think you need to start with taking that cable modem back to Spectrum and getting another one. It may be defective or not configured on their end properly.

Then if your problems persist, do a factory reset on the router and start over, then work from there.

Did you hook right up direct to the modem with an Ethernet cable to test the speed coming off that?

You have at least two wired connections running over 100mbps: the one to the basement computer and the one to the 5ghz WiFi. You have multiple wired connections limited to 100mbps.

My question is: what do the 100mbps wired connections have in common that the two faster wired connections do not? I’d give that common point a look for a bad or improper connector, connection, wire, etc. Check to make sure both ends of the wire are wired the same way; the colors are wired to the same points in the connections.

One other quick and easy thing to look at: are the 100mbps wires connected to a 100mbps switch somewhere?

I did that once repurposing equipment I already had.

Still weird you are only getting 250mbps on the wired basement PC when you are paying for 500mbps service. Were you downloading games or streaming somewhere else at the same time?

It's a love/hate relationship, even if you do it everyday. /