Wireless Network Issue Assistance

Paulmack

Paulmack

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Can anyone recommend somebody who I can pay to call round to my house and figure out whats going on with my wireless network, I am halfway between Liverpool and Manchester.

I was with BT and it was crap, so swapped to TalkTalk and its just as bad. It cannot be the router as I have a time capsule too and used both and its still the same. TalkTalk tell me categorically there is nothing wrong with the line, but I can be using my iPhone, iMac or MacBook and its terrible, to the point where I revert back to using 4G on my phone and tethering at times. Everything stops working, it won't refresh, and when it does its mega slow. I have a 10Meg line (max I can get) as Fibre isn't available to me yet.

I have turned off and unplugged every other device in the house to see if that improves it, but no joy. I have 3 Amazon Firesticks around the house, but they are hardly used (because of the wireless issues) but surely they aren't causing the issue are they?

I am at my whits end with it now, and sick of being moaned at by the missus and daughter that they can't access the net!
 
You shouldn't need to pay anyone.
You just need a little help learning how to diagnose the problem yourself, just by approaching it in a logical and measured fashion.

Have you already done any testing of any kind yourself? Even a broadband speed test? If so, it might be useful to know what you found.

Are you able to connect one of your computers to your TalkTalk hub using an ethernet cable? If you can do this, we can start to determine whether it is your Wi-Fi or the network/line at fault.
 
Is it an old house with thick brick walls between rooms?
If you are in the same room as the router does it work properly?
If it is a wireless problem then the switch from BT to TalkTalk wouldn't make a difference as you aren't getting that far.
 
The first thing you need to establish is whether or not this is an internet speed issue or a wifi issue.
Once you've established that it makes things a little easier to diagnose.

What happens if you connect your iMac or laptop to the router with an Ethernet cable? Does the speed improve?
 
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I've done various speed tests myself, spent plenty of time on the phone trying to diagnose the issue with TalkTalk, connected via wireless and ethernet, but the problem is its not happening constantly, it can be fine for a while but then just hit a brick wall.
Its a new build house, over 3 floors, so I have my Mac on the ground floor, router on the first floor and then will use my phone in the bedroom on the top floor and it can be rubbish everywhere. I bought the apple time capsule because of its extended wireless capability and it seems ok connecting to it and transferring files etc but browsing the web can be a real grind.
Had to upgrade the data on the missus phone to 5GB as she was always turning the wireless off to get social media to load etc on her phone.

I am not too bad from a technical point of view with computers and networking etc. but I am at the point of giving up here and looking for someone to come out and do a wireless analysis to prove categorically if its my setup or the line before I go back to TalkTalk
 
Have you tried connecting the router to the test socket to rule out an internal wiring issue?

If you are connected to the test socket and laptop or PC connected to the router via Ethernet and you are still getting slow speeds, you should be requesting an engineer visit.
 
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ecoleman said:
Have you tried connecting the router to the test socket to rule out an internal wiring issue?
Click to expand...

Yeah, tried them all to be honest, but the main socket is next to the front door so it can't stay there, but I have tried it though
 
TBH I've been having the same battle with TalkTalk since the end of March and finally they have relented into sending out a "senior tech" to try and resolve the issue.

What I am going to suggest first of all, is running a program called MTR (My Trace Route / Martin's Trace Route) which is a bit like pingpath - you can leave it running indefinitely and use the statistics to try and help diagnose the problem ... even if it is an intermittent issue. In the end I used it to convince TalkTalk the problem was between the WAN interface on the 'hub' and the DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Multiplexer) at the other end.

It's possible that even though you moved from TalkTalk to BT, you could still be on the same line and the same DSLAM ... I'm not entirely sure - I'd have to do a little digging. If that were the case, you could still have your original problem. Or, it could just be coincidence.

Like I said earlier, the first step is to start properly diagnosing the problem, determining whether it's the Internet connection itself or the WiFi.

If you are in a 3 story house and the WiFi access point is on the ground floor, then I suspect your top floors are not going to be adequately covered. But personally, I like to start at the WAN end and work backwards to the end devices in investigating these types of problems.

I'll be passing your way in 3 weeks time, I'd be happy to take a look for you, if you can wait that long.
 
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ecoleman said:
What speeds are you getting from the test socket anyway and what are you expecting?
Click to expand...

10MB download, 0.4MB upload which is roughly what I expect, but browsing speeds really do not feel like a lot of the time
 
afasoas said:
TBH I've been having the same battle with TalkTalk since the end of March and finally they have relented into sending out a "senior tech" to try and resolve the issue.

What I am going to suggest first of all, is running a program called MTR (My Trace Route / Martin's Trace Route) which is a bit like pingpath - you can leave it running indefinitely and use the statistics to try and help diagnose the problem ... even if it is an intermittent issue. In the end I used it to convince TalkTalk the problem was between the WAN interface on the 'hub' and the DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Multiplexer) at the other end.

It's possible that even though you moved from TalkTalk to BT, you could still be on the same line and the same DSLAM ... I'm not entirely sure - I'd have to do a little digging. If that were the case, you could still have your original problem. Or, it could just be coincidence.

Like I said earlier, the first step is to start properly diagnosing the problem, determining whether it's the Internet connection itself or the WiFi.

If you are in a 3 story house and the WiFi access point is on the ground floor, then I suspect your top floors are not going to be adequately covered. But personally, I like to start at the WAN end and work backwards to the end devices in investigating these types of problems.

I'll be passing your way in 3 weeks time, I'd be happy to take a look for you, if you can wait that long.
Click to expand...

Is MTR windows only as I use Mac and can't find it. Hey if you're passing then don't mind having a look then I would appreciate the help matey
 
It's actually a Linux application.
The source code is on GitHub and there are various blogs with instruction on how to compile it etc.


But you don't have to go to those lengths. If you can open a terminal and type out a few commands, you can install it and run it fairly quickly.

Have a look at:
http://rudix.org/

There are installation instructions for rudix on the home page (it's a one liner)
Once you have rudix installed, you can just do:

sudo rudix install mtr

Then you should be able to run mtr, for example:

mtr 8.8.8.8 ... leave it running for 24 hours, then probably best sending me a screen capture, rather than posting it publicly.

For good measure, run multiple mtrs to different locations... (8.8.8.8 is a Google Public DNS)
Let me know if/when you get that far and I'll give you a few more locations to try.

Cheers
A
 
Your speed as measured is a decent healthy one but hopefully you appreciate the more active WiFi connected devices you have you are sharing a finite bandwidth at a speed that will be less than your 10Mb you state.

Also as you say the slow down is not constant, these factors can come into play:-
- contention at the exchange increasing at certain times of the day.
- how many active devices using the wireless connection at the same time. NB active does not necessarily mean in use, if its DHCP lease is live there will be some chatter going on to retain the connection.
- the choice of the WiFi channel and how many of your neighbours are on the same channel thus causing "interference"
- do you have DECT type wireless house phones, as I read that some can affect WiFi . this can be mitigated in part by using a dual band router I.e. one that offers both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wireless.
 
As always, I'd rather we stopped speculating on what the problem is, but rather concentrated on helping the OP collate evidence that will pinpoint exactly what's going on.

There's a myriad of possibilities that could explain the difficulties the OP has been having. A few simple tests should start narrowing things down.
 
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An Android app I have found and useful to check both signal strength and the presence of other nearby WiFi users and the channels used illustrating the less congested channels.

WiFi analyser by Kevin Yuan. Cannot copy the app store link but here is the website. http://a.farproc.com/wifi-analyzer
 
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afasoas said:
It's actually a Linux application.
The source code is on GitHub and there are various blogs with instruction on how to compile it etc.


But you don't have to go to those lengths. If you can open a terminal and type out a few commands, you can install it and run it fairly quickly.

Have a look at:
http://rudix.org/

There are installation instructions for rudix on the home page (it's a one liner)
Once you have rudix installed, you can just do:

sudo rudix install mtr

Then you should be able to run mtr, for example:

mtr 8.8.8.8 ... leave it running for 24 hours, then probably best sending me a screen capture, rather than posting it publicly.

For good measure, run multiple mtrs to different locations... (8.8.8.8 is a Google Public DNS)
Let me know if/when you get that far and I'll give you a few more locations to try.

Cheers
A
Click to expand...

Managed to get it running, so sent you an email with a screenshot to make sure its working right.

Thanks for the help mate, much appreciated!
 
Box Brownie said:
Your speed as measured is a decent healthy one but hopefully you appreciate the more active WiFi connected devices you have you are sharing a finite bandwidth at a speed that will be less than your 10Mb you state.

Also as you say the slow down is not constant, these factors can come into play:-
- contention at the exchange increasing at certain times of the day.
- how many active devices using the wireless connection at the same time. NB active does not necessarily mean in use, if its DHCP lease is live there will be some chatter going on to retain the connection.
- the choice of the WiFi channel and how many of your neighbours are on the same channel thus causing "interference"
- do you have DECT type wireless house phones, as I read that some can affect WiFi . this can be mitigated in part by using a dual band router I.e. one that offers both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wireless.
Click to expand...

Yeah I get the contention is an issue, but it shouldn't kill it as bad as it is right now
Active devices can be anything from 2-8 but mostly around 4, however once again 4 phones/tablets and an iMac/MacBook shouldn't render it unusable should it?
I have gone through the range of channels on the router to see if it improves, unfortunately not.
I don't have any landline phones connected.
Using an Apple Time Capsule so its a 5GHz router, and it auto selects depending on interference I believe
 
wave01 said:
Just a quick thought does this happen after 1700
Click to expand...

I can't say really as I work all day, seldom work from home but funnily enough I did yesterday and I ended up turning my WiFi off on my phone and stuck to 4G due to this
 
I had this prob with Internet dying after 1700 it was down to the provider throttling back the speed switched to sky years ago never had a problem.
 
Not yet ruled out a Wi-Fi problem, but it looks like the OP definitely has issues with the router (less likely, but easy to triage for), the network (again less likely) or the line (most likely) between his home and the street cabinet.
Hopefully we've gathered enough evidence for TalkTalk to get involved and take the issue seriously.
 
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