Help Mutliple devices, same location, drastically different wifi speedtest results??

[brandons7985]

Hi all,
For a long time I was blaming my ISP (Time Warner) for my slow internet, but when I upgraded from 2MBPS to 6 and was still having trouble streaming Netflix and Youtube, I did some testing. I was about to continue blaming my ISP or router until I was surprised to discover that one of my devices actually did perform well. I have tried this a few times over several days with similar results. When these tests were run, the device running the test was the only one connected to the wifi. No other processes were running on the devices (I did not use a kill any tasks on the mobiles however).

What do you guys make of this? Any suggestions on what I can do to speed up the slow ones? Let me know what additional information is needed, and as always, it is very much appreciated.

Download MBPS / Upload MBPS​

• iPhone 5, 1.5 years old
  • • trial 1: 0.32 / .013
    • trial 2: 0.27 / .074

• Moto X Android 4.4.4, 1.5 years old
  • • trial 1: 2.38 / 1.68
    • trial 2: 1.79 / 1.44

• Dell laptop, i3, Windows 8, 1 year old
  • • trial 1: 0.13 / 1.06
    • trial 2: 0.80 / 1.07

• Dell laptop, i7, Windows 7, 2 months old
  • • trial 1: 6.50 / 1.04
    • trial 2: 6.49 / 1.04

Additional specs:

• Dell laptop, i7, Windows 7
  • network adapter Intel Dual Band AC 7260
  • i7-4910MQ 2.9GHz

• Dell laptop, i3, Windows 8
  • network adapter Dell Wireless 1708 (**driver is current**)
  • i3-4010U 1.7 GHz

 

[Crashdamage]

You failed to consider the most important aspect of speed tests - the actual throughput speed of the connection at the time of the tests. The connection speed must be a consistent, known factor to get consistent, meaningful results. Still, your results might be useful as baseline, ballpark figures.

Assuming that you were using Speedtest.net, it checks for the best available server. But the server is not always the same. It could be anywhere, it might be under load or not, it might be killer fast or not. Add to that the fact there could easily be 10, 20 'hops' between your device and the server Speedtest chooses. Run tracéroute on a few connections and be amazed.

So keep in mind Speedtest does not necessarily actually test the speed of your device or your ISP's internet connection. It's testing the speed of the entire connection from your device to the test server.

Anyway, all that said, point is you probably did not connect to the same server for all tests, and your TWC internet speed can vary widely under various load conditions, thus effectively making your testbed inconsistent.

But let's assume for the sake of arguement that the testbed was, in fact, fairly consistent. What do the results mean and what should you do? Well, there's still unanswered variables...

Were all devices running on the 2.4 GHz band or 5GHz band?

Were all devices 801b/g/n/ac capable or do the slow ones lack /ac?

To do:
There's not much you can do to your devices to make them faster. But you can optimize your WiFi network. This might help speed up all your devices. To find the best setup I like WiFi Overview 360. The free version is probably all you need but the Pro version is cheap.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.android.wifioverviewpro

On the router give the 5GHz and 2.4 GHz bands different SSID names. When setting up the 5GHz band usually it's best to set the router to use a channel well over 100. Over 150 if there's a clear channel. For both bands of course use channels with the least interference and best signal.

 

[brandons7985]

Thank you Crashdamage for your response!

You failed to consider the most important aspect of speed tests - the actual throughput speed of the connection at the time of they said tests. The connection speed must be a consistent, known factor to get consistent, meaningful results. Still, your results might be useful as baseline, ballpark figures.

Assuming that you were using Speedtest.net, it checks for the best available server. But the server is not always the same. It could be anywhere, it might be under load or not, it might be killer fast or not. Add to that the fact there could easily be 10, 20 'hops' between your device and the server Speedtest chooses. Run tracéroute on a few connections and be amazed.

I performed all the trial 1 tests and then went back to each device and performed the trial 2 tests. As I mentioned, I have been getting consistent results over a number of days. I did see that sometimes the servers varied; however there are dramatic speed differences here and over the number of days and number of tests, something besides speedtest.net variation is going on. I'm looking to this community to point me in the right direction.

So keep in mind Speedtest does not necessarily actually test the speed of your device or your ISP's internet connection. It's testing the speed of the entire connection from your device to the test server.

The variation between devices is what I'm trying to resolve. If all devices were slow, I would look to my network, but that's not the case.

Were all devices running on the 2.4 GHz and or 5GHz band?

Were all devices 801b/g/n/ac capable or do the slow ones lack /ac?

I don't know a lot about this, but I will research it. Could these variables cause the dramatic speed differences?

To do:
There's not much you can do to your devices to make them faster. But you can optimize your WiFi network. This might help speed up all your devices. To find the best setup I like WiFi Overview 360. The free version is probably all you need but the Pro version is cheap.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.android.wifioverviewpro

On the router give the 5GHz and 2.4 GHz bands different SSID names. When setting up the 5GHz band usually it's best to set the router to use a channel well over 100. Over 150 if there's a clear channel. For both bands of course use channels with the least interference and best signal.

One of my devices is already running at the full bandwidth that I pay for from my ISP. Can working on my wifi network help the slower devices, or is this a device issue? I would like to understand if there is a hardware difference between the devices that could explain what I am seeing. I haven't heard of others complaining about dramatic download speed differences between, for example, two modern laptops.

 

[EarlyMon]

Mobile hardware and networking firmware can vary from one another a lot more than between laptops.

Laptops running Windows are easily corrupted resulting in any number of performance issues.

 

[Crashdamage]

Absolutely differences in hardware specs can account for speed differences. But other factors can also. Very likely speed differences are due some or all of:

Which WiFi band a device is connected to. Usually 5GHz is much faster than 2.4GHz. But your slower devices may not be 5GHz capable.

Your slower devices may not be 801/ac capable. They may only have 801/b/g/n. /ac is much faster.

Your WiFi network might need tweaking to get the best out of your devices.

 

[Slug]

Another thing to consider... was there other activity on the internal network at the time? If a PC/laptop was updating AV signatures, downloading updates etc then available throughput to other devices would be restricted.