Slow WiFi Speeds on 2.4GHz band.

[rickatk]

While troubleshooting my new TV wifi connection I set my wifi router to a discrete 5GHz SSID. This was to aid the TV to find the faster 5GHz connection. Before that I gather my AirPort Extreme wifi router was set to offer up both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands simultaneously.  All my devices worked well getting respectable download times on a 600 Mbps account. As soon as I turned on the 5GHZ with its own SSID, all my devices appeared to get dramatically slower connections as follows:

Imac 630Mbps > 150Mbps

iPad Pro 400Mbps > 75Mbps

AppleTV v4 250 Mbps > 60Mbps

I have had my Airport router set to automatically offer 2.4Ghz and 5GHz for years and got very good speed on Shaw Internet. I am now assuming my devices tended to connect to the 5GHz band.

I contacted Apple and they said putting a separate name to the 5GHz band should not interfere with the 2.4GHz band. Even though it appears that by adding a separate SSID for the 5GHz band that I would then have to manually direct my devices to which band to operate on.

After a bit of troubleshooting including modem and router reboot the problem persists. This leads me to think that over the years devices have been connecting to the faster 5GHz band on my wifi router automatically, thereby getting maximum speeds. Directing my devices to the 2.5GHz band I get much slower speeds. This leads me to conclude my my 2.4GHz band is not performing well at all.

Any suggestions about improving speeds on the 2.4GHz band or do I need to be on the 5GHz band for optimal speeds nearing 600Mbs on the Shaw system?

[rickatk · Accepted solution]

Update:

I spoke to a very helpful Shaw Tech, he explained that 2.4GHz maxes out at 100Mbps, on a good day.

He also confirmed that I have probably been running a dual band setup for some time and have been experiencing faster speeds by devices connecting automatically to the 5GHz band of my network. Moving forward and because my Samsung TV can’t access the 5GHz band on its own, I have to keep my wifi router in a discrete band setup and redirect my other devices that require a faster connection accordingly. 

The tech was was very helpful and a pleasure to talk to!

[shaw-tamara]

Hey  

Glad to hear you were able to get this sorted out! In my experience, the 5GHz band offers faster speeds but has a smaller range. I live in a pretty small apartment (that's Vancouver living for you), so I just use 5GHz for everything, but people in larger homes may need to switch over to 2.4GHz since it tends to have better range despite the slower speeds. 

[rickatk]

Hi Tamara:

In my old house(3 story) I experimented with 5GHz a while back, but found one room in particular was too far away to effectively receive a good wifi signal. Ironically that was the media room. I was able to receive enough signal for an older Apple TV and networked speaker bar. 4K was out of the question. Not requiring 4K at the time and after testing I elected to “turn it off”, not realizing I was simply restoring my router to dual band. Everything worked well on dual band for years and I watched my internet speeds creep up well past the 100Mbps cap of 2.4Ghz. Not realizing my router and my devices were merrily operating on the 5GHz band, likely in most cases. Seems ignorance is bliss and this gear is a lot smarter than me!

When I moved last September I was seeing 630 Mbps on my wired iMac and plenty fast enough on my other devices. Thanks Shaw! When I moved to my new home, a rancher, everything hooked up just fine and my iMac was still receiving over 630 Mbps, this time over wifi! Because of the layout of my new home and some comforting words from the Shaw Tech last evening  I am happy to manually point some of my bandwidth consuming devices to 5GHz accordingly.

As an aside this latest tech adventure started because I bought a new 4KHDR TV. I never thought I would be spending so much time researching 4K HDR settings, router settings not to mention HDMI 2.2 cables and so on. This forum and of course “phoning a friend” at Shaw tech support has been very helpful. Certainly I have learned a thing or two in the process which makes it all worthwhile and enjoyable.

Not too sure why the Samsung TV couldn’t find its way to the 5GHz band automatically, so I sent a note to Samsung.

[oscar9]

I have contracted for 600 mb download and while I get close to that on my iPhone next to my iMac, my iMac gets just over 100 while on ethernet and similarly on wireless. My iMac is old but i wonder if there is setting that puts a cap on download speeds???

[shaw-tony]

Hey oscar9,

It is likely the network card on your iMac that is limiting the speeds. If it is a gigabit network card, you should be able to enable the full-duplex settings so you get the maximum speeds. 

Hope that helps,

Tony | Community Mod.

[oscar9]

I checked and hardware setting is automatic and full duplex is happening; i have potential for 600 download but with internet i get 125.

[shaw-tony]

 Which iMac do you have? Do you have another PC you can test a direct ethernet connection with?