Home Internet issues / help

[MoeTE87]

Good morning All,

Over the past few days my wife and I have been experiencing slower than normal internet speeds (download / upload). I went into the office yesterday and she was working from home, she mentioned last night the internet was very slow throughout the day.

Specs:

- Spectrum internet: On the 300 mbps plan.
- Netgear Orbi AC3000 Tri-Band Mesh router with 1 sat extender
- Modem is supplied by Spectrum (model EN2251)

I went ahead and did a speedtest from my iphone 12 pro max. Here are the results from last night:

- 10:35pm: Download: 365 mbps and upload 8.95 mbps.
- 10:36pm: Download: 344 mbps and upload 6.10 mbps.
- 10:37pm: Download: 349 mbps and upload 1.53 mbps.

I went ahead this morning and unplugged the modem and router for about 10mins. I plugged everything back in and waited another 10mins while I was getting my things together to go into the office.

I ran a few more tests after the hard reboot and here are the results:

- 6:19am: Download 149 mbps and upload 8.42 mbps.
- 6:20am: Download 139 mbps and upload 8.35 mbps.

Let me know if anyone has any suggestions or I should change out my modem and router for something better.


Thanks!

[R BMW]

Have you tried to do the test using a hardwired Ethernet connection?
Laptop to router and then, Laptop to Modem.

[MoeTE87]

No I haven't. What will that show me?

Thanks!

[R BMW]

If you get slow results at the router, then move to the modem.

If you get slow results via hardwired connection at the modem, it's the provider or their modem.
If all the hardwired connections are faster, it's the wireless issue with the router.

[BIGW0RM]

Originally Posted by R BMW

If you get slow results at the router, then move to the modem.

If you get slow results via hardwired connection at the modem, it's the provider or their modem.
If all the hardwired connections are faster, it's the wireless issue with the router.

This!

[MoeTE87]

Originally Posted by TudTuriceanu

As someone who doesn't know much about this, I think it's worth contacting Spectrum customer support to make sure there are no service outages in your area.

Thanks TudTuriceanu! That was the first thing I did yesterday morning and there wasn't any.

I will work on the above tomorrow when I am working from home and can spend a little more time on it.

Anyone have any suggestions on a really great router / modem combo that is fast and can cover over 5k sq feet?

[R BMW]

Get a separate modem and router.
Asus makes good routers. Get external antennas for better coverage.
There should be a list of Spectrum approved modems somewhere out on the Internet.

[cfm56d7b]

If all else fails, is there another provider in your area?

[Chick Webb]

That Orbi AC3000 set-up is plenty fast and unless there's something about it that's broken, not likely to be the root of your problem. You say you tested first at night, and then again in the morning. Is it possible that other Spectrum customers in the area are generating sufficient load to overload the local Spectrum infrastructure and cause you to be throttled down from 300 Mbps?

[M-technik-3]

Also see if there is new firmware for your router. It might just need an update.

[MoeTE87]

Originally Posted by cfm56d7b

If all else fails, is there another provider in your area?

There is but they are worse than Spectrum.

Originally Posted by Chick Webb

That Orbi AC3000 set-up is plenty fast and unless there's something about it that's broken, not likely to be the root of your problem. You say you tested first at night, and then again in the morning. Is it possible that other Spectrum customers in the area are generating sufficient load to overload the local Spectrum infrastructure and cause you to be throttled down from 300 Mbps?

I tested last night and this morning and the download speeds are consistent over 350 mbps. However, the upload speeds are less than 1 mbps. Not sure what is going on with that.

Originally Posted by M-technik-3

Also see if there is new firmware for your router. It might just need an update.

I just checked and it is all up to date. Thanks!

[Chick Webb]

Originally Posted by MoeTE87

I tested last night and this morning and the download speeds are consistent over 350 mbps. However, the upload speeds are less than 1 mbps. Not sure what is going on with that.

Download/upload speeds for cable are typically extremely assymetric and I don't think I've ever seen more than about 10 Mbps at home. 1 Mbps does seem pretty low. Based on your previous post it may be a transient condition, though. Regardless, it's probably not a concern unless you're uploading large (like 100 MB large) files from home.

[MoeTE87]

Originally Posted by Chick Webb

Download/upload speeds for cable are typically extremely assymetric and I don't think I've ever seen more than about 10 Mbps at home. 1 Mbps does seem pretty low. Based on your previous post it may be a transient condition, though. Regardless, it's probably not a concern unless you're uploading large (like 100 MB large) files from home.

Makes sense. I appreciate the info.

I just did another speed test:

Download: 370 mbps
Upload: 11.4 mbps

Best I have seen in a few days for both.

[eleven11]

If I'm not mistaken, the bandwidth on a cable modem ISP is shared by others in your area. It's possible that there has been an increased usage of said bandwidth in the past week or so because of more people at home during the holidays.

[MoeTE87]

Thank you all for the help last week. I have a Spectrum tech coming out to the house this afternoon.

Couldn't take it any longer. This weekend was rough with the very slow internet.

Will let you all know what is done / said.


Thanks!

[c1pher]

It’s not just the internet speed, it’s also the latency. You can have really fast internet but if the server responses are slow, it negates the benefit of the bandwidth.

I would first, use Speedtest.com to not only see what your throughput is but also latency. If your latency is high, I would download and install wireshark and then monitor what happens when you visit a website. I had an issue with my small firewall handling several devices so I installed a smart switch to handle a portion of the assignment of addresses etc. This sped everything up dramatically within my home network.

As said above it’s better to have a separate cable modem and router. If you have 30+ devices, things will also bog down since each device adds a little more processing time because your equipment has to handle it all.

[micah_675]

Alright Moe here is what you need to do. There is a website called dslreports.com that has some handy tests it can automatically run for you.

Now what you need to do first is go into your routers config and enable ICMP (ICM ping) or allow the router to respond to external pings.

After you've done this go dslreports and subject your IP to a smoke check. I think you need an account to allow it to run for several days. (Been a while since I've done this)

Then let the website ping your address and check the results after a few days. A ping will send about 10 packets to your router and it will respond with about 10 that it's there. This will tell you how stable your connection is and if you have any packet loss or latency issues. It will plot it on a pretty graph and you can use it as ammo against your ISP (since the ping goes to the modem and then right back out the can't claim it's your wifi like they love to do).

[MoeTE87]

micah_675 appreciate the help!

I will look into this! Thank you!

Looks like the internet has cleared itself up 4 days ago. It's been fast and have had zero issues. I ended up cancelling my appointment with the Spectrum tech.

Thank you all for the help and information!