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I had a new FTTP connection installed two days ago following a roll-out in our town. The openreach boxes were installed through my study/spare bed wall (ground floor) and the router was left on the edge of my desk. All fine, working OK.
I've gone for a 300/50 connection (best one cheaper than my old phone/broadband) and the engineer tested it at 300mb/s from the box indoors. I was getting about 280/40 via wifi on my laptop in the same room.
I've moved the router off the desk as worried about knocking it off the end (and its an uppy/downy desk) to top of the adjacent bookcase so about 2.2m above floor level. I used a longer ethernet cable (about 3m rather than 1.5m provided).
The speed has dropped to about 150/30 - why? Would it be because the router is too high adjacent my work space? Or the longer ethernet cable to the Openreach box? (Its an old cable I've had maybe 6 or 8 years - would this impact?)
Thanks for any help!
cat 5 vs cat 6 cable?
Cat5 can work it's probably the cable thou.
Plug direct to your laptop and run a speed test,some providers fluctuate over a few days upon new installation.
You have two variables here, rule one out. Move it back where it was but use the same cable, that'll tell you which it is.
It shouldn't be the cable unless the cable is faulty, CAT5e is rated up to (just shy of) 100m so 3m shouldn't trouble it.
Wi-Fi coverage can be weird and patchy, it often resembles a doughnut shape. If the router up high then that's usually a good thing, but somewhat perversely you can be too close to it.
Keep an eye on whether you're connecting at 2.4GHz or 5GHz. The former will be a stronger signal but slower. Might be as simple a fix as rebooting your laptop.
Why not just cable the laptop into the router if it's that close?
(... I'm assuming here that "Ethernet cable" is between the presentation and the router, not the router and the laptop)
cat 5 vs cat 6 cable?
Not relevant.
The speed has dropped to about 150/30 – why?
WiFi adjusts its speed according to how good the signal is in basic terms. Lots of things affect the signal though. I've found with the PCs we have here that sticking the WiFi dongle in the back of the PC near all the power cables and extension leads is much worse than using a USB extender and putting it on the desk, because all those power cables generate electrical noise which may be interfering with the WiFi signal. Your new router placement might be closer to some cables in the wall or something.
^^ I stuck my USB Wi-Fi dongle on a 1m cable to move it out from behind the minitower PC, the throughput doubled.
Just tried some speed tests again (haven't changed anything else):
Phone = 290/45 - so where it should be
Own laptop = 90/45
Work laptop = 45/30
I had a look in wifi connection properties on the laptops:
Link speed on own laptop is 144/144
Work laptop is 72/72
Would this affect anything, and can it be changed? (TBH no real need as thats plenty fast enough for Teams / using excel etc off work servers but anyway...)
That 'link speed' makes no sense to me. Can you post a screenshot of what you're seeing?
What are you using for these speed tests?
Are the devices (laptops) capable of of hitting those speeds wireless.
Stick a cable in and test it via Ethernet