Wifi connection speed slows down over time

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R

rainer

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Jan 19, 2008
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Over the years I noticed that virtually every WIFI connection to my wireless router will gradually slow down over time. For instance if I reconnect it will be at full speed (300mbps) but after a day or two it will be down to 77mbps.

I've observed the same behaviour with a handful of different devices, wifi usb adapters, PCIE wifi adapters, and 4 different wireless routers, 3 of which are top rated. I always used the latest drivers. I also three versions of Windows OS as well as Ubuntu. Distance is only about 50 feet and two walls. Reconnect will always be at full speed. I disabled all power saving features of the adapters. Also transmit power is set to max.

I wonder what is the culprit behind this?
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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Jan 4, 2012
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50 feet and 2 walls is pretty substantial. My initial guess would be that you have some spurious RF interference. That interference is not present when you first connect, so you start off at full speed. But the regularity of its presence makes your equipment fall back to the slower speed for a more reliable connection. A microwave oven is a common one if it's used frequently - it emits at 2.45 GHz - right around channel 9 in the 2.4 Ghz band (so it strongly impacts the default channel 6). My parents called to complain their movie streaming would always freeze and stutter just before dinner. Turned out my mom was heating stuff in the microwave around that time.

If you leave a device right next to the wifi router for a couple days, does it still suffer the slowdown? (This only applies to 802.11n/ac. 802.11 b/g would slow down to the speed of the slowest device connected. They were incapable of maintaining different connection speeds to different devices.)

If you've got 5 GHz devices, you can try that as well. Though it doesn't have as much range as 2.4 GHz. Also note that the popular Intel AC7260 is known to be flaky, with a connection speed which degrades over time even when right next to the router. I'm sitting about 8 feet from my router, and mine has degraded to 585 Mbps. I need to turn wifi off and back on to get it back to 866 Mbps.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Jun 24, 2014
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Also, just because it states 300mbps upon connection doesn't mean it's actually capable of transferring at those speeds. The connection standard and the actual throughput are rarely the same, and when the device is first connection the speed of the "standard" is going to be what's reported until packets actually start moving through the connection.
 
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