On Facebook, several of my friends have been complaining about home internet speed. Most people point to the service provider, but the issue could be your own equipment. This article outlines a hardware replacement I completed last year. At the end, I include troubleshooting steps and tips on dealing with your carrier.
Background
For about 10 years, my job was running the global network for a Fortune 500 company. I know a thing or two about networks. Evidently, my home network was neglected during this time, because both of my children logged daily complaints about slow and poor connectivity. They eventually escalated the incident ticket to a priority 1.
Cost: About $240
Time to Install: About 1 hour
Home networks have 3 main components:
- Service: The the company you pay for broadband. The carrier physically connects your house to the internet with either coax, phone line, or fiber optic cable.
- Modem: Changes the physical media (coax, fiber, phone line) of the service to something you can plug into a router (ex: ethernet/CAT5/CAT6).
- Router: Provides wifi to your house and routes traffic from your home network to the internet. Typically has a few physical ports to connect devices to the network via ethernet cable.
For reference, Megapath's speed test site is at this link:
https://www.megapath.com/speedtestplus/
On paper, everything looked fine. Speed was fine, and we weren't even getting close to maxing out the numbers.
In reality, things were not fine. Streaming TV shows frequently would turn fuzzy, and the children complained about download speeds almost daily. Our poor laptop in the kitchen was so slow, I thought something was wrong with it.
When faced with situations like this, I typically turn to Google's search engine with a tall glass of Maker's Mark. This problem took more than one glass.
First thing to check was my download rate from Spectrum Cable. After looking at the bill and the web site (this took longer than it should have), I figured out that we were paying for 200 Mbps download speed. Hmmm... 84 is less than 200. Where is the bottleneck?
The answer was simple. The gear was the problem. Max speed on my cablemodem was lower than the speed from Spectrum, and the big bottleneck was the 100 Mbps port on the router.
The unit of measure for a cablemodem is the number of channels. My old modem had 4 upload and 4 download channels. More channels = more speed. Fortunately, buying a cablemodem doesn't require much research. Very fast units only cost about $85.
I settled on the Arris SB 6190 with 32 download channels and 8 upload channels. Max speed is 1.4 Gigabits per second. The Amazon link is here.
Which router to buy with way too many choices?
I've had good luck with Netgear routers since the early days. They just work all the time with very few problems. My main criteria for the purchase was:
- Good range
- Reasonable price
- Compatible with Circle Home (list at this link)
- Gigabit LAN ports (to fix the 100 Mbps limitation from the modem)
The refurb version is about $140. Range is excellent with 6 antennas. Compatible with Circle Home. Gigabit LAN ports. Yep, everything checks off the list.
I recommend installing one component at a time. That way, you know immediately if the part works or not.
Installing a Cablemodem:
- Unplug the old modem and all the cables
- Hook up the coax cable to the new modem
- Plug the network cable into the ethernet port of the modem (use the new cable!!!)
- Unplug the old cable from the old router
- Plug the new cable into the uplink port of the old router (usually a yellow port)
- Plug the cablemodem into power
- Call your cable provider. Tell them you just installed a new cablemodem and they need to change the hardware address on their side. The hardware address should be on a sticker on the cablemodem.
- Test your internet (Megapath Speed Test). Troubleshoot with the cable provider if it doesn't work.
No problem. This took me about 15 minutes including the phone call to Spectrum.
Installing the New Router
- Unplug the old router and all the cables.
- Plug in the ethernet cable that goes to the cablemodem. Usually the uplink port on the router is colored yellow.
- Plug in any ethernet cables that go to a wired device.
- My network has a switch to give me more LAN ports. I used the new ethernet cable that came with the router to run from the new router to the switch.
- Plug the router into power.
- Config.
Configuring the New Router
- Connect a computer to a LAN port on the new router (via ethernet cable).
- Open a browser and browse to 192.168.1.1
- Note that different routers will have different steps to follow. This list is somewhat generic and not necessarily step by step instructions.
- Update the router firmware.
- Set the admin password to something other than the default. Use a strong password that has uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters (like #@!). Write this password down in case you forget.
- Name the wireless SSID's. This Netgear router has one 2.5 Ghz radio and two 5 Ghz radios. The name of my 2.5 Ghz radio is Bdiddy and the 5 Ghz radio's are Bdiddy5G and Bdiddy5G-2
- Set the passwords for the SSID's. I set all mine to the same. Write these down in case you forget.
- The only other setting I changed was turning on Dynamic QOS and auto-updating the database. QOS allows the router to categorize traffic. An example of this would be giving more priority to TV shows than large game downloads. QOS allows people to share the network without negatively impacting each other.
- Reconfigure all the wireless devices in your home to use the new 5Ghz SSID (if the device support it). I'll talk about this in more detail below.
Why Use the 5Ghz Radio?
In the ancient times (a few years ago), 5 Ghz radios were weak. The signal wouldn't penetrate walls or floors very well. The new radios go much farther. 5 Ghz radios also have more channels, so your WiFi doesn't collide with close neighbors. If you are using 2.5 Ghz in your house and having WiFi issues, then your neighbor's WiFi signal is most likely the cause.
The new 5 Ghz radio's are also much faster than the 2.5's.
When to use the 2.5 radio?
I've got 2 devices in the house that only have 2.5 Ghz radios. One is an older Ring doorbell. The other is an ancient smart TV. If you want better performance from an old smart TV, buy a Roku for about $50. Ring has an upgraded doorbell with a 5 Ghz radio, but it's way to expensive to replace. I use a network extender to boost the signal to the Ring doorbell.
Results?
Holy moly. Performance with the new gear is almost too good to believe.
- TV's never get fuzzy while watching YouTube TV, Netflix, or Amazon. Never, ever.
- Download speed is regularly 230+ Mbps (about 3X improvement)
- WiFi speeds frequently hit 135 Mbps
- Coverage and signal strength for the entire house are much improved. Devices no longer lose connection to the WiFi
- Games and app downloads are screaming fast
- The bonus room above the garage actually has a usable signal. That room is far away from the router. The old speed was like a dialup connection. Now, those devices are getting about 25 Mbps
BONUS Section - Troubleshooting Tips
If you're not sold on buying new gear, what can you check out before spending money?
First thing would be the speed test. Compare the test to the speed that is advertised from the service provider. Run the test from a PC that is wired to the back of the router. Fast on the wire and slow on wireless points to a router problem.
Next, look at the cablemodem. Arris has a web console to look at logs. Open a browser window to 192.168.100.1. The status screen will show signal strength to the provider. The event log keeps track of service issues. It's normal to see a few issues in here. If the log has events every day or hundreds of events, call your service provider.
The final straw is calling your internet provider and scheduling a dispatch to your house. The person on the phone will probably want you to jump through a bunch of hoops, try to solve the issue remotely, and say that nothing is wrong. Be adamant that you want a dispatch. Spectrum has a policy to dispatch upon request, no matter what. When a technician comes out, they will test signal strength into your home, and also test from outside your house to the provider.
I recently had a service issue (about 4 months after the hardware replacement project). When the technician came out, he replaced the cable that goes through my yard to the house and put new ends on the coax cable that goes into my house. He also saw an upstream issue that was repaired the next day.
Good luck!!!
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