Speed issue with Unifi APs

ellchester

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I have Gigaclear as my ISP and pay for the 300 MB service. Using Gigaclear's own speedtest I'm getting about 230 down and 240 up on a wired connection. Same with OOKLA but slightly worse.

I have turned off the wifi on the router and I'm using Unifi Acess Points (Pro and Lite). I'm using cat 6 ethernet cable direct from RS components (as recommended on this site) but my speed tests are only coming in at 75 Mb down and 282 up for wifi. I used to get much better speeds, (150-220mb on wifi) when I was always getting a solid 300mb (wired) from Gigaclear but it has slowed in the last few weeks. It's the same with both APs. Even if I plug the AP straight into the router (via POE) I still get the same. My MAC is getting the 230mb and has a TP link gigabit swicth connected to it which I am running the first AP off and getting less than 80mb.

Any suggestions or where I can start to improve speeds?
 
Last edited:
Have changed channels and settings as recommended elsewhere on here, tried several different Cat 6 cables to the AP but no chnage, the fastest speed is around 70mb now over wifi, but sometimes as low as 40mb.
 
I suggest you test using both ethernet and Wi-Fi by way of establishing whether the issue is with the ISP link or your local Wi-Fi.

Test using something wired to you router and see how that performs - it'd be worth noting whether that link is coming up at 100mbps or 1000mbps (AKA "gigabit") which is dependent on both your router and the end station's capabilities.

Similarly, using online speed test sites isn't a very good way of assessing local Wi-Fi performance as it's subject to any variance that might be occurring upstream of you. A better solution is to test using something like iPerf or NetIO which takes everything upstream of you (including your ISP link) out of the equitation. It's kind of like hosting your own SpeedTest server locally. Both are free and pretty easy to use, albeit that you'll need a couple of devices, one to host the "server" and one to host the "client." IIRC they are cross platform so any Mac/Linux/Windows PC will do, though one can believe the number of households that are "iSomething only" is increasing which might be a problem!

Run the tests locally a few times at different times of day and see what the trend is.

If local tests are reliable quick, you know it's not a Wi-Fi issue and you should beat up your ISP. Vice-versa, if (wired) ISP tests are good and local Wi-Fi isn't, you know you have a local issue.

I wouldn't fixate much on cable "cat" - ethernet links work at fixed rates 10/100/1000 mbps and the links either "work" full speed of not at all - it doesn't vary as Wi-Fi link rates do and certainly doesn't slow down because you give it lower "cat" cable. If there's a cable issue, it's more likely to just not work at all.

Ethernet is also a very efficient protocol and you expect to observe most of headline link rate as throughput (speed tests measure "throughput," not "link rate" - they are different "things" that are often erroneously conflated.) 75mbps would be a tad slow for 100mbps ethernet and dreadful for 1000mbps ethernet. It might be an indicator that you've got a link that isn't coming up at gigabit.
 
I suggest you test using both ethernet and Wi-Fi by way of establishing whether the issue is with the ISP link or your local Wi-Fi.

Test using something wired to you router and see how that performs - it'd be worth noting whether that link is coming up at 100mbps or 1000mbps (AKA "gigabit") which is dependent on both your router and the end station's capabilities.

Similarly, using online speed test sites isn't a very good way of assessing local Wi-Fi performance as it's subject to any variance that might be occurring upstream of you. A better solution is to test using something like iPerf or NetIO which takes everything upstream of you (including your ISP link) out of the equitation. It's kind of like hosting your own SpeedTest server locally. Both are free and pretty easy to use, albeit that you'll need a couple of devices, one to host the "server" and one to host the "client." IIRC they are cross platform so any Mac/Linux/Windows PC will do, though one can believe the number of households that are "iSomething only" is increasing which might be a problem!

Run the tests locally a few times at different times of day and see what the trend is.

If local tests are reliable quick, you know it's not a Wi-Fi issue and you should beat up your ISP. Vice-versa, if (wired) ISP tests are good and local Wi-Fi isn't, you know you have a local issue.

I wouldn't fixate much on cable "cat" - ethernet links work at fixed rates 10/100/1000 mbps and the links either "work" full speed of not at all - it doesn't vary as Wi-Fi link rates do and certainly doesn't slow down because you give it lower "cat" cable. If there's a cable issue, it's more likely to just not work at all.

Ethernet is also a very efficient protocol and you expect to observe most of headline link rate as throughput (speed tests measure "throughput," not "link rate" - they are different "things" that are often erroneously conflated.) 75mbps would be a tad slow for 100mbps ethernet and dreadful for 1000mbps ethernet. It might be an indicator that you've got a link that isn't coming up at gigabit.
Thanks, we did used to get 300 mb - which was good as we pay for the 300 mb service but testing it today on wired it is ranging from 180 mb down to 230 mb down. Wifi is now no more than 60 mb. We didnt sign up for the 1GB sevice as that was a bit pricey.
 
If testing wired is consistently showing performance issues, then it may be time to call your ISP.

An approach you might consider is to keep a diary, run your tests are various times of the day over a few days (say week) and make a journal of the result. You've then got some evidence to hand if you engage with the ISP. Test wired, testing Wi-Fi only complicates matters. Unfortunately, the difference between wired and Wi-Fi is down to your Wi-Fi environment and that's not the responsibility of your ISP (unfortunately, Wi-Fi is all on you.)

It may also be worth checking your ISP contract and see if it's sold on the basis of guaranteeing some minimum level of service, or whether it's been sold on the "up to" basis.
 

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