Question virgin shub3 and ap

killer10971

Prominent Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
1,180
Reaction score
44
Points
413
having a right mare with this

I have a virgin superhub 3 and get 215Mbps wired and wireless , I was getting a dead spot so ran Ethernet to the area (speedtest on the new cable shows 215Mbps) and put in a tplink 2.4ghz access point (300Mbps).

when I connect to the new access point I only get 90Mbps ???

also when I connect to the superhub and view connected devices my new iPhone 7 is showing as connected at 54Mbps and my alienware the same (speedtest down on alienware @215Mbps)
but my wifes iPhone 6 connected at 1000Mbps
 
What is the exact model number of your TPLink...?

In many locales, there isn't enough frequency spectrum available in the 2.4GHz waveband to form the "fat" radio channels needed for the faster rates (if you have neighbours for example.) In such situations, sometimes a kind of "good neighbour" protocol kicks in and the links fall down to "thin" radio channels which basically halves your link rates. And some 2.4GHz kit simply doesn't do "fat" channels - model number for the TPLink will allow us to check.

1000mbps sounds remarkably like Gigabit ethernet. I don't know the Virgin firmware, but if your SH is seeing your iPhone 6 as a devices connected to the "other" router, it's essentially "seeing" that device through one of it's LAN (ethernet) ports and is potentially reporting the "speed" of that port, not the rate the device is (Wi-Fi) associated with the TPLink. Your SH will have no knowledge of the speeds at which devices have connected ("Associated" in Wi-Fi speak) with the TPlink - SH will think they are all downstream ethernet devices (presuming you've connected the TPLink to the SH using ethernet.)
 
Last edited:
many thanks for the reply

TP-LINK TL-WA801ND 300 Mbps Wireless N Access Point

and yes the superhub only shows two devices connected wirelessly and the 1000Mbps iPhone it says connected via Ethernet ?
 
The WA801ND only has a 10/100 ethernet port so it won't ever exceed more than 100Mbps anyway, regardless of how fast a client is connected wirelessly.

I am in a similar position though have two 901s one ND and one N on a 300Mbit connection though I have a lot of stuff hardwired.

I found in normal usage I never have any issues in "speed" from any of the wireless clients. Primarily because beyond a certain point you don't need that much speed.

The VM hub doesn't know that stuff connected to a remote AP is wireless and will usually remote it as connected to the LAN.
 
The WA801ND only has a 10/100 ethernet port so it won't ever exceed more than 100Mbps anyway, regardless of how fast a client is connected wirelessly.

Thanks Chuck, I hadn't thought of that: That being the case, then 90mbps (ish) from an Internet SpeedTest site is about right.

Internet speedtest sites effectively test the slowest "hop" in the pathway between the test client and the speedtest web site. Until fairy recently, that was almost always your ISP connection so the speedtest web site does what it was designed to - test your Internet connection speed. Now that ISP's are rolling out links to homes that exceed some ethernet/Wi-Fi speeds, that is no longer always the case.

Thus, with the equipment mix you describe, from client Associated with your TPLink AP, you are now effectively testing the 100mbps ethernet link between the AP and SH as that's now the slowest hop in the pathway and 90mbps is about what one would expect from the SpeedTest.

Here's your test regime:

Client~~~~AP----SH====ISP?????Rest of the world.

If AP----SH is the slowest hop, your speed test has effectively tested that as everything else is faster.

Some might ask "what's the point of a 300mbps Wi-Fi link if the uplink is "only" 100mbps?" There are good use cases for such, if interested I can describe them, but it's a little nuanced and will take more than a couple of sentences. Anyone interested, post back and I'll cite exemplar.

With regard to 54mbps Wi-Fi connection speeds (presumably as reported on the client.) 54mbps is the top speed for the G & A Wi-Fi protocols which suggests the phone is Associating (Wi-Fi speak for "connecting") using one or other of those protocols rather than the faster N or AC protocols. I'd suggest you check out your phone and AP/SH to ensure that all the N & AC protocols are enabled on those devices that support them.

Even then, you may just be experiencing a bit of "bad luck" in that on that particular day your phone couldn't get a N or AC link (it won't get the latter with the AP as the AP doesn't support AC) and "fell down" to an older slower G or A protocol.

Indeed, if none of your client device require the A/B/G protocols (ie they are all N and/or AC capable,) you might consider disabling A/B/G in the AP & SH which will force use of N and/or AC (or you'll get nothing at all.) To determine whether that's a option worth exploring or not will mean you need to check the capabilities of all your Wi-Fi clients (and whether the SH/AP will let you selectively disable particular protocols - not all SOHO kit does.)

I don't know why your SH would report devices Associated with the AP at 1000mbps - maybe it's a bug - I'd expect it to say 100mbps if anything for reasons we explore below. In any case, such reports are something of an illusion: With the exception of directly associated Wi-Fi clients, client devices and routers don't maintain any kind of "connection" in any meaningful way. It's like the postal service - there's no "connection" between my house and the local sorting office. But both of us know how to get packets of information between each other - that's all we need to "know" about each other.

SH (and things like BT's HomeHubs) try to be "helpful" by listing the devices they are aware of as if they are "connected," but that's based on a presumption that the SH/HomeHub/etc is the only network device and everything is directly connected to it - they don't countenance the idea that you may have other AP's/switches downstream of them.

Thus can you get these somewhat bizarre situations where a Wi-Fi device associated with a downstream AP get reported as "ethernet" connected - even for devices like iPhones which don't have ethernet NIC's! This is because your SH is "seeing" traffic from said devices arriving through one of it's ethernet ports, so it reports it as "ethernet" "connected."
 
Last edited:
The other thing I would add is that I decided to change from the TPLink software to OpenWRT which allows you to do a lot more things on the router. Its effectively open source and allows to have much more control and add additional plugins. (You can actually turn your AP into a router if you really wanted)
I use mine for multiple SSIDs and VLAN control as I have a few "naughty" clients that are half way in between and jump APs. Ordinarily this would be ok however some of the software doesn't like this and drops connectivity. So I have a common SSID on both but then a specific one to tie to each AP. That means fixed stuff like Sonos that isn't wired won't change AP...
 
appreciate the in depth answers guys

i thought my Ap was the bottleneck but didn't realise the Ethernet port was the issue purchased just saw the 300Mbps

even If speedtest from my phones direct to the superhub im still getting 30-40Mbps yet same room laptop wireless 215Mbps ,I will try to force N/AC

my kit supports it

Cheers all
 
Your phone might decide it doesn't want to connect at that speed.

Just tried it on mine, hadn't done since I changed some configs and getting only around 15Mbps download and 20MBps upload on my VM connection. Obviously something is having a wobble as its 300+ on wired. Maybe the 901 do not like the VLAN setup but will see.

The thing is how much bandwidth do you need 30-40MBps is sufficient for a full blu ray stream so most streaming will be far below this and that's usually the most bandwidth intensive you need.
 
turned off all but ac and n

turned off wifi and deleted login credentials

retested and got 168.22 down 12.30 up from iPhone then second test back to 37down

but agree its plenty
 
It's perhaps also worth mentioning that not all N and AC devices are capable of achieving the fastest rates availed by their respective specifications.

By way of example, the N standard avails rates up to 600mbps. Yet my N router tops out at 450mbps and my N laptop "only" manages a paltry 72mbps, so a 72mbps link is the best I get. (To echo ChuckMountain - it's more than adequate for day to day Internet surfing.) You need to dig into the specs. of your devices to see what they are capable of. Phones, for example, can be quite limited.

Same deal for AC.

Wiki's articles on 802.11N and 802.11AC have some (abridged) tables listing various permutations of number of radio streams, channels widths, modulation & FEC shcemes and the data rates yielded if you really want to get into the "numbers game."
 
turned off all but ac and n

turned off wifi and deleted login credentials

retested and got 168.22 down 12.30 up from iPhone then second test back to 37down

but agree its plenty

Maybe you're suffering some interference issues. We haven't discussed it thus far, but to prevent interference between your hotspots, you should ensure they are using differing radio channels. In small SOHO networks, I favour setting the channels manually rather than letting them auto select.

In the 5GHz band, just ensure the channels are different (moot point as the TPLink doesn't do 5HGz.)

In the 2.4GHz band, ensure they are at least "5 apart" - e.g. pick two from the set [1,6,11]

However, a wrinkle occurs in that there isn't enough frequency spectrum in the 2.4GHz waveband to avail more than one "fat" channel required for the fastest N rates. So with two hotspots you can either make one "thin" one "fat" channel or make them both "thin." If you opt for the fat-thin combo, (if you AP/SH let yo make the choice) you'd want the channels as far apart as possible - at least 1, 7, but it depends somewhat how the devices allow you to specify a "fat" channels centre frequency -there's various ways.

Even then, with enough interference, it's possible that whichever of SH/AP is configured for "fat" channel may still not achieve it if enough interference manifests that it can't create the fat channel and falls down to a thin one.

(Thin versus fat channel pretty much halves the maximum link rate - and whether the channel can form can vary moment to moment.)

Unfortunately, it's all very complicated. :D
 
Last edited:

The latest video from AVForums

Is Home Theater DEAD in 2024?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom