Slow Wifi on B One Router

I’m getting some very low speeds on wifi. On Ethernet, I’m getting 100M+, but when I move to wifi, it’s down in the 20s. My signal strength is really good, so I’m stuck on what else I can check.

Thanks in advance.

Just ran a speed test, 237/48 on a 500/50 line over WiFi with my B One. I’m about 20’ and a floor away from the router and there’s a metal duct between us. Are you sure you’ve got good signal strength and quality?

I think so. The icon in the taskbar shows full strength anyway.

I am assuming you aren’t using Wi-Fi as WAN, if so, that might be cutting your bandwidth down quite a bit.

A few quick things to check:

Open task manager, performance tab, Wi-Fi, on that page listed as connection type it will tell you what protocol it connected as. For the B One it should be 802.11ax. If it’s not ax or ac, that would severely limit your speed.

Test the speed with your cell phone to see if it gets the same speeds in the same locations.

In the router webpage, AP tab, settings, default profile; make sure that
ssid is checked for 2.4 and 5 for the ssid you are using
proffered frequency is set to 5ghz
channel width and channel are set auto
output power set to fixed max

There are other settings that could effect your speed and you could have multiple profiles for settings if you have an advanced config but this is likely how it is currently.

The next steps after that would be to maybe test it with other Wi-Fi antennas off of another router, test it with another laptop or tablet that is Wi-Fi 6 capable and test another similar router in your location.

Lots of devices will report good signal even when it actually isn’t, either because of interference or the antenna of the laptop or phone being far weaker than the access point.

The final step, and likely out of your capabilities is to do a site survey of the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands and see what you have going on. I have seen an incredibly leaky microwave knock out all Wi-Fi including site to site links aimed away from it that were over 100 feet away. A wireless tv extender that did the same over an even larger area. Wireless headphones that made Wi-Fi so slow as to be unusable on that band if the headset was off but the base station was on. Also saw a soundbar with a locked up chip for the rear/sub that was blasting 160mhz of the 5ghz band all the time, even when turned off.

If you test it somewhere else that is known to be good, line of site with multiple modern devices and it is still terrible, I would reach out to support or the company you purchased through.

Some other people here might have some suggestions too.

Thank you for all that information. I checked the router/AP settings and they all seem to look good.

I’ll check the PC.

Thank you again.

There are a lot of WiFi things to check on this page

It’s a rabbit hole :slight_smile:

Hi @JJ_Slayton,

Welcome to the Forum!

I too have the B One (5G) and am experiencing the same - slow WiFi connectivity. My primary WAN (cable, advertised as 1 Gbps) averages 850 Mbps down by 20 up. Over WiFi, to three different devices all in really close proximity to the B One, I average 400 down by 20 up. That’s on 5 GHz and test devices are all WiFi 6 (802.11ax).

Plugged in a third-party WiFi 6 AP via ethernet to the B One and averaging 650 down and 20 up. Interesting.

And here I thought it was “just me” and possible congestion. If you find any tweaks or combos that get you closer to actual, please let me know!

WiFi 7 from Peplink can’t come soon enough. :wink:

  • Beau

Dang. Sounds like it might just not be a very good solution.

FYI, Peplink only allows up to 80Mhz bands to be used on their wireless. Other AP or routers may be using 160Mhz on 5Ghz or 320Mhz on 6ghz on 6E or 7. This would easily account for a noticeable difference in speed vs another device in the same spot. (Such as 650 down vs 400).

Also, there can easily be quite a difference just between changing brands of the wireless cards. I can make an educated guess that there is a Qualcomm Wi-Fi chip in the B One. It might not play well with some laptop or cell chips and work better with others.

That said, in the original post you said you were down in the 20s, that’s not explained by a difference like that. I could run a test but I can likely get 20Mbit through it line of site with no antennas connected.