I have a Peplink Balance 20x using the two stock wifi antennae. This is for home use, connected to a typical cable moden from Comcast. I have 480Mb to my MacBook using wired ethernet so I know the signal is getting to the Balance 20x. I love it as a router/switch. Wifi is another story.
The wifi reach is poor. Being on the next floor only 25 feet away gives me a poor and inconsistent signal. Using Speedtest.com, last night I was getting 9Mb of speed with lots of jitter (don’t recall but in the high 100s). This morning I’m getting 45Mb with 13ms ping and 104 jitter. Today’s performance is a real outlier. Usually it’s like last night’s figure, and in practice it’s barely enough to run a YouTube video. I also get inconsistencies during a session of use. It might start as barely enough to run a YT video but then an hour later it will have degraded to the point that even web surfing static pages is difficult.
Is this typical for this unit? Is there a way to install better antennae?
I’d hate to think that I would need a second wifi AP, and if so I worry that an AP from Peplink would have the same problem. I’m not going to install APs in every room or two.
Hi there!
I would start by checking the wireless environment and adjust channels, bandwidth and output power.
Fix your transmit channels to something less used in your space, and perhaps increase your bandwidth up or down depending till you find the sweet spot.
Thanks
Sorry, I don’t follow. There are two frequenies, each have four channel widths, and each have about 10 channels. The math leads to what, about 160 combinations of settings. Plus a choice of output power, preferred frequency, etc. You’re suggesting a brute force method of trying each combination one at a time until all permutations are tested?
Hi there,
All depending on the mode, you don’t have that many combinations, but it really comes down to the environment you’re in.
The Balance 20x is running Wi-Fi 5 and supports 20, 40 & 20/40 on 2.4 and 40, 80 & 40/80 on 5.
Peplink purposely leave out DFS channels and middle range channels by default as they’re often used by everyone else.
I’d start by simply locking the channel and width,
2.4Ghz > 20Mhz & Channel 1
5Ghz > 40Mhz & Channel 36
Generally, I’d avoid anything between 5 - 9 on 2.4 and all DFS channels (49-148) on 5.
Here’s a great resource on channels for you,
If you have an Android device there’s heaps of tools to scan your network and find out where most devices hang out and you can start by avoiding these.
Finally, if no change can be observed, look at antenna placement, surrounding interference etc…
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This writeup has many suggestions for tweaking/fixing slow Wifi
I agree with the earlier comment that Android offers many apps for this. On Windows. I love WifiInfoview from Nir Sofer at nirsoft.net. It offers tons of techie details.
As to your confusion, two big Wifi parameters are the channel and the channel width.
Best performance is when you are on a channel your neighbors are not using. Next best is to use the same channel as your neighbors. Worst, is to use 1 channel up or 1 channel down from your neighbors. That screws up everyone.
Channel width takes some trial and error. Very wide is fast performance but more likely interference with neighbors. Personally, I prefer narrow channels to avoid interference, at a small hit to speed. But trial and error.
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Thanks for the helpful replies. I’m using a current model MacBook with Sonoma, so Android is off the table, but I appreciate the suggestion.
On interference: the house to the south is vacant (up for sale). The house to the north is owned by a very elderly lady and I’m not sure she has wifi based upon what show up in the logs. Other houses are at least 100 feet away.
Captain_Nik, I tried your setting suggestions. From 480Mb coming into the router it is sending 22Mb over wifi to my MacBook 25 feet away on the next floor. Line of sight on the same floor, 10 feet away is 88Mb; 25 feet away is 32Mb.
Is this typical performance for this model? Kinda hard to believe the engineering dept signed off on this.
Michael234, I’ll take a look at the Horowitz article. I’m familar with him and he’s very good.
Marc,
First thing: from the Dashboard page in the router, click on Ethernet Wan, and set the Upload Bandwidth and Download Bandwidth so that they reflect reality. It may not explain your slow speeds but it can’t hurt if these are accurate.
More important than how far you are from the router, is the strength of the connection. For that you should check the router to see what it reports for your devices.
Also, you can not trust just one speed testing site. I have seen huge variations and thus would use three different sites. There are many. I use fast.com, speedtest.net and speed.cloudflare.com.
All that said, your speed seems unusually slow. Perhaps its the router, perhaps its Wifi, perhaps its your device. Place multiple devices in the same location and see what the signal strength is for each of them. There may be a difference. Also, speed test with more than one device in the same location.
Yes, its a pain.