New Super Fast Fibre, time to get full speed

[Skeeter1600e]

Hi  all,

today I had super fast fibre connect, the 1.6gb busy home package, it went live at around 16:30 or so.

Running speed tests on both Fast.com and the Ookla app is showing an average of around 400/500mb on my iPhone and significantly less on my iPad. I can accept the differences between the devices (will look at the iPad later) but even so this is massively less than I was expecting.

Does a brand new install take time to settle down before it starts delivering the speed I thought I was getting?

thanks

eta fixed ipad discrepancy so now running at same as iPad

[Mustrum]

@Skeeter1600e  the iPad Air 2 is quite old now, no longer supported, but is only a WiFi5 device, in practical terms that means a realistic speed on tests around 450-500Mbps.

No excuse for the 16 pro though.

How is the PS4 connected?

What site are you using for a speedtest = try thinkbroadband or speedtest.net if you are not using them.

Way early to be talking congestion on a brand new circuit, but there is a possibility that the router and any other connected devices are up or downloading stuff which will slow down speed tests.

[Skeeter1600e]

I am using the EE provided router paying for a 1,6gb connection with a speed guarantee if 1.3gb so I am not sure what you posted is relevant.
Sent from my iPhone

[JimM11]

@Skeeter1600e Will just leave it as is then, you can carry on.

[bobpullen]

@Skeeter1600e some thoughts...

iPhone Pro has Wi-Fi 7 but only supports 160MHz bandwith so the maximum theoretical link speed is 2882mbps.
The iPad Air 2 (10 year old device), you're talking 80MHz at 5GHz which is 867mbps maximum.
For the PS4, which model? Earlier models (10+ years old) only support 2.4GHz connectivity/Wi-Fi 4 which is 144mbps maximum.

Link speed is not synonymous with your actual throughput. As an approximate rule, dock it by ~40% or so, which gives you...

• iPhone (need to be v.close to the hub and using 6GHz) = max(ish) speed
• iPad = 520mbps i.e. around what you're getting
• PS4 (if 2.4GHz model) = 86mbps (although 2.4GHz is notoriously bad for congestion which can further degrade things)

So, in summary - I'd say you're getting about what I would expect with the exception of the iPhone. I'm not sure just how reliable/consistent these devices are on Wi-Fi 7 due to how new they are but from reading around, they already seem limited to 160MHz, when the hub would deliver 320Mhz if the phone supported it (twice the bandwidth).

If you move right next to the hub with the iPhone, toggle the Wi-Fi off/back on and then run a speedtest in the same spot, what's the result? I would expect it to be pretty close to your contracted broadband speed.

You can also run a speed test using the EE app which will measure to your hub and take the Wi-Fi network completely out of the equation.

[Skeeter1600e]

Thanks all.

After playing around a bit and looking at the advice on the thread my summary is;

1) part of the issue is my devices, some of which are not capable of handling the speed

2) completely resetting my iPhone, including all of the network settings seems to have sorted this

3) speed drop off as you move away from the actual router is quite dramatic

4) connecting my laptop via Ethernet seems to get a best connection of just about 1Gb, and it seems that is a router hardware limit (as far as I can see)

5) the router is reporting 1.6Gb to the router so the actual connection looks fine

In summary, it seems to be all but impracticable to actually get 1.6gb unless you use a wireless device and place it pretty much on top of the router.

This is mildly disappointing but having said that it is much faster than I have been used to and seems stable.

[JimM11]

@bobpullen Will let you do the answer's, No. 4 is an old laptop.

[Mustrum]

@Skeeter1600e  Sounds linke you are getting there.

If you have the Smart Hub Pro as you say, the laptop is restricted by a 1Gb LAN port, the router has 2.5Gb ports, so you will get more speed with a laptop with a better Lan port.

But you are not alone in learning these things, we all have to at some stage.

Good luck upgrading your equipment, it is all part of the experience.

PS did you also get the pro extender, that will help maintain higher WiFi speeds around your property.

[Skeeter1600e]

Thanks

At least it is giving me excuses to buy new stuff.

[TuckerUK]

@Skeeter1600e All depends on the devices you use that can take advantage of WiFi 7. My iPhone 15 PM can get 1400mbps download and 1600mbps upload with WiFi 6E. My gaming PC has 2.5 gig Ethernet, so I see 2gig up and down with my ISP.  The iPhone 16  should be seeing the same speeds or slightly higher as my 15 PM. But from your other devices, the speeds look about right to me. 

[bobpullen]

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@JimM11 wrote:

@bobpullen Will let you do the answer's, No. 4 is an old laptop.

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I think the answers have been provided in my absence 🙂

@Skeeter1600e you're pretty much bang on the money with your conclusions. On point 4, the rating of the Ethernet ports and cables matter. Ethernet ports are commonly 1Gbps these days, older/cheaper devices: 100mbps, and if you go back further than that, or look at some of the low-end IoT devices that are on the market: 10mbps.

Higher speed Ethernet ports in 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps flavours are available, however we're only just srarting to see the rise in popularity of the former, with the latter still being reserved for prosumer kit/hobbiests. All of the ports on the Smart Hub/WiFi Pro are 2.5Gbps.

In order for > 1Gbps to be achieved, you need a multigig Ethernet port at both ends (read: laptop and hub), and you also need to use an Ethernet cable of suitable length/grading; a decent four-pair cat5-e cable shorter than 100m as a minmum.

One relatively cheap/convenient way to get a multigig Ethernet connection on a laptop that 'only' has a 1GbE port is to use an adapter like this. Although, that then gives you yet another thing to consider, which is the rating of your USB port; it needs to be USB3 or you'll create another bottleneck!

At lower speeds, it was almost always your Internet connection that was the 'weakest link' so none of this stuff has ever really come to the fore. As gigabit+ Internet becomes more commonplace, I suspect you'll not be the only one coming to some of these realisations for the first time 😉