I don’t know too much about routers and how wifi works, but my parents bought a “gaming” router a year back or so and it’s been absolutely amazing, even all the way from my room which is at the opposite end of the house. Thing is, when I’d take some time off from college to hop on my Playstation, the TV in the living room would lag when they tried to watch football or movies so, one day they messed with it somehow. They made two wi-fi networks to connect to: “Template” and “Template5G” and they said they’re moving the “better wifi” to 5G and only the TV could use it. It worked for a while but now… goddamn. A 10GB update for a game I have takes 3 hours or so now. Even the TV doesn’t work and the wifi is just super slow and sometimes will spike and completely not work from time to time. I even recommended to my dad that maybe if we put the router higher in the room, we’d get better connection? So, they taped/nailed it behind the top of the TV and called it a day. Anyways, I need some help… I don’t even mind if ya’ll use words I don’t understand, I’ll learn. Thanks for reading ;
Edit: I don’t know if this is important but it also sttes we have “weak security” under our wifi networks.
TL;DR my parents messed with some wifi settings and now it doesn’t act right/it’s slower for everyone
Did they turn on qos? If so turn it off
It sounds like you’re a bandwidth hog. Save your downloading for when everyone’s in bed and quit messing up their tv streaming.
More than one device can support 5g. I have my desktop and both chromecasts on it, no issue and our wifi sucks. Backup laptop is on 2.4 and our phones vary. Your parents kinda sound ignorant dealing with that or extra devices connected when they shouldn’t be tbh. Check your router admin and see what’s actually connected.
Do you have access to the routers configuration page?
On a modern router like that, it would have a smart connect feature which would automatically connect you to the router speed with the fastest signal that your device supports (either 2.4ghz or 5ghz). Once your parents created two different networks to connect to and each network only broadcasts one signal and said only they can use the 5g signal, they took away the faster signal from you and making you use the much slower 2.4ghz network speed.
Also, if simply playing on your playstation online but not downloading anything caused their tv to lag, you probably have a slow internet connection to begin with. Nothing you can do about that besides calling your isp and upgrading your plan.
I’m yet to see any of those so-called smart connect actually put 5GHz devices on the 5GHz network.
Roaming is ultimately up to the client, and SO many things implement “stay on the first one it sees until there’s better signal” which usually means it goes for 2.4GHz.
Far better to split them and have one SSID for 5GHz, connect EVERYTHING that supports 5GHz to that network (there’s more bandwidth, more non-overlapping channels, fewer things to interfere) and only use 2.4GHz for things that don’t support 5GHz (usually lower end IoT)
Older/cheaper smart connect devices are less efficient. If you are on a newer, powerful broadcasting signal gaming type router, it’s far more effective.
But I agree about splitting them. I have a cheap router and have them split into two seperate SSID’s
Also, if simply playing on your playstation online but not downloading anything caused their tv to lag, you probably have a slow internet connection to begin with. Nothing you can do about that besides calling your isp and upgrading your plan.
Not necessarily, TVs don’t tend to have the best network adapters.
Ehh, playing a game online uses such a small amount of data though.
5G will be faster transmission but not as far distance signal, 2.4 will have better performance at further distance. Good to have both for different devices around the house. That way if you’re far you can connect to the 2.4 ghz channel etc.
I could be entirely wrong but check if both wifis are at 2.4 or 5Ghz. There might be interference if they are on the same channel.
Man oh man, Wi-Fi is an arcane, dark, and hardly understood art of radio waves, materials science, and of course IP networking. Really, it will be hard to give you good advice without a site survey. I have fixed WiFi professionally for companies more than a few times over my life. So I’m going to give you some pointers on how you can go about discovering the issue. Don’t worry, it isn’t too technical, just common sense is needed :)
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Connect your phone to the same WiFi network as the PlayStation. Stand next to the PlayStation. Run a speed test on your phone, and the PlayStation.
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If there is a difference, like the phone is much faster, then the issue probably lies with the PlayStation / TV. If this is the case let me know and I can walk you through next steps.
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If there is no difference, then the Wi-Fi signal isn’t strong enough there. A fix for that would be a Ethernet to power line adapter connected to a Wi-Fi repeater. Easy things to google and find cheap.
*microwaves.
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is there a chance you can obtain a long ethernet cable and run a direct line? that will be the absolute best…
Even the TV doesn’t work
So it’s probably not a configuration setting that is a problem if the TV was faster but now isn’t.
Start with the basics, has the router/modem been restarted yet?
If so, can you connect a PC/PS5 with ethernet and see how speeds are to narrow down if it’s a speed problem with the Wifi vs a speed problem with the whole device?
If it’s just the wifi, honestly, just factory reset it if your parents are okay. Then put your network name and password back on. Modern devices are pretty darn good at auto-negotiating their channel settings and things like that.
If there’s a speed problem even over ethernet, you might have an ISP issue, or the device itself is failing, or someone tripped over a cord and yanked it loose.
Could be a million things, so focus on narrowing down what exactly is not working
There are two WiFi bands, 5ghz and 2.4ghz.
For gaming you want 5ghz because there is less interruption and you get a better connection. Downside is it is a shorter ranged signal. Unfortunately your parents have separated these, which means when one of them gets slow you no longer switch between bands. As they have also taken this 5ghz one away from you, this means you will forever have poopoo connections because 2.4ghz is shit for online gaming, and 5ghz is shit at range (you are the opposite end of the house).
So what can you do?
All is not at a loss. Tell your technically abled parent that you are “experiencing poor latency and high ping, in part due to the separation of WiFi frequencies, but also because you are experiencing too much interference over WiFi. As such, please could they purchase you a powerline adapter”
In short what this does is allow you to use the copper wiring in your house to directly wire your console into your router. It uses a LAN cable (internet cable) to connect the router to a plug socket device, then you plug another into a plug socket upstairs and plug the wire (also a LAN cable) into the back of your gaystation. It is cheap and effective - and will be better than using the 5ghz band because it will provide you with an wired network within your house using the copper wiring within your home. Pro tip - avoid multi plug adapters to maximise speed.
Also - sit in your lounge and download the “Speedtest.net” app on your phone. Run a Speedtest. If your speed is below 10mbps download and your upload speed is approx 1mbps, then your provider is probably not “great” for gaming online. If your ping is above 33ms this will also be “bad”. Also, check a few times over the day to see when is “best”. Just make sure you are as close to the router as possible.
What else…. Well the TV is no longer working so they have two real options:
1/ reset the router to factory settings and start from scratch 2/ call a technician (3/) run the Speedtest and discover their internet speed is rubbish and is causing all the issues…in which case you get the ISP to perform or take your business elsewhere. In the case of the UK they will want to try (in this order) cityfibre, Virgin media or BT (sky, now, EE , O2 etc all subcontract off BT). Nip onto their websites and see what packages they’re willing to offer - the higher the package the better the speed is likely to be.
Good luck - may be helpful if you edit your original post to detail your Speedtest results and name your internet service provider.
The proper way to do this is to have 1 wifi network with QOS set up. You want the bandwidth capacity set to whatever your ISP is providing. Then you want to set the maximum capacity per device to be no more than half of the provided bandwidth. Not all routers have that option, but if yours does it will probably fix the issue for you and your parents.
Either your network connection in general is just slow or you are having some transmission issues from your ISP.
Give the router a reboot to see if that helps, but just creating separate networks isn’t going to have that sort of impact on speed.
Here are some settings you want to check:
Have both SSIDs (aka network names) the same with the same password. Let the device pick the stronger signal. 2.4ghz is slower but goes farther, 5ghz will be faster but the signal wont travel very far (physics).
Make sure you are using at least WPA2 level security with AES. Do not use AES TKIP, WPA or WEP. That should make the weak security banner go away.
Connect the tv via cable…