Ok, schlepped all the way to Victory Park, swapped out the old Archer for a new Cudy . Some feedback. I can no longer watch watch YouTube or any other content on streaming without it looking like an 80s video game. I guess I will have to buy repeaters. My kids are moaning about delays on their gaming. Speedetest seems ok on a wired connection but really bad on WIFI. I feel like I have fixed one problem but been given a Temu replacement…after 10 years I am actively seeking a better solution.
Maybe it's just the choice of WiFi channel used on the new router, try testing different channels to see if speed improves.
Also some general advice for improving local network performance.
For any non-mobile device it's always best to try use a "hard line" (CAT5e/6 ethernet cable) between them and your router. E.g. TVs and gaming desktops/consoles should definitely be connected by cable. If you have conduits in the wall for aerial/DSTV cables you can run network cables through them too. If you work from home try have a network cable to your laptop, makes a world of difference in quality of online meetings.
Even when WiFi seems to work well, there are almost certainly still a lot of automatic re-transmissions happening which you just aren't aware of, this makes latency for computer games spiky and can very noticeably cause downloads or video streaming to take longer to start (I normally have my AppleTV wired, but when I was temporarily using it over WiFi, buffering took very noticeably longer before videos would start playing).
Before I comment about WiFi repeaters, to ensure that we're on the same page in terms of terminology, a WiFi
repeater generally refers to a device which uses WiFi to talk to an "upstream" WiFi device, it wirelessly relays communication. A WiFi
access point generally refers to a WiFi device which uses an ethernet cable to communicate with your router.
WiFi repeaters
can help, but they are often only marginally better and tend to
halve your possible throughput. It's much better to rather have Access Points which are hard wired back to your router. If you choose WiFi access points which support PoE (power over ethernet), you only need run the network cable to them which provides the power too.
The problem with WiFi repeaters is that you need to keep in mind that (generally) the airwaves are a shared medium, this means every device on a WiFi network contends with each other to communicate, they can't "talk over" each other and have to take turns, it's really a lot like a lot of people in a room trying to have separate conversations at the same time (humans talking between each other is also wireless
).
Keeping with the people talking in a room analogy, if you want to communicate with someone a bit far away and decide to have someone between you act as a repeater, you can imagine how it really slows down the communication as each side has to take turns waiting while the person in the middle relays the communication, and this is why they tend to halve the speed and increase latency.
By comparison, when using an ethernet wire, each has its own completely private communication channel and doesn't generally have to contend with anyone else, furthermore they don't have interference issues and this means much less retries, resulting in much better lag/latency for computer games and online calls. At the end of the day all wires need to plug into a router and switch and while these do have a maximum speed, it's probably 10s or 100s of times faster than what's possible over WiFi, and again, also having minimal to no interference.
If you're in a single-story house with a normal pitched roof, running wires in your ceiling is not especially hard. Wires and the plugs for them are not particularly expensive, the cost of labour for someone to pull the wires would probably be more. Crimping the connectors is not hard (easy to understand from an online guide or YouTube video), but requires a crimping tool, which while aren't expensive, do have a cost too.
If you don't trust your ability to put the connectors on the wires or don't want to invest in tools, you can still save a lot of money by buying cable yourself, pulling them, and then calling in someone to just put the plugs on for you, maybe you have a friend (like me) who would do it for free.
In terms of cable, CAT5e is up to 1Gbps and is easily plenty enough for 5-10 years. If you want to future proof a bit, CAT6 costs only a little more and can do up to 10Gbps (but you'll need considerably more expensive network switches for these speeds). Another aspect on network cables is "copper coated aluminium" (CCA) vs "solid copper", CCA costs less but in my experience it's a gamble and you might regret the choice later, stick with solid copper if you can afford it.
