Our WiFi disintegrated, we didn't notice.

If we have learned one thing during this whole virus mess it is that a computer that responds faster and works quicker makes us happier, puts us in a better frame of mind, and probably even lowers our blood pressure. We got ourselves some new computer junk (as opposed to the junk from 1, 2, 3, etc. years ago) and were writing a report to friends and family. Then it dawned on us, we're generally all in the same boat with this stuff. Maybe someone else might be interested. So here's our story.

It was under the Christmas tree, and today it’s up and running. Our new modem and router and tech stuff is making our WiFi connection faster than we’ve ever had it before - one room away from the router, we get 704 megabits / sec downloads on WiFi.

Over the past 20 months our fancy home WiFi mesh system had degraded in power / some mesh units had died / the general WiFi noise level and WiFi load demand (sure, get another Ring or Blink camera or Alexa) had increased markedly. Our speeds and range really suffered. We had not noticed it much. How come?

Early on we came to the conclusion that wired ethernet was the secure and fast way to go at home. Newton and Coulomb were right, the inverse square law is still in force, the nature of things, the basis of phyics still hold true. Cell and WiFi are not the ultimate answer. Our wired machines still give us 95% of their initial speed, but the radio broadcast stuff never did. We had run ethernet to three other rooms for the use of desk / lap top computers and VOIP phones. Everything was fine. Then the radio problem caught up with us. Cell phones using WiFi started dropping calls and we noticed streaming movies in the backyard no longer worked. At Christmas with a lot of people in the house, each carrying phones, tablets, laptops, the added demands on the old WiFi system basically crashed it. We fixed that today.

Here’s what we found after installing our new Xmas stuff today -
Download Speeds Comcast Xfinity 1 Gig Service in Germantown:

Modem —> Computer One via Ethernet = 960Mbps setup test.

Modem —> Router —> Computer via Ethernet = 945Mbps same room
Modem —> Router —> Phone via WiFi = 789Mbps same room

Modem —> Router —> Computer via Ethernet = 943Mbps one room away
Modem —> Router —> Phone via WiFi = 704Mbps one room away

Modem —> Router —> Computer via Ethernet = 937Mbps upstairs bedroom 1
Modem —> Router —> Phone via WiFi = 575Mbps upstairs bedroom 1

Modem —> Router —> Computer via Ethernet = 937Mbps upstairs guest room
Modem —> Router —> Phone via WiFi = 324Mbps upstairs guest room

Modem —> Router —> Computer via Ethernet = 939Mbps upstairs above garage
Modem —> Router —> Phone via WiFi = 84Mbps upstairs above garage

Test Parameters: Ookla Speed test for measurement standard to test servers - Memphis and NESPARC. Wifi measured by same iPhone 13 with WiFi 6 spec to Orbi router / Satellite at WiFi 6 spec (4200AX speed), and Arris S33 modem. The LAN is all gigabit standard, the ethernet is Cat 6 minimum, the switches are all Netgear gigabit. Some of the above ethernet measurements were obtained by walking a 50 foot cable into the room to test vs. WiFi. We expect an installed cable would yield similar results. The tests were run from Xfinity to Memphis per the image attached. Some testing results / measurements will vary, but it makes the race more interesting if everyone is playing from more-or-less the same deck of cards. Our phone has WiFi 6, we have one laptop with WiFi 6 - all our other devices are older and therefore slower. Please understand that for our test the phone on WiFi is the exact equivalent of a laptop on the same level of WiFi standard. We understand wall structure/material and distance will vary from house to house, but believe our result roughly illustrates the inverse square law as it applies to energy or force radiating out in spherical fashion as opposed to directed / vectored energy typified by wired transmission.



Your system could be faster than ours - our modem has a 2.5Gbps output and some routers will negotiate connections at > 1Gbps input speeds. Our AX4200 rated unit will not. The WiFi could run faster with WiFi 6E (which has 1200MHz of 6GHz spectrum to run either 14 or 7 additional channels). Then again, a WiFi 6 router could run wired backhaul to obviate the 6E — this is the stuff contests are made of. With Comcast Xfinity running at 1.25ish Gbps and some computers equipped with 10Gbps LAN connections it is likely someone in Germantown could get web browsing or game play better than 1Gbps. And we do not know what speeds the fiber optic sections of Germantown can muster. More power to you if you’re running faster than we are! Tell us about it!

Are we happy? Well, we’ve omitted one critical point — Upload Speeds. We produce stuff in our Germantown home office/classrooms, still. The stuff can get large. Uploading 20 or 30 megabytes of .pdf files, or 1 or 2 gigabytes of multi-media files takes a very long time at 40 to 45 Mbps Xfinity upload speeds. Holding a number of Zoom sessions in various rooms of the house becomes a problem with the limited upload speeds. Working with a 500 down / 500 up fiber system as we have in one of our offices elsewhere is a far better experience (they have this stuff in parts of East Memphis and Collierville, where apparently the high tech people live).

Newton and Coulomb and Bernoulli and Volta and others told us, about 3 centuries ago, of the advantages of using a wire, some shielded copper, or a Cat 6 Ethernet link instead of a WiFi or Cell Phone broadcast for our internet efforts. But we humans are a stubborn lot who often ignore their advice in favor of convenience.

Still we intend to tweek the QoS settings on our router to limit, as much as possible, the power output and heat generation of the WiFi in hopes it will lengthen the life span of our wireless transceivers.

Now our internet service travels much of its route through strands of glass as data carried by light beams. It's called fiber optics. It is extremely reliable, but even this device is sometimes accidentally cut, outside light leaks in, or the equipment in the middle - where photons are translated into electrons - fails for a variety of reasons. Then we have no internet service wired into our houses or offices, and we are forced to once again make rude gestures toward Newton, Coulomb, et all and rely upon radio waves. This happened to us very recently. To read about what we did to restore our service long before any service people could come, click here. A phone tether Whether it's for one computer, one monitor, or an entire network, it is possible for a cell phone to give you emergency internet service.

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