Internet Speeds

[BobTheHawkHater]

I strongly suggest installing a mesh system. You will have fall off from point to point but it will perform much better than what you are currently experiencing.

One thing to think about with mesh systems is that the repeating from one node to the other is also via wireless, so you may encounter roughly the same issues with a single node vs multiple mesh nodes if the nodes don't have good communication with each other.

I have an 8 year old ASUS router in my basement. WiFi was always crappy in places upstairs. I decided to switch to a $300 2-node eero mesh system. I tried placing the eero nodes in about 10 different locations relative to each other and could never get the WiFi speeds I was looking for.

I ended up returning the eeros and purchased a 2nd identical 8 yr old ASUS router for about $30 on eBay. I wired the two routers together via a 100 foot ethernet cable (drilled a hole out my basement wall, wrapped the cable around the outside walls of my house by just tucking it under the siding, drilled a hole in my upstairs sun room and installed an ethernet jack in the wall) and enabled the built-in mesh feature. I'm super happy with the results - my WiFi speeds are very good throughout the entire house now.

 

[ghyland7]

If you want an easy (and relatively inexpensive) mesh system, the google home system works well. Eero is pretty similar. There are more expensive and customizable products.

However, you really will want to have them wired, if at all possible. Depending on when your home was built, there’s a decent chance that you may have cat5 in your walls already; that standard is actually from the 90s, and it can (probably) handle 1g. If you have phone jacks in your walls, there’s a decent chance it’s cat5 just using half the wire pairs. Re-terminating the ends is relatively easy and provides a hard connection which you can then plug your mesh system into.

 

[Gunnerclone]

In this day and age you should be getting closish (like in the 900-940 range) to the advertised speeds even on wifi.

 

[AgronAlum]

Do other phones, and other wifi devices (laptops, etc) get similar speeds? There's a whole lot of additional variables involved with wifi connectivity, from the antenna capabilities (on BOTH sides of the connection), interference, channel width, etc.

Speaking of interference, have you scanned channels to check for what else is out there? If you pick an unfortunate channel you'll get horrible throughput. It's like a CB radio in that only 1 device can talk at a time. If you have great connection strength but are on a crowded channel you'll still never get to move much data. This would also apply to having your own access points on different channels so that they don't interfere with each other, too, in addition to avoiding conflict with your neighbors.

Honestly don't know. Basically everything we have is a wireless device (phones, ipads, TVs, thermostat, ring, xbox, etc.) I usually only check if we have a TV acting up. I'll see if I can dig into the Eero to see about the channels. I haven't really touched anything since Metronet set everything up.

I strongly suggest installing a mesh system. You will have fall off from point to point but it will perform much better than what you are currently experiencing.

I believe that's what we have. It's provided by Metronet but the two access points are Eero Pro 6E devices. Coverage seems to be ok throughout the house because the speed doesn't really change from room to room.

 

[AgronAlum]

Have you tried plugging in? The number you pay for is wired not wifi. I've gotten over 900 MB fairly consistently plugged I'm with T Mobile. Usually 150 to 300 on wifi

I suppose I can get our dinosaur of a laptop out and hardwire it. It only gets turned on once a month for budgeting and can barely run Excel.

I have tried running the speed test through the Eero a couple times but it seemed fishy that I was always getting exactly 1 gig on a device proved by Metronet.

 

[cyfan92]

Google Fiber at work - 900 up and down and we pay for 1000 (Very happy)

Mediacom at home - pay for 200 and get between 50-250 down and 20 up...

 

[Gunnerclone]

Google Fiber at work - 900 up and down and we pay for 1000 (Very happy)

Mediacom at home - pay for 200 and get between 50-250 down and 20 up...

Google Fiber and ATT are the two services I’ve used that get the closest to the advertised speeds.

Mediacom Cable - OK but biggest variances
Centurylink - LOL

 

[AgronAlum]

Anyone using T Mobile home internet? One of their sales people put a 20% friends and family code on our account when we switched the phones over. The internet would be about half of what we’re paying Metronet.

 

[TitanClone]

Anyone using T Mobile home internet? One of their sales people put a 20% friends and family code on our account when we switched the phones over. The internet would be about half of what we’re paying Metronet.

I do. Works great in WDM. No cost to cancel either so worth a try.

 

[CYdTracked]

We have CenturyLink 1gb fiber. A lot of people like to complain about CL but they've been pretty solid for us. Yeah their customer service sucks, but not much worse than the other options imo.

We pay $65 with "price for life", so likely will never change unless they decide to end that. Use the Google mesh Wi-Fi with 1 access point for our 2 story house.


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I had CL at 2 different houses and it was just fine for me. They don't have fiber in my neighborhood so when Metronet came in I had to switch. Felt bad when I called to cancel CL because I've never had an issue with their service and they tried to retain me but I basically told them if they ever have fiber in my neighborhood I would gladly give them a chance to beat Metronet's price.

I think the main issues people have with CL and Mediacom is mostly a neighborhood isolated thing. Some of these areas in town are in serious needs of upgrades to their equipment and unless they have enough people constantly report issues that gets a tech out to dig into them more they don't always proactively upgrade the infrastructure. When we sent everyone to work from home during Covid some of these underlying issues probably got magnified with more bandwidth usage. I dealt with 1 guy that was in denial that his Mediacom service was the issue why his work VPN connection was so slow and dropped. I could see the latency when I pinged his device and see it time out or have terrible response times. Replaced it twice to prove a point as the first replacement he tried to tell me "they must have sent me a lemon." It was doing the same thing as his last device, the 3rd one not surprisingly had the same problem. "I've already had Mediacom out, they say nothing is wrong and my personal devices aren't dropping like my work device does." Well I told him he better get Mediacom to come back out or figure out if it's something in his home causing the issue. A few days later he tells me Mediacom sent a different tech out and he found some faulty hardware in the box down the street that had not been touched in years. Once they fixed that he said even his home devices seemed to have faster speed too.

I see people complain about both ISPs and my guess is the ones that have problems all the time probably live somewhere that needs some attention by the ISP. With new fiber companies coming into the market it may finally force them to fix some of the problematic neighborhoods as they'll keep losing customers if they don't.

 

[simply1]

Your phone can't and does not need to do 1G. We have 1G up and down and the only way I can get that is multiple devices downloading at once. On my phone right now I get about 300M.

Phones can and certainly do hit that speed.

 

[Turn2]

I have Metronet 500 up/down. Here's the difference between running a test at the router with the Eero app and checking the wi-fi in a room a floor above the router. YMMV.

 

[BryceC]

My metronet has been absolute cheeks the last few weeks. If anybody has a referral code for centurylink I’ll use it when I sign up again

 

[twentywest]

I wouldn't recommend Metronet to anyone. They've gone very cheap on their network equipment in order to grow very quickly and I've seen nothing but issues with them. I deal with many companies who use them as their business internet and it's sketchy at best.

 

[khardbored]

Came here because metronet just went down ... Although that is rare.

I almost never get more than 500 up or down and paid for 1,000. Even when wired. (Metronet)

Feel like I'm getting ripped off ...

 

[BryceC]

Came here because metronet just went down ... Although that is rare.

I almost never get more than 500 up or down and paid for 1,000. Even when wired. (Metronet)

Feel like I'm getting ripped off ...

Ours has been incredibly spotty over the last month. Constant disconnects, etc. don’t work from home much anymore but makes it unusable.

 

[Mr Janny]

We've had Metronet in Ames for 4 years now. It's been incredibly reliable for us. The current outage is probably the 2nd longest we've experienced since we've had it. Super frustrating today, though.

 

[cycloner29]

They did a super great job of burying my cable. Right til they got to my fence. 3’ of cable exposed to the main pole. Dang rabbit started gnawing on it. This was on a Friday at 2 pm when it went out.

 

[Cyientist]

We’ve had metronet for 3 or 4 years and this is the first actual outage. Anyone know what’s going on?

 

[Turn2]

I thought they’d announced some planned maintenance outages, but this is not it.