Got a new Belkin AC1200 (F9J1106 v1) modem router last week. It is dual-band, and I know what you are going to say about Belkin - it wasn't my first choice either, but it was free.
Set it up without a problem. It sits in the study at the corner of the house, ground floor, thickish walls, on a top shelf. Not ideal, I know, but with my much older modem/router I never got less than 30% signal anywhere in the house.
I put a few screenshots of my settings here:
I did some testing earlier today using a couple of Android apps to check signal strength and wifi speed around the house.
Wired speed seems to be fine - I get pretty much what my ISP claims that I should get.
However, wifi performance is really bad:
If I am within a few meters of the router, in the same room, I get:
- 72Mbps on the 2.4 GHz network
- 200-433Mbps on the 5G GHz network (seems to vary)
As soon as I am out of the room and the signal drops to below 50-60%, the 2.4 network drops to between 2 and 12Mbps, and the 5G network to slightly higher (around 20Mbps).
What I have tried so far:
- Installed the latest firmware.
- 5GHz channel was set to "Auto" and I left it as is.
- For the 2.4Ghz band I tried channels Auto, 1, 6 and 11 and a few others, but it made no difference.
- Rebooting the router.
- Hard resetting the router to factory settings and entered the settings again.
- Moved the router to the hallway - open space, and tried to check from around a corner.
All resulted in the same speed drop.
The house is pretty isolated, with no other wifi's visible, and all the channels are free from any interference.
Only other wireless devices around the house are:
- a cordless landline phone.
- a 3g booster thingy connected to the network switch as mobile signal here is very poor.
- a central heating wireless controller/thermostat (Honeywell 927 I believe) - located only 1m away from its receiver.
To be on the safe side I turned them all off, but it made no difference.
My questions are:
- I believe that theoretically I should get somewhere close to 300Mbps using the 2.4Ghz band, and close to 867Mbp using the 5Ghz when standing close to the router. Why don't I get anywhere near these values? Why never more than 72Mbps on the 2.4?
- Do you think the router is faulty?
- Anything that I missed?
Any idea how to resolve this?
Many thanks in advance.
J.