Zen wifi speeds and Routers

I am having some problems with my Zen wifi speeds.
I have resorted to routing cat 5e round my house for the main computers but the wifi is still poor. Speeds are terribly inconsistent. I have been on at Zen for weeks with 10 engineer visits and a whole new router. I am using the provided Fritzbox 7530 and a provided fritzbox range extender.
Speeds jump about, between 70 to 300 mbps. Even stood right next to the router. The TV is 6 ft from the router and regularly stutters.
yesterday I bit the bullet and setup a new TP link AX1800. After a lot of setup hassle. Was really fiddly to get the settings right, the wired ethernet is running nicely. However, the wifi speeds are even worse, between 70 and 100 right next to router. We are now at the stage of moving providers. Can anyone offer any help?

How is changing providers going to help. This is a wi-fi problem as you have demonstrated by using a third party router which still gives you poor wi-fi speeds. Nothing to do with Zen as you are not using their supplied Fritzbox and the wired speeds are good.

You need to look at how your wireless devices are connecting to the network to find out if that is restricting the speed. The operating mode of the wi-fi connection is critical and can have a large impact on your speed.

I use Acrylic Wifi on my Windows laptop to display all the local Wifi networks and decide which might be the best channels to use. There a similar products that run on mobile phones.

For wifi I use old routers with DHCP disabled as wifi access points.

I would agree, its definitely a settings issue. Which is why i am asking for help . . .

This is one of the big differences between consumer grade wifi and something more suitable for SOHO or enterprise level.
Unifi for example will check on the RF spectrum and use less congested channels.
It is more expensive and difficult to setup initially but I only have 2 APs (AC pro) to cover the whole house and garden and they just work. I run up a VM with the Unifi software occasionally to check for updates otherwise they just continue to work flawlessly.

You can of course also do this manually.

Edited by smouty (Tue 11-Jul-23 10:51:41)

One thing that may be worth trying if you haven't already is to go into the Fritz wi-fi settings and give the 2.4GHz network a different name to the 5GHz one. Maybe append _2.4GHz to end of the SSID for the 2.4GHz network.

Before I did this, I found my devices would switch between the two and often be on the slower, congested 2.4Ghz network and give rubbish speeds.

Giving them different names allows you to control which you connect to.

Also, my Fritzbox likes to use high-numbered 5GHz channels (100+) as they are empty rather than the regular 36-48. I manually set it to one of the lower ones for better coverage and because a TP-Link wi-fi bridge I use can't even see 100+ (a bug), However, often when the Fritz was rebooted it would jump back up 100+ again even though the settings said it was set manually to something else! (A bug). Very annoying and I cured it in the end by putting OpenWRT on my Fritz but that's another story!

Anyway, as a test, rename or disable the 2.4GHz network and set the 5GHz network to a channel in the 36-48 range if it has defaulted to 100+, then do some more speed tests.

In reply to a post by Glenn2:

Also, my Fritzbox likes to use high-numbered 5GHz channels (100+) as they are empty rather than the regular 36-48. I manually set it to one of the lower ones for better coverage and because a TP-Link wi-fi bridge I use can't even see 100+ (a bug),

It might not be a bug, TP-Link may have decided not to support the DFS channels because there are some considerations to take into account regarding their use.

Actually it does connect to 100+, but what it won't do is re-connect after either it or the Fritz is power-cycled. It goes deaf! But I take your point.

In my experience of different routers, FritzBox routers have pretty bad range in comparison to other routers. In order to get a decent throughput I have had to mesh several together.

In reply to a post by boxst:

In my experience of different routers, FritzBox routers have pretty bad range in comparison to other routers. In order to get a decent throughput I have had to mesh several together.

I would second that.

That said; these days, we have very few items on wifi, (just phones and tablets), as even the best wifi can vary.

As someone suggested earlier in the thread separating the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz may be worth doing as is the suggestion to choose your own wifi channels.

If the eithernet speed is OK, the wifi speed has nothing to do with Zen other than the fact that their supplied Fritzbox 7530 router has poor wifi range. - (We also found that the model up from that, (ie. the Fritzbox 7590), also had poor wifi range).

Although I do quite like the Fritzbox Routers the wifi range was always very poor, (we too had to mesh together six fritzbox devices to cover the house when a router with better wifi range, (eg.an Asus RT AX88U), did the whole house itself.