I live in a rural area and broadband on the phone lines is woefully inadequate. For over 4 years, I have been receiving broadband from a local company wirelessly at a speed of 32 MBPS both down and up.
Because the house is spread out, I have had a mesh wifi system (TP-Link Deco M5) for the past 2 years and that has worked well. The speed loss from unit to unit was ±10% so when the gateway was showing 32 MBPS, the first unit might be ± 27 and the third around 24. I regarded this as a normal rate of loss and didn’t think much of it.
On this system, the speed at the Gateway would decline in the evening and the ensuing loss in the satellite units also reduced pretty much on a pro rata basis. I attributed this loss of speed to more users online with limited bandwidth capability, again I regarded it as normal.
From the end of October, I converted to a Fibre to the Home connection and now receive 500 MBPS at the gateway, both down and up. However, the loss between the mesh wifi units is severe, about 85% to the first satellite and another 20% to the second. Even at the primary unit, I lose ± 15% on wifi over a wired connection.
This also seems to be even more pronounced in the evening when the loss is 90%. The evening loss cannot be attributed to more users as the gateway delivery is still 500 MBPS. It is brand new infrastructure and undoubtedly has substantial excess capacity
Now for the most part I can live with this. I seem to be able to stream (even UHD content) and in the abnormal event that I have to move big files, I can do so on a wired connection at the gateway.
The one exception and annoyance is downloading media content to my Sky Q box which cannot be done at the gateway (different floors) and moved due to the design of Sky Q. They still take a long time to download.
Can someone explain why there is such a more severe loss of speed (and further losses in the evening) on a superfast connection when compared to my experience on a slower connection and, more importantly, advise if there is a solution.
I have tried moving the Deco units around (the primary has to stay where it is as that is the source of the external connection) but moved them back as this seemed to be best. I have two other mesh wifi systems operating (Sonos and Sky Q) and have tested it with both of these shut down with no noticeable impact.
I have referred the matter to TP-Link who have done an online diagnosis and attribute the issue to anomalies in my house. This does not explain the discrepancy with my historical experience.