Wired
 

Even with Centric 1Gb speeds, the wireless connection seems to cap out at around 200-250 when I run their speed test from my PC which is connected via Wi-Fi. In the connection properties it says the "link speed" is 1.2G. Interestingly from my cell phone connected wirelessly, it tests out at just barely short of 1Gb. I assumed it had something to do with the pre-cast concrete walls between the router and the room my desktop is in, so I installed a Netgear Mesh Extender that I had, which doesn't seem to improve the speeds.

I thought I'd use the wired network, but it appears to be stupidly installed in that each cable run terminates in the garage enclosure where the sprinkler box is located, along with all the hard coax cable lines for TVs in the house. Are we supposed to put a network switch in something as unsecured as a garage that is also, IMO, too hot of an environment for electronics (even a switch)? I don't understand why they didn't terminate the runs above the kitchen cabinets where they put the modem and router. Thoughts/fixes?

The PC may be limited by its processor, the wifi hardware, or the negotiated connection parameters. There is a way to find the negotiated connection speed but I don't recall now how to do it. I'll update this when I find it.

Make sure the cell phone is using the wifi network and not the cell network. If the cell phone is significantly newer than the PC then that could explain why the cell phone is faster.

Can't you connect one of the hard COAX cables in the sprinkler box to a cable that goes to a TV location? Or, if the TVs are already connected, you could add a splitter to the COAX TV cable at the TV location. Or, maybe I don't understand your post.

Centric? Where do you live? Our 1GB Xfinity speed does vary at times. It runs 400 to 800 and I have never seen a 1GB speed. Our Arris modem is about 6 years old so maybe a new modem would show me more consistently faster speeds.

In our home my cable modem is installed above my refrigerator. I have CAT6 cable from their to the distribution panel in the garage where the rest of CAT6 cables terminate. I have a switch installed there for all those other cables to connect to. Been out there for 4 years without any issues of heat.

As for the Wi-Fi as stated your connection speed is something that will be dictated not by your speed from your ISP but by a negotiation between your device and the Wi-Fi Access Point, usually integrated into the router. The negotiation will like connected at the high speed available by device with the lower maximum speed. Example is a brand new Wi-Fi AP that could connect at 1G but your laptop is 3 years old, may only connect at 200m, or vice versa.... Think of it like plumbing...

Not sure I understand the situation accurately, being more of a visual person, but I would consider rewiring the house for best results.

I had a second wiring closet installed in the garage, and the outside wire comes into the garage into a cable modem, from there it goes to a separate router capable of Network Address Translation (NAT), and then to a switch for each ethernet cable run. . . The router only handles two house ethernet ports, and I have 9 ethernet outlets, one at each cable outlet, plus a ceiling overhead wifi access point, so that's why i had to add a switch. . there were no 8-9 port routers at any reasonable price point 5 years ago. . today, there is.. .

all equipment is rated at 1 GB speeds, so that there are not physical speed reductions. There have been no problems with temperature so far, and speeds are acceptable, based upon time of day usage. .

personally, i would use PoE wireless access points and install them on the ceiling, from a switch where the fiber connection is made. . and then hard wire connections to the TV locations for hard wired speed for TVs

but this is just my limited knowledge of your house and my preference for hard wire over wifi for security reasons

You might get lucky if the CAT5 cables happen to be routed close to the kitchen area. I am guessing these could be cut near the low voltage box in the garage and pulled back to the kitchen area and then terminated in a new box in the kitchen area. Our house (2013 vintage gardenia) is wired this way. If you are not comfortable doing this wiring, there are a few people on this site that should be able to help, in the cooler weather....

I have the Xfinity Internet service that is rated up to 1.2GB. It is called their "Gigabit" service. I usually get about 900mbps on my ethernet hard wired desktop. I would suggest that you check the specs on your modem because you may not be taking full advantage of the Xfinity service you are paying for. I rent the modem from Xfinity and they did replace the modem when I upgraded the speed.

The short answer is Yes, you are supposed to put a switch in the LVP in your garage if you want to use the pre-run ethernet wiring. You can either have Centric do it, or DIY. I believe they'll sell you a 5-port switch installed for $150 (which you can buy online for less than $30 or something), but the good thing about this is that for that $150 switch, they will include termination of all your ethernet cables running into the jacks in your house. They will also test the connections for free. Or you can do all this yourself for less money.

I get 900+ Mb/s up and down on my hardwired PC.

My cable sticks up through a hole in the floor in my office (what would be the guest bedroom if we were normal people) and is threaded under the particle board (manufactured home). My modem and router sit on a bookshelf next to my computer, and all three are connected physically to each other. Our two TVs are wifi connected to the router, as is our printer and my tablet. We have no buffering problems. I don't know what the speed is on the other devices because it doesn't matter what it is. What matters is that it all works seamlessly. The computer speed is 520.58 download, 42.02 upload, and pings at 17ms to Bonita Springs, according to speedtest.net. We have a 600mbp xfinity internet plan and subscribe to YouTubeTV for hubby's TV-watching pleasure. I use netflix and amazon prime to watch movies and their own branded content on the computer. My modem and router are both owned outright by me, and I've had them for the six-plus years we've been living here.

VPN or DNS
 

Does your VPN or DNS setting have anything to do with it?

Internet speeds in detail
 

Internet speed is determined by the slowest part of the path.
Connection to the house is the responsibility of the Internet Service Provider(ISP).
Modem at that point can limit speed. Having dealt with Comcast, rental modems are not generally replaced when newer, better ones come out. Being technically oriented, I buy my own.
From modem signal travels by wired connection to WIFI router or direct wired connection.
WIFI speeds depend on the speed of your router AND the speed of the WIFI built into the end devices.
WIFI routers should be located high and in a location where penetration through walls is nearly straight on. Signal is straight line meaning, the more wall/Ceiling material passed through, the more degraded(slower) the signal.
WIFI routers with multiple visible antennas provide stronger signals than those with "built in" antennas.
Most modern routers offer multiple bands. If you use the lower 2.2GHz band, you generally are very limited in top speed regardless of the speed provided by your ISP. The drawback of the higher frequency bands(5GHz etc) is that they degrade more with distance and wall penetration.
To get true 1GHz speeds, devices must use the high frequency bands.
If your devices can not run on these bands, then buying 1GHz from the ISP is a waste of money since you can not achieve those speeds through the low frequency WIFI band. This is primarily a problem for older devices.

Finally, running physical wires has its drawbacks. Like everything else in computers, wiring becomes obsolete with time. Old wiring in walls becomes slower than an up to date wireless connection. Other than manufactured housing areas, running new wiring in Villages homes is difficult. If building new, make sure wiring is to the latest, more expensive standard(Cat 6 currently) as it will take longer to become obsolete. Once it is obsolete, you need to either run a dedicated wire for your wireless router or put your router in the garage near the ISP incoming modem(not ideal from for wireless signal strength in house).

getting gigabit speeds on your computer requires the latest equipment. I just replaced my computer and my speed was three times faster. My new PC has WIFI 6. WIFI 6E would increase it a little more and the recent WIFI 7 should get me to the gigabit speeds. In all reality, very few people need over 300mb.

As mentioned, you need to add a switch in the low voltage cabinet in the garage to connect the ethernet cables around the house.

First, check to see if you have an ethernet jack in the room where your desktop is located. If so, call me and I can help you install the switch and get everything running. I've done a couple in your area for other Villagers. If you don't have an ethernet jack in the room with the desktop then you can have an electrician run a new cable or you can upgrade your wifi with your own system. Either way I can help you. John 914-419-9398

If you are getting a good service, then why pay for a higher speed? I pay for 100Gig from Xfinity and run over a dozen devices without a problem.

I had to hard wire to all rooms . Wireless just never worked good. I'm in Duval here in The Villages Now I get 900 to 950 mbps download speed all the time now and 40 upload speed . I fought with the cable company for years getting the speeds and speeches from customer service on the phone. Not a problem anymore. I'm still with xfinity.

I have a lot of experience with wifi. At the end of the day, if your wifi is not installed in the proper place in your home it will never work properly. So, placement, not brand or service provider is what's important. Typically, a high, central location is best. Unfortunately, in our Village's homes this is usually on top of the kitchen cabinets. This is why Centric installs their router in this location when a new home is built.

As most know, I've helped many here in the Villages get installed with Quantum fiber and once you find the location that works, it works 100% of the time on all installations.

As far as wiring, sure direct ethernet is best but often these days, most have wireless computers and wireless streaming devices. The only time I'll have a room wired is when someone has a desktop computer near an ethernet jack.

If anyone needs some help, please reach out to me. This seems like a hard problem to solve but it's not.

I've heard this issue but can't confirm this solution but someone way back said to call Centric and make sure the power level on your wifi router is set as high as possible. A Villager once discovered that his wifi router was not at full power becasue Centric was setting them that way to avoid wifi interference between homes. Again, I can't confirm this but that's what I was told and it can't hurt to call them and find out.

Either way, you will never get link speeds wirelessly unless you are very close to your wifi regardless what anyone tells you. Also, if you have an older device, it will never run at 1Gbs, so the device will also play a role in the speed you actually get.

Also, I haven't see the post in this thread yet, but someone will eventually comment that you only need 100Mbs speeds anyway but that depends on how you are using your internet.

What you are describing is the way a home should be set up but very few here in the Villages from my experience, have a set up like that.

What I'm finding is a good Wifi7 wifi device placed on top of the kitchen cabinets works well in every Villages home, even a premier home, that I've been in. Some homes have an odd layout that may require an additional extender or node but that's about it. The reason why this works is because most are streaming and using a wireless laptop or tablet so as long as they are getting reasonable speed all over the home, it's fine. Very few are looking for or need full speed at all points in the home.

Using a VPN *could* affect speed. With a VPN you don't connect directly to the site you are trying to reach. Instead, you encrypt your traffic and send it to the VPN service where it is decrypted and sent to the site. A good VPN service should be very fast but if it isn't then it would show in the speedtest.

Easy enough to check - simply disable the VPN and run the speedtest to see if it makes a difference.

Just because you have a Gig internet connection, that means nothing to your internal lan. No ISP knows how to setup an internal lan, they put 1 router somewhere in your house and leave. So much more to it. 1 router won’t cut it, I have 4 mesh routers inside my house and 1 router in my garage, most wired and a couple using the proprietary 2.5G backhaul to communicate between routers. I can go anywhere in and outside of my house and get over 800Mb on wifi.
Don’t fall for the cheap/worthless wap’s, or extenders that plug into an electrical outlet, they don’t work. Do it right, spend a few bucks and you won’t have to worry about it for a long time.
If you get a mesh network, get at a minimum the 6e or 7, don’t get anything older.
Also, you know how to tell when your isp or network guy doesn’t know what they are doing? How many ssid’s (wifi names) do you have? If it’s more than 1, you hired the wrong people to touch your network. I’ve had the same ssid for decades and will have it for the foreseeable future.

Absolute statements like that are almost always wrong.

As I have written many times in answer to this statement, I have one router in my home and enjoy 250Mbps - 300Mbps throughout my house including my garage.

YMMV of course and in some cases a single router may not provide the range or the speed that you desire. If you're in one of those cases then sure, spend the time and money to build a complex network and accept the maintenance cost that comes along with it.

*IF* the OP's issue has to do with the wifi strength at his computer then more hardware might be necessary. However, if his PC is negotiating 1.2G and his phone is downloading at 1G then the wifi just might not be the problem.

Me too. I have always used just one router, even in the 3-level house I had in Virginia.

Technically you are right but very few here in the Villages will spend the money to set up an internal network like that because all they care about is, are they getting reasonable wifi speed where they need it in their house. The ISP solutions do just that when they are installed properly.

Except for one person, the only Villager's whom I've seen set up a network like that are people in Premier or higher-end homes where they tend to have the funds to hire a professional to install such a system. I'm sure there are may individuals who will go out and install an Orbi or TP link or Ubiquity solution but I'll bet it's a minority.

As far as bandwidth is concerned and I'm sure you know this, if you have fiber you have the full bandwidth available to you both upload and download, unlike cable. But as you said, unless you have a well layed out internal network, you won't be getting full speed everywhere in your home via wifi and most here don't need or care about that.

I recently had a Villager call me. She had Quantum fiber a couple of years ago and could never get it to work properly so she went back to cable. She called me because her cable bill was out of control and needed help. I signed her up, wired up the rj45 jack in the kitchen and in her office, got the Quantum tech to install the Wifi7 device over the kitchen cabinets and she has good wifi coverage all over her house and lanai, problem solved. Price locked in at $50/month, no taxes, no fees, done.

Jrref - it’s not that much money. I think I got my buddy a 5 pack of the latest mesh network routers for around $300. I used a 5 year old router in my garage to extend my wifi into the garage.

If you use just wifi to connect all your TVs, ecobee thermostats, and pretty much all your home devices, you are using the 2.4ghz band which has terrible speeds and latencies. 1 of the reasons I use this many routers is because I come out of the router rj45 ports into my TVs/dvd/streamers and all these devices are using 1G speeds, not the slow 2.4gjz band, huge difference in speed and latency. The other reason I use so many routers is I have fully automated my house and control it from anywhere in the world. I stream music to all my home stereos plus I stream to all my cars anywhere in the country. Plus, outside cameras require so much bandwidth to work right.

I agree, just relaying what I tend to see here in the Villages. Very few want to spend any money. All they want is Quantum to come in, install the system and start using it. Many have no technical knowledge and have no one to call. This is where I come in. So far, I've not signed-up a home where the Quantum fiber wifi7 device didn't work but again typically I see close to full speed in about 50% of the home and the rest enough speed to stream or use their tablets, etc..

In my house, I have an Orbi 980, 3 node system with wired backhaul on one node, every RJ45 jack is wired back to the low voltage cabinet and to my main Orbi router eventhough I'm only using one line to my office and I get almost 100% speed to over 80% of my house. Way more than enough for what I'm actually using eventhough my wife and I are computer geeks. Using an internal speed test server I'm able to get almost 8GBs wired and 5Gbs wireless max speeds with this system. Never going to use that much bandwidth but I wanted to know what the system was capabile of.

WiFi can connect over 2.4GHz or 5GHz. Used to be those SSIDs were different names, so it was easy to know how you were connected.

Connecting to a 5GHz can give you up to around 1300Mbps while 2.4GHz max is anywhere from 100-600Mbps.

2.4 goes farther, through walls better, whereas 5 does not.

With modern equipment it negotiates the best frequency to get you the best speed.

As an aside, what are you all doing that you require a gigabit connectivity?

the fastedt connection you will get is a wired connection from your pc to your router wth a cat 5 or 6 ethernet cable. only that will tell you what bandwith you are getting from your isp