Router issue?

[elysestiner]

We've had a MI424WR actiontec router for about 3 years now with the 50/50 fios plan. Recently we had a snow storm that caused our power to go out for a few days and damaged the Fios lines into our house.

Verizon came out and repaired the lines. Since power has been restored, we're getting weird wifi behavior. Speedtests show that the download speed average is usually between 3-8 mb/s, while upload is consistently 35-40. Prior to the power outage, with the same number of devices connected and same physical location of the router, the download speeds were always 30+ mb/s pretty much everywhere in our small house.

I spent an hour on the phone with support. They had me change the channels, hard reset it, unplug it, etc, all to no avail. The speeds if I plug my laptop in to the router via ethernet are good, 60+ mb/s up/down. Basically, the only variable seems to have been the storm and power outage which is now causing the wifi download speed to suffer.

Could the router itself have been damaged in some way, or is it possibly just failing due to age? The thing that throws me is the fluctuating download speeds when testing it while the upload is consistently fast.

Any other steps to try? Of course, support just wanted to push me into a newer router purchase, but unless I'm sure  it's an issue with the router I don't really want to go that route.

[smith6612]

If the wired performance is fine, the problem is certainly centered around the Wi-Fi.

Since there was a power outage, it may be worth using a Wi-Fi Analyzer tool to figure out what channels other Wi-FI networks are using nearby. Many networks tend to default to Channel 6, and it's possible your router is just on a regularly congested channel. It's best to use Channels 1, 6, and 11. In some cases due to heavy congestion, you may need to use channels in between like channels 3 and 8. Channels 6 - 11 will be interfered with by microwave ovens, so do keep that in mind if you choose to use channel 8.

Otherwise, it is certainly possible the Wi-Fi component of the ActionTec has gone bad. Hardware has the tendency to work well constantly until powered down, then it's a gamble. You can always give another router a try if you have one sitting around, setting it up as an access point to see if performance improves.

What revision is the MI424WR you have? Rev. I?

[elysestiner]

The tech I had on the phone said it's a Rev. 2 router, for what that's worth. Annoyingly, I do have an older Netgear router I could try, but I can't find the power brick to hook it up.

[elysestiner · Accepted solution]

Disregard my initial question. I've narrowed down the issue to the wifi card in my laptop. I found an old USB wifi adapter and tested that, the laptop now gets normal speeds up/down. I think we did have a problem with the wifi router as speedtests on our phones and ipads showed poor results, but it looks like those are now normal and the only device having issues is my laptop when on the internal card rather than the USB adapter or hard wire.

It's a week-old Dell, so I guess they're shipping them with garbage adapters these days.. Fortunately, that's easily replaced.

[smith6612]

If the Dell has Bluetooth, try making sure that is disabled in the OS Settings. I can confirm that some of the combo cards I've seen, don't have adequite antenna design, and the Bluetooth ends up interfering with the Wi-Fi. I've seen the same behavior on some Android phones. Apple devices? Have yet to come across the same issue.

I've also had issues with the Intel Wireless-AC 3165 wireless chipset. Dell and many other computer brands have been putting those into laptops lately, and I've seen quite a mixed bag of performance out of those, while other wireless chipsets have no issues. Usually Intel Wireless cards are pretty solid, besides the occasional driver disabling issue which comes around. Qualcomm-Atheros and Broadcom are generally rock solid. Realtek can be a mixed bag - they have their good and bad chipsets, and usually problems boil down to bad antennas once again.