I'm having massive lag issues with video playback on my Atom netbook, it doesn't matter if its via Youtube or the HTPC in the lounge - there is constant pausing and despite us having a 200meg Virgin connection Youtube often drops to 480p and even then still struggles :-( The Virgin dual band router is in the room below the netbook and / but the house has has been wired with cat5e and there is a spare port in the room the netbook is mostly used. It seems my options are either use a range extender or connect an access point to one of the spare ports in same room as the netbook. In practice either or would be powered from the same socket / be the same distance from the netbook but the access point seems the better route as it will be communicating with the router / rest of the network over cat5e rather than the suspect Wi-FI - if the netbook is having issues then i'd guess a range extender in the same location would also?
Step one: verify that the problem is actually bandwidth related before spending any money, 'cos it's entirely possible your video playback issues are caused by something else. Head over to fast.com on your netbook and post the result.
Cheers for the replies, did wonder if the range extender would slow things down... Tried the fast.com link and get 43mb on the 2.4ghz network and 48mb on the 5ghz. Have noticed that the signal strength is showing very low for both bands. From memory the 5ghz has been as high as 76mb before. If its any help the Mrs also has a different make of netbook in the same room, that suffers from frequent disconnects. When playing video it can be fine for a good while and then go through a period of pausing / stuttering more than its actually playing - very frustrating. Its been going on for months now, tried different channels but no real difference - due to the room layout / silly thick Virgin cable its not practical to move the router, although its directly below the netbook anyway.
Then you've got enough bandwidth available to stream Ultra HD video without a single problem. Per Netflix, Ultra HD will stream at 25Mb/s - and even on 2.4GHz you've got nearly double that. In short: it ain't a bandwidth problem. This suggests it could, however, be an intermittent interference problem. Trouble is, this is hard to track down - you'd need to wait until it's happening then go back to fast.com and see if you're getting the same result.
Quick update... Forgot there was an old Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH kicking about in a cupboard - have set the Virgin router to "modem only" and placed the Buffalo upstairs in the room with the netbooks, whilst the overall wireless speed has dropped slightly the signal strength is much better and so far so good. Good job there was a couple of network points there, used one to connect the Virgin kit to the WAN port on the router and the other to connect one of the LAN ports to the switch downstairs, will have to connect the MediaPortal client in that room directly to the router but as they are next to each other its not a biggie.
I was about to suggest grabbing a better router. My TP-Link TL-WDR7400 (1750M) is loads better than anything an ISP has given me. Especially the 150N that Hyperoptics provides.
Another update... Had some random drop-outs using the 20/40mhz dynamic mode but since changing it to 20mhz only its been fine. Checked the speeds with the netbook downstairs / router up and they are about the same, the main thing again seem to be the much improved signal strength. Been streaming video for the last few hours and not a single issue - dare say it was either poor placement of the Virgin router, it being a pile of junk (as per silk186 lol), interference or a bit of all three.
If you want a really good access point pick up a Mikrotik hAP AC (not the lite). It’s around £100 notes but it’s a full router as well as 3x3 dual band 2.4 and 5ghz. My house is a pretty standard double fronted three bed two storey and placed right in the middle I get perfect coverage out to the whole place, rock solid performance and always max out the ISP link.
Cheers Zoon, looks like something will need sorting - tempted fate by saying all was ok as last night according to fast.com the speed was a little above dial up and felt every 80Kbps of it too lol. No idea whats causing it, signal strength was showing full and the connection didn't actually drop, just slowed to a crawl. The only thing I did notice was that whilst this slow down was happening the "site survey" option in the router only detected a couple of other networks when normally there are lots more - as soon as the slow down stopped the other networks showed up as normal?
I’d definitely recommend you juice up your router with the above and try to switch as many devices onto the _5G SSID it’ll provide on the 5ghz band. It made such a huge difference to me. I went from the router just randomly slowing down, stoning Wi-fi clients or kicking them off, to being rock solid and fast as anything.
Looks like a new 5g router is in order, will have to wait a bit as its getting to "that" time of year again... In the meantime i'm tempted to risk a fiver or so and pick up a 10/100 USB > Ethernet adapter, would get away with 7.5m of cable and already have USB extension to take some strain off the port.
