Forum Discussion

Albanker's avatar
Albanker
Channel Surfer
3 years ago

Widely varying download speeds with different devices in home

First of all, I have a broadband service with continuous +200Mbps. I have a 2015 Roku player in kitchen and the speed connection varies from 28-49Mbps and I have jiggly pictures issues at times. . I have a streaming stick in family room far from wifi pod and it shows over 200Mbps. I have an ultra in living room that is hardwired to wifi pod and it shows 93 Mbps. 
Now if I move steaming stick to kitchen, speed goes up to over200Mbps. If I move streaming stick to  living room, speed picks up to 150Mbps. I maybe could understand If I need to replace the 2015 Roku box in the kitchen to increase speed , but I am mystified why streaming stick speed connection is better in Living room compared to hardwired fairly new Ultra ?? 
any suggestions appreciated

Al C

tv & player wifi

3 Replies

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  • makaiguy's avatar
    makaiguy
    Community Streaming Expert
    3 years ago

    To date, no Roku streamers have Gigabit Ethernet connections, they support the 10 and 100 MBps transmission standards over Ethernet.  From a practical standpoint, this limits you to about 90 Mbps or so over Ethernet. This is quite sufficient for network streaming where needed rates for compressed video seldom exceed 40 Mbps or so.

    The supported WiFi standards permit higher throughputs than this, which explains the difference you are seeing between WiFi and Ethernet performance.

    Some Roku devices support only the 2.4 GHz-only WiFi band (of recent devices this would be non-4K Roku Express models and Premier models).  The  max real world reception rates will top out at around 150 Mbps, but are usually quite a bit lower due to interference on this very crowded band that is used for many purposes other than WiFi, such as Bluetooth.  On the 2.4 GHz band I usually see reported rates on my Rokus of 35-40 Mbps.

    Most of today's Roku models have dual band WiFi circuitry that support both 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi bands.  The 5 GHz band is faster, is less widely used, and has less interference but it doesn't reach as far and has greater trouble penetrating walls and other obstructions.  Real world max reception can go as high as 450 Mbps.  My internet speed is around 250 Mbps, and I often see 5 GHz rates up to 120 Mbps reported on Rokus located a couple of rooms away from my router.

    • Albanker's avatar
      Albanker
      Channel Surfer
      3 years ago

      Great answer…..so it sounds like my solution to the picture quality problem on the TV that has the basic 2015 roku box is  to replace it with a current model streaming stick and get the dual bands. ( the nearest wi fi pod is only on the opposite side of a wall, only about 8 ft away)

      Thank you

      • makaiguy's avatar
        makaiguy
        Community Streaming Expert
        3 years ago

        It could be that the WiFi channel your router is using in the 2.4 GHz WiFi band is encountering interference. This could vary from time to time depending on activity from any nearby routers causing varying degrees of interference, and activity in other non-WiFi uses of that band. You might benefit from changing your router to use a different channel.

        When connecting in the 2.4 GHz WiFi band, all Rokus support channels 1-11. The preferred channels are 1, 6, and 11 as these do not overlap each other in frequency, so I'd start by trying these, although depending on which channels your neighbors are using you may find one of the other channels gives better results. You also may be able to reduce congestion by setting your router to use 20 MHz channel bandwidth rather than 40 to reduce channel overlap.

        I use a WiFi app on my phone that can show me the congestion on each WiFi channel, allowing me to choose a less congested one. I check this periodically as this situation can change when neighbors come and go and/or reconfigure their routers.