At home, my speed tests are excellent — it delivers almost everything I pay for. But when I try to watch heavy remixes from my NAS on the TV in the living room, it starts to slow down, especially during fast-paced scenes with high bitrates.
The most annoying thing is that a regular speed test paints a pretty picture, and the numbers should be flying. But the traffic is local: the NAS is right there, and the TV is on Wi-Fi.
How can I tell if it’s the Wi-Fi that’s failing or the TV itself (or maybe the app) that’s slowing down? Where would you start checking
Well first, stop using internet speed tests for local streaming problems.
I’d immediately look at the local network. NetSpot with active scanning via the iperf3 server is perfect here. The point is to test your Wi-Fi specifically, not some random internet server. If measurements directly on the TV show sluggish speed or wildly fluctuating ping to the local network, that’s it, living proof that the wireless channel is to blame.
Is it possible to connect the TV via a wired connection, even for one evening, to finally confirm that the Wi-Fi is the issue?
@Altruistic_Stock_508 Yeah, I can probably drag a cable over there just to test it. Annoying, but doable. If it plays clean over Ethernet, then at least I’ll know I’m not chasing the wrong thing.