Honestly, I’m furious. I pay for super-fast internet, and everything was perfect before. Now the Wi-Fi is barely moving. In the kitchen, it barely reaches 10 Mbps. Even near the access point, the connection is unstable. I haven’t changed anything in the settings, the router is still in place. Why is my WiFi so slow out of nowhere? Please advise me what to do!
Listen, 10 Mbps on a gigabit plan? That’s not just “slow internet”, it’s some kind of digital regression. At that speed, you’d only be downloading text messages from the 90s, not browsing the web. Let’s be honest, guessing why the router went on strike and coming up with all sorts of hypotheses would take forever. Use a Wi-Fi analyzer like NetSpot. Most likely, your neighbors bought some new, powerful equipment, and now their signal is simply drowning out yours. Check the channel chart, do a site survey: find dead zones where the signal completely breaks down. And if your router allows it, switch to DFS channels.
Check your cables. No, seriously. If the Ethernet cable between your modem and router is damaged or just old it can negotiate down to 100 Mbps or lower.
"I haven’t changed my plan or moved my furniture"… Doesn’t matter. Your devices changed. If you’ve got an old tablet or a cheap smart bulb from 2015 clinging to the 2.4GHz band, it can hog the “airtime” and drag the entire network’s efficiency into the dirt. Slow clients occupy the channel longer than fast ones to transmit the same amount of data. This creates a “queue”.
I agree with @Circuit_Breaker_4 it sounds like interference issues. Check which channels are less crowded and move on. Wi-Fi environments are fickle, and if your channel was clear yesterday, it could be completely overloaded today.
ISPs are notorious for oversubscribing nodes. If your neighbors all signed up for the same gigabit plan recently, the local hub might be choked during peak hours. Run a test at 4 AM — if it’s fast then, it’s a capacity issue at the street level, not your house.
Reboot. Not a “click the button in the app” reboot, but a “pull the power cord and go make a sandwich” reboot. Routers deal with memory leaks just like PCs. If it’s been on for six months straight, the RAM is probably screaming.
@nirvanachicks_0990 You guys are legends! I ran it through NetSpot and was stunned: the neighbor’s mesh network was brazenly hogging my 5GHz channel. I manually switched to a free DFS connection, and instantly got 800 Mbps. Thanks for the help!