How do you tell whether slow internet is Wi-Fi or the ISP?

[Sam]

When a connection gets slow, I’m never sure whether the problem is the Wi-Fi in the house or the internet service coming in. A speed test over Wi-Fi can be affected by distance, walls, or other devices, so it doesn’t seem like a clear answer on its own.

What checks would you do first to narrow it down? Is comparing a wired test with Wi-Fi enough, or are there other simple signs worth looking at before contacting the provider?

 

[root]

Having worked at an ISP... definately wired testing is te best way to check your internet speeds as wifi in 99% of cases is the cause of slowdowns.

Just ensure if your speeds exceed 100meg, that you use a modern device with a gigabit port and that you have a gigabit ethernet cable - some very cheap cables skip some pairs and will only offer 10/100mbit spees.

 

[energie8]

Sometimes your ISP throttles without telling you as a warning not to download illegal content such as copyrighted movies.

There are other reasons of course.

To do a speed test, head THIS WAY.

 

[joshuascott]

A wired test is the first split, but also ping the router/gateway and a public IP from the same machine. If pings to the router are high or lossy on Wi-Fi but fine wired, the local wireless link is suspect; if the router looks clean but pings past it are bad, it’s likely upstream/ISP. Repeat at different times and note the link speed. That separates local Wi-Fi from ISP more clearly than one speed test.