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How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

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Re: How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

#51

Post by moron4hire »

ghouse wrote: post #5
moron4hire wrote: post #3

So this works because you have neighbors who are also on Comcast and you can leach bandwidth from them?

It works because he has access to two separate networks and can load balance between the two. His neighbors could be using any ISP. So long as his router can also connect to their network, he can load balance between their wireless network and his wired network. If his router had three radios, he could load balance between to upstream wireless networks and his own downstream network.

My point was, in this setup, if his neighbor was not a Comcast customer, then he would not have any legitimate authorization to connect to the xfinitywifi network through his neighbor's router.

I don't have a lot of confidence in Comcast to have set it up so that connections to the xfinitywifi network do not impact the regular, private usage. It's just not in that company's style to think proactively and conscientiously about its customers.

Re: How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

#52

Post by apenwarr »

andrewhillman wrote: post #47

I just had comcast to my home last week. I pay for 120 mbps but when connected via cat 5 it only reached 90 max mbps which would fine considering when using a wifi router it only reaches around 30 mbps. I have moved around the wifi router but it doesn't make much of a difference. The technician told me the 120 mbps that I am being charged for is for for direct access and wifi won't reach 120mbps. I complained to cust…

It's extremely rare for OpenWRT to magically make your wifi connection's raw speed faster. It's good for many things, but not that.

Wifi is extremely finicky, due to interference and the FCC's limits on legal transmit power levels. But you should be able to get same-room speeds of at least 180 megabits if you have a decent router and a client that supports it. The key things are you need to use a 5 GHz radio and (for distance) channel numbers >100. Many ISPs still give out 2.4 GHz-only radios, so performance will suck.

Re: How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

#53

Post by icebraining »

andrewhillman wrote: post #47

I just had comcast to my home last week. I pay for 120 mbps but when connected via cat 5 it only reached 90 max mbps which would fine considering when using a wifi router it only reaches around 30 mbps. I have moved around the wifi router but it doesn't make much of a difference. The technician told me the 120 mbps that I am being charged for is for for direct access and wifi won't reach 120mbps. I complained to cust…

I don't see the problem. If you paid for 120 items and you can't carry them in your car, it's not the grocery store's fault, even if "most people" used small cars.

If you want to get a better Wifi connection, get a good router and plug it in to the one installed by Comcast.

Re: How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

#54

Post by mintplant »

chatmasta wrote: post #46

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this in the thread but you can actually opt out of the xfinitiwifi thing. The deal is that you can use any of the hotspots if you have a comcast account and also share your router. If you opt out, you can no longer use the xfinitiwifi hotspots but nobody can use yours either.

Have you tried opting out? When my dad did, he ran into a mess of broken links and incorrect support pages. Eventually he got someone to opt him out over the phone... only to have the "xfinitywifi" network pop back up the next day. It took a few more tries to have it actually disabled once and for all.

I imagine the less technically-inclined would have given up a lot earlier in the process.

Re: How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

#56

Post by minot »

icebraining wrote: post #53
andrewhillman wrote: post #47

I just had comcast to my home last week. I pay for 120 mbps but when connected via cat 5 it only reached 90 max mbps which would fine considering when using a wifi router it only reaches around 30 mbps. I have moved around the wifi router but it doesn't make much of a difference. The technician told me the 120 mbps that I am being charged for is for for direct access and wifi won't reach 120mbps. I complained to cust…

I don't see the problem. If you paid for 120 items and you can't carry them in your car, it's not the grocery store's fault, even if "most people" used small cars. If you want to get a better Wifi connection, get a good router and plug it in to the one installed by Comcast.

Personally, I got an Asus router as well so this does not affect me. However, I can understand this from an average customer's point of view. It would be nice for the ISP to give a router that is good enough for the speed that they advertise. The router should not be the bottleneck.

Re: How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

#58

Post by getsat »

andrewhillman wrote: post #47

I just had comcast to my home last week. I pay for 120 mbps but when connected via cat 5 it only reached 90 max mbps which would fine considering when using a wifi router it only reaches around 30 mbps. I have moved around the wifi router but it doesn't make much of a difference. The technician told me the 120 mbps that I am being charged for is for for direct access and wifi won't reach 120mbps. I complained to cust…

Cat5 has a max throughput of 100mbps. 802.11g wifi (probably what you're using) has a max throughput of 54mbps.

Either buy a Cat5e/Cat6 cable or change your wifi access point to use 802.11n. I am connected to my 2007 Airport Extreme at 300mbps right now using 802.11n.

Re: How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

#59

Post by andrewhillman »

icebraining wrote: post #53
andrewhillman wrote: post #47

I just had comcast to my home last week. I pay for 120 mbps but when connected via cat 5 it only reached 90 max mbps which would fine considering when using a wifi router it only reaches around 30 mbps. I have moved around the wifi router but it doesn't make much of a difference. The technician told me the 120 mbps that I am being charged for is for for direct access and wifi won't reach 120mbps. I complained to cust…

I don't see the problem. If you paid for 120 items and you can't carry them in your car, it's not the grocery store's fault, even if "most people" used small cars. If you want to get a better Wifi connection, get a good router and plug it in to the one installed by Comcast.

I have a NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band Router.

Re: How I doubled my Internet speed with OpenWRT

#60

Post by CodeWriter23 »

Xfinity says your wireline speed will not be impeded by others who are using WiFi via the xfinitywifi shared service. Since DOCSIS 3.0 has no limit on the maximum number of channels (source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS#Bandwidth_tables ), I believe in order to make that claim, they have to allocate additional channels to the xfinitywifi traffic.

BUT OP will only double his bandwidth if he is purchasing a rate less than or equal to the actual realized throughput of his WiFi connection, somewhere from 50-90Mbps.

Additionally, all Cable modems have some kind of throttling because the speeds offered by ISPs (30x5, 100x8, etc.) are not evenly divisible by the per-channel rate of DOCSIS 2.0/3.0 (38Mbps Down, 27Mbps up).

And then there's this: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29743167-Signals-Report-16-...

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