Wi-Fi Ping Spikes: Causes and Fixes

[thiggins]

Wi-Fi ping spikes aren't always caused by a poor connection. Your router settings could be to blame. Read on SmallNetBuilder.

 

[L&LD]

Great article Tim. Curious who Dennis Bland is though? Was he the author of the article, or you?

 

[thiggins]

That's explained in the article. His bio is included at the bottom

 

[L&LD]

Oops! Sorry, I saw your name at the top of the article, skipped the intro, and just saw the bio at the bottom. Thanks.

 

[theirongiant]

This was a great article. One of the suggested features to check — automatic channel selection — was enabled on my AX88U. I was having intermittent severe latency on the 2.4GHz channel: we're talking several seconds where packets would not go through, followed by a flood of extremely late packets (5+ seconds). Occasionally devices would drop off the network entirely, necessitating a reboot of the device or the router to resolve.

The 2.4GHz network is *only* used for Smart Home devices (IoT) that don't support 5GHz.

To increase network stability I set a fixed channel, reduced the bandwidth to 20MHz, and limited the protocol to 802.11g/n only (no 11b). These changes have reduced a lot of the random dropouts and latency spikes. My Twinkly Christmas lights are much more responsive now!

I have Smart Connect enabled for now, but I plan to turn it off soon.

 

[tgl]

Hey ... the link shown at the top of this thread is giving me "Page not found" ... could we get that article back please?

 

[tgl]

... ah, a bit of searching finds it here now.

 

[thiggins]

Sorry about that. Link has been fixed.

 

[Weston]

Wi-Fi ping spikes aren't always caused by a poor connection. Your router settings could be to blame. Read on SmallNetBuilder.

Wifi Ping Spikes generally occur when two devices transmit data at once. At that time, many packets collide with each other and as it results, you get ping spikes. To fix it, try to use a wired connection while transmitting the packet. Due to that, the chances of packet loss are none.

 

[thiggins]

@Weston Wi-Fi devices must coordinate airtime. See https://howiwifi.com/2020/06/30/wireless-contention-mechanisms/