Wi-Fi Download Speed Issue

[Burninator]

Almost at wits end here. I'll provide the details, but here is the gist. Wi-Fi download speeds are terrible (1.5 Mbps average) but the upload is great (2.5 Mbps) and wired is great (25Mbps down/ 2.5Mbps up which is the plan I pay for).

Equipment:
Telus router (Wi-Fi disabled)
D-Link Wireless router (DIR-655 N and DIR-850L AC)
iPad, Phone, Smart TV on wireless

Tried just the Telus router and the N router, and have gotten terrible speeds. I live in a condo so there is lots of other networks and thought I would try an AC router. Worked great at first (full download speed) but then after a couple minutes or so the download dives to the 1.5Mbps again. Turn the AC router on and off and the speed is fast and then dives. Tried a Wi-Fi scanner and picked a channel no one else was on and nothing changed.

Not really sure where to go from here. Maybe the AC router is faulty? I could try placing the wireless router somewhere else. Right now it's beside the Telus router and my Drobo. Any suggestions?

[PsYcNeT]

Have you weighed the possibility you have a network leech? It would explain why it starts strong and gets slow if some ass nearby is using your network as a torrent hub.

Do you have WPA2 and MAC filtering on?

[Burninator]

Yes I am using WPA2 for sure, would have to check about the MAC filtering though. Seems unlikely though because every router uses a different SSID and password and only one router wasn't slow out of the gate.

EDIT: I should add that even when the wireless is crappy, the wired is still full speed, so I don't suspect it's a network leech.

[Bean]

I had a pretty similar situation and it was fixed with buying an additional router to act as a repeater and by changing the wireless 'channel'.

[smoothpops]

I had a telus tech come yesterday and install a wireless extender. I had the same problem as you, (i'm in a house, but there are a ton of wireless signals around, mostly from telus). totally seems to have fixed the problem, and i've since disconnected my d-link 645. the tech charged $50 for running the cable from the basement to the 2nd floor, but no charge for the wireless extender. the wireless extender runs 2.4 and 5 ghz. maybe look into that, if you haven't solved it already. Hopefully this means we can stop spending money to make up for the terrible quality of the actiontec.

[FlamesPuck12]

I've had similar problems recently. I live in an area where there's a lot of networks so there's a lot of collision. Most of these networks are running out of the box settings so they're running on 2.4 GHz so make sure you're only using 5.0 GHz. It's impossible to find a channel on 2.4GHz which is empty.

Also wifi scanner only picks up non hidden networks so just because it reports certain channels as empty doesn't mean that no one else is using the channel. So try experimenting with different channels. Also, the distance on 5.0 GHz is shorter than 2.4 GHz so you may need a repeater if you're too far or have too many walls in between the router and your device.

One way to verify that the cause is due to collision is to run speedtest.net on wired connection and look at the graph for download speed. It should be a straight horizontal line. Now if you try it on wireless on a network with a lot of noise, the graph looks very spiky due to collision. Once you find a good channel, it should look similar to the wired connection.