Any network or Wi-Fi experts here?

[nerdstrike]

What is the 4 core 4 thread CPU?

To put Arthur at ease, I have an even older i7 4770 and have no problems whatsoever with the Internet.

One angle we've not discussed is packet loss. If this wifi card is a POS the issues might reflect not receiving all the data and having to re-request. I had this issue some years back because my ISP was being cheap. It manifests particularly with streamed video, where the buffering will fail and the stream won't play until you reload the page/video, and where some elements of a page don't load in in timely fashion.

Some networking software can estimate packet loss. I used a teamspeak client, but something else might be more technically appropriate.

In any case, what are you doing to your hosts file that is improving things?

 

[Count Arthur]

To rule out the OS/drivers, you could try booting from Ubuntu on a USB stick and seeing what your speed's like there.

Funny you should say that.

I had a spare SSD and thought I'd try out Linux and set about installing Mint. I created the bootable USB stick, and started the install, but couldn't get past installing to the SSD. I salected the "delete everything and format and install" option, but that wouldn't work, so I tried the custom install option and tried creating the necessary partitions manually, but I couldn't get that to work either. After an hour or two of messing about I gave up.

I then spent another hour trying to get rid of everything on the USB stick and the SSD so that they were once again usable by Windows. I couldn't re-format via Windows Explorer, or the Disk Management utility. I finally managed to clear the drives and make them usable on Windows using Acronid Disk Director, which I have a copy of: https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/products/disk-director-home/

It was all a rather frustrating experience, which is a shame, I was quite open to trying out Linux on a second system. I'm fairly tech savvy, I develop databases, web sites, I've built several PCs, and installed Windows countless times without much issue, but it seems installing Linux is still not as straight forward for newbees.

 

[Count Arthur]

It manifests particularly with streamed video, where the buffering will fail and the stream won't play until you reload the page/video, and where some elements of a page don't load in in timely fashion.

That sounds sort of familiar.

In any case, what are you doing to your hosts file that is improving things?

I use an edited hosts file that essentially just points hundreds of known tracking and adverting sites to nothing, like this:

0.0.0.0 admedia.com
0.0.0.0 w.admedia.com
0.0.0.0 cdn.admixer.net
0.0.0.0 run.admost.com
0.0.0.0 ads.adnet.am
0.0.0.0 ad.adnet.biz #[Tracking.Cookie]

See here: https://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

 

[nerdstrike]

Ah yeah, that would help streamline page loads and render a lot

 

[threni]

Funny you should say that.

I had a spare SSD and thought I'd try out Linux and set about installing Mint. I created the bootable USB stick, and started the install, but couldn't get past installing to the SSD. I salected the "delete everything and format and install" option, but that wouldn't work, so I tried the custom install option and tried creating the necessary partitions manually, but I couldn't get that to work either. After an hour or two of messing about I gave up.

I then spent another hour trying to get rid of everything on the USB stick and the SSD so that they were once again usable by Windows. I couldn't re-format via Windows Explorer, or the Disk Management utility. I finally managed to clear the drives and make them usable on Windows using Acronid Disk Director, which I have a copy of: https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/products/disk-director-home/

It was all a rather frustrating experience, which is a shame, I was quite open to trying out Linux on a second system. I'm fairly tech savvy, I develop databases, web sites, I've built several PCs, and installed Windows countless times without much issue, but it seems installing Linux is still not as straight forward for newbees.

If you still have the patience, download ubuntu:

Enterprise Open Source and Linux | Ubuntu

Ubuntu is the modern, open source operating system on Linux for the enterprise server, desktop, cloud, and IoT.

ubuntu.com

write it to your USB stick and just boot from that. No installing, just boot directly from the USB key, try it out regarding your original problem. If it works ok, and you have yet more patience, perhaps you could then install (from that Ubuntu session) onto your spare drive. Just use the whole drive for the install. If you get any errors, take a photo and post them here.

 

[Prana Ferox]

Unless your 5ghz reception is truly atrocious it's probably better than 2.4ghz. And if 5ghz is that bad you should probably do something (move router, change router etc) to improve that.

At a wild waving guess your issue sounds like it's getting hung up doing some DNS lookup on ad/tracking garbage until it times out, which is quite common, and a modified HOSTS file helping with that seems to suggest as much as well. If you are tech savvy enough to set up something like pihole or adguard or just get a good browser ad-blocker (I prefer uBlock Origin) you may find that considerably improves casual browsing speed and latency.

 

[Count Arthur]

If you still have the patience, download ubuntu:

Enterprise Open Source and Linux | Ubuntu

Ubuntu is the modern, open source operating system on Linux for the enterprise server, desktop, cloud, and IoT.

ubuntu.com

write it to your USB stick and just boot from that. No installing, just boot directly from the USB key, try it out regarding your original problem. If it works ok, and you have yet more patience, perhaps you could then install (from that Ubuntu session) onto your spare drive. Just use the whole drive for the install. If you get any errors, take a photo and post them here.

I may give it another try at some point when my patience for faffing about has recovered a bit.

In addition, there are a couple of things I want to use that I don't think will be available of Linux, so I'm curious to try it, but I don't think it will be a long term solution.

 

[Elitzur–Vaidman]

I may give it another try at some point when my patience for faffing about has recovered a bit.

In addition, there are a couple of things I want to use that I don't think will be available of Linux, so I'm curious to try it, but I don't think it will be a long term solution.

Do you have an ad-blocker installed in addition to your modified hosts file? It seems like your browser is still trying to load a bunch of background junk.

 

[Count Arthur]

Do you have an ad-blocker installed in addition to your modified hosts file? It seems like your browser is still trying to load a bunch of background junk.

Yes, as far as I'm aware, I've set up both PCs in a similar fashion.

FireFox browser with similar settings
AdGuard
Edited HOSTS file

The mini PC is Windows 10, the main PC is Windows 11.

 

[Multicore]

Is there anything I should look at or anything I can try?

Can you test the same PC with a ethernet cable. If that resolves the issue then you need to reorganize the radio network. In wifi, traffic is like noise unless it's yours so everyone has to slow down and quiet down to give the guys with worse seats a chance. It's a bit of a mess.

If the behavior continues then you need to fix the PC.

 

[Elitzur–Vaidman]

Yes, as far as I'm aware, I've set up both PCs in a similar fashion.

FireFox browser with similar settings
AdGuard
Edited HOSTS file

The mini PC is Windows 10, the main PC is Windows 11.

Do you have any hardware monitoring software installed? It's possible your mini PC has a thermal issue (doesn't seem super likely based on your description).

I'd also try using chrome just to see if you have the same issue across browsers.

 

[Soniclife]

Can you test the same PC with a ethernet cable. If that resolves the issue then you need to reorganize the radio network. In wifi, traffic is like noise unless it's yours so everyone has to slow down and quiet down to give the guys with worse seats a chance. It's a bit of a mess.

If the behavior continues then you need to fix the PC.

Was also going to suggest trying it on a wired connection as a test, it will eliminate one side of the problem.

 

[Multicore]

Was also going to suggest trying it on a wired connection as a test, it will eliminate one side of the problem.

Or move the problem PC close to its base station and turn everything else on that network off. Does that resolve the problem?

The solution to overcrowding on the radio is, I'm sorry to say, more base stations at lower power.

 

[Count Arthur]

Do you have any hardware monitoring software installed? It's possible your mini PC has a thermal issue (doesn't seem super likely based on your description).

I'd also try using chrome just to see if you have the same issue across browsers.

I have HWiNFO installed: https://www.hwinfo.com/

It all looks fine, nothing looks like its overly hot.

The Mini PC does have a build in ethernet port, so I will try that at some point; I think I have a nice long ethernet cable somewhere, if i can find it.

 

[threni]

I may give it another try at some point when my patience for faffing about has recovered a bit.

In addition, there are a couple of things I want to use that I don't think will be available of Linux, so I'm curious to try it, but I don't think it will be a long term solution.

It's certainly swings and roundabouts compared to Windows, Macos, Android etc etc, but worth devoting an old laptop or a Pi to if you want to have a play around and see what it's like. I would try specifically uBlock Origin as an extension to Firefox/Chrome etc - it's just faster and better than the others in my experience/opinion.

 

[Berwhale]

Test for bufferbloat

Tests for Bufferbloat - Bufferbloat.net

www.bufferbloat.net

Thanks for this. It highlighted a small problem with my pfsense router that I didn't know I had ...

5 minutes later, after implementing CoDel limiters on the firewall, we're all good...

 

[Berwhale]

I have HWiNFO installed: https://www.hwinfo.com/

It all looks fine, nothing looks like its overly hot.

The Mini PC does have a build in ethernet port, so I will try that at some point; I think I have a nice long ethernet cable somewhere, if i can find it.

I suspect your issue is network config related, rather than hardware. Name resolution is often the culprit in these types of issues - I experienced similar delayed loading times on my mini PC when I using it to test my pfsense router. The pfsense router was nested behind my old Asus one at the time (I was familiarising myself with pfSense before making it my primary router and risking the wraith of the rest of the household!). Putting one router behind another can get quite complicated and it's easy make mistakes when forwarding services like DNS.

You could try using using a Firefox plug-in that analyses and displays loading times...

Load timer – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US)

Download Load timer for Firefox. Displays page load time in the toolbar

addons.mozilla.org

 

[digitalfrost]

Thanks for this. It highlighted a small problem with my pfsense router that I didn't know I had ...

View attachment 265543

5 minutes later, after implementing CoDel limiters on the firewall, we're all good...

View attachment 265544

I've been using OpenWRT on a RPI4 with SQM to fix this

 

[StuartC]

It's threads like this that show how great Internet forums can be. OP has an issue and everyone piles in to fix it with no barbed comments or vitriol in sight. Keep up the good work people.

 

[abdo123]

Just use LAN over power lines for any sort of work that a consistently stable connection.

Wifi will always be a mess, specially in crowded spaces.