Is Your WiFi Slow?

Is Your WiFi Slow? Or is it Your Internet? Or Is It A Combination Of The Two – Do You Know The Difference?

If these are the questions you are looking for answers to, then look no further. This guide is designed to help clearly explain why you might be experiencing slow or intermittent WiFi and internet performance or, indeed, a combination of the two!

What is WiFi?

It is important to understand that WiFi is the wireless distribution of your internet service WITHIN your property boundary, but it is entirely dependent on there being an underlying internet service in the first instance. The reliability and performance of the WiFi is ultimately governed by the internet service, but, at the same time, an ultra-reliable and robust internet service is not enough on its own to ensure a robust and reliable WiFi service within the property.

WiFi itself is achieved using wireless access points, also known as access points or APs. APs are essentially small radio transmitters (yes, WiFi is, in fact, radio) which are positioned in areas of a property where wireless internet is required. The APs broadcast a radio signal, which your devices connect to, and if the APs are in turn connected to the internet, your device(s) will be too – you will, at that point, be able to connect to the internet wirelessly/ via WiFi.

APs come in many different shapes and sizes, levels of quality and varied price points. Whilst simple, inexpensive APs and “off the shelf” WiFi solutions are widely available, a reliable and robust WiFi system will invariably require the involvement of a professional. There are arguably only a handful of APs on the planet that can be used for a professional WiFi solution – see here for more information on WiFi solutions.

Internet Options

Now, with a basic understanding of WiFi under the belt, you might be wondering what your internet options are. In the UK (although much of this does apply internationally), there are commonly only a few ways one can connect to the internet. Internet is delivered to your property via an internet service provider (ISP). We will refer to the different internet delivery options as internet delivery mechanisms.

Broadband is the most common internet delivery mechanism, so most of us are only aware of broadband. It is the most common becuase it is the most straightforward mechanism to supply to a property and the cheapest to run for the end user/customer – as a result, however, it is also the most overused and unreliable.

Broadband in the UK is primarily provided by two companies – Open Reach and Virgin Media. These two companies own the physical network of cables and equipment responsible for delivering the internet service to your property. That means, Virgin Media aside, if you are a broadband customer in the UK, regardless of whom your ISP is (these include Sky, BT, TalkTalk, Plusnet, Waitrose etc.), the services are almost identical, as these suppliers are all using the Open Reach infrastructure/network.

SOGEA (Standalone Generic Ethernet Access)

Broadband over the Open Reach infrastructure is known as SOGEA. With this service, a fibre optic cable is present at a local street cabinet in your neighbourhood, to which your property connects through a telephone wire. As the internet service is distributed down the copper telephone wire to your property, it is obviously not a pure fibre optic internet service, As such, there are limitations and fault possibilities.

Firstly, using copper, the internet speed can never exceed download/downstream performance greater than 78mbps and an upload/uplink speed of 20mbps. SOGEA broadband is an asymmetric delivery mechanism meaning the download and upload speeds differ significantly, with priority allocated to the download. Despite 78mbps being the maximum, the length of the copper wire (from the cabinet to your property) greatly influences the overall performance, with speed decreasing steadily as the length of the cable increases. Acceptable/regular broadband performance is in the range of 40mbps-70bmbps, with anything more seldomly achieved. It is important to note that if switching broadband providers in the UK, unless you are making the switch to Virgin Media, your bandwidth/broadband speed will arguably never be improved nor diminished.

Fibre to the Node (FTTN)

Virgin’s internet delivery mechanism is slightly different to that of Open Reach, with their network designed and built using a combination of fibre and coax cable. Whilst a SOGEA-style product, Virgin’s architecture is also known as FTTN (Fibre to the Node). As a result of the different architecture, the Virgin network can deliver better performance than Open Reach (commonly 50mbps – 500mbps download). It is also an asymmetric delivery mechanism, with the upload rate being at roughly 10% of the download.

Internet Service Pricing

So, if Virgin has its own network and all other ISPs use the same Open Reach infrastructure, why do their prices differ?

There may be a handful of determining factors, but the most significant is arguably centred around something known as contention ratio. Now ask your ISP about their contention ratio values or try and find the answer yourself and you are likely to have little success as these figures are not published.

What is Contention Ratio?

Put simply, contention ratio is the measurement of how many properties/customers are sharing an internet line. Broadband is not a dedicated internet service, meaning the internet line feeding your property is doing precisely the same job for many other properties in your neighbourhood, at least those using the same ISP as you. What this means is that your home/office, and those of all the other customers in your area, are contending (competing) for the bandwidth/internet speed – hence the term contention ratio.

Frankly, the cheaper your internet subscription, the higher the contention ratio/the more users are sharing the same line. Cheaper suppliers might bundle 50 customers on one line, which determines a contention ratio of 50:1. Mid-priced providers might have ratios in the 20:1-30:1 bracket, whilst smaller/boutique providers might never exceed 5:1.

A major drawback of a contented internet service is undoubtedly the performance. Logically, the more users on the line, the worse the line will perform, particularly at busier times. Pre-COVID, this was an issue that presented itself in the evenings and at weekends but with the load on domestic broadband now at levels it was never designed to deliver and work from home solutions here for the foreseeable (albeit not quite at pandemic levels), one can expect broadband services to continue to underperform.

Why does my broadband underperform?

Using broadband also introduces more risk areas than contention ratio alone – your internet will underperform or fail in its entirety for a number of reasons, including:

• Telephone exchange fault
• Local street cabinet fault
• Cable fault (from the cabinet to your property)
• Telephone socket fault (within your property)
• Internal wiring fault (within your property)

Level of Service

To add insult to injury, domestic broadband is not supplied with an SLA (Service Level Agreement), meaning should one of the above faults occur (which could happen at literally any moment), your ISP is not contractually obliged to have the service back online within a set time frame. The primary reason being that they cannot guarantee this as the fault itself, if not internal to your property, is the responsibility of Open Reach, who will ultimately send engineers to investigate and repair the fault. Depending on the severity of the fault, it could take hours, days or, in some instances, weeks to resolve, leaving the customer without a service until the break has been fixed. In our view, this type of service is no longer compatible with modern-day, work-from-home scenarios.

Leased Line/Dedicated Fibre

With SOGEA broadband being considered the entry-level internet delivery mechanism, at the complete opposite end of the spectrum is something known as leased line/dedicated fibre – the premium internet delivery mechanism. As the name suggests, dedicated fibre is 100% dedicated to your property, meaning nobody else is sharing the line (i.e., it has a zero-contention ratio). It is a full fibre product meaning there are no copper wires (telephone lines or otherwise) involved in the delivery of the internet service to your property – a fibre optic cable is run directly from the telephone exchange to your premises.

Guaranteed Uptime

With the leased line service being a full fibre product, there are no real limitations on bandwidth/speed. Leased line can run at speeds of up to 1Gbps (1000mbps), and unlike SOGEA broadband, it is a symmetrical service meaning your upload and download bandwidth are in sync. Put simply, if, for example, you subscribed to a 500mbps leased line service, you will achieve 500mbps on both the download and the upload. Leased line is also protected by an SLA, which guarantees an uptime of 99.5% and, in the highly unlikely event there is an outage, the service contractually needs to be restored within a matter of hours (typically 4-7 hours, depending on your supplier). If you are looking for near enough, 100% reliable and rock-solid internet, leased line is the product for you. As you might imagine, leased line comes with a price tag which, pre-COVID, meant it was rarely seen in a domestic setting, but this has rapidly changed in recent times.

Fibre to the Premises (FTTP)

So, if SOGEA is near the bottom of the barrel and leased line at the top, are there any products somewhere in the middle I could consider? There are a few, but we will touch on the two most common. FTTP (fibre to the premises), as the name suggests, does use a fibre cable right the way to your premises, but it is NOT a dedicated service. It works similarly to SOGEA in that, if the service is available in your area, you will be sharing it with other customers (i.e., it is contended). So, despite the bandwidth being far greater (up to 350mbps), if/when the service is busy or a fault or failure occurs, the same sub-standard level of service one might expect from a domestic broadband service remains the status quo. Another consideration is that, if SOGEA is already available in your area, it is UNLIKELY (not impossible) that FTTP will be available any time soon. The FTTP rollout by Open Reach has been prioritised in areas where there has previously been no “high speed” internet option.

Generic Ethernet Access (GEA)

A very popular delivery mechanism, and the perfect go-between – it is essentially a hybrid/combination of SOGEA and leased line. The product known as GEA (Generic Ethernet Access) distributes the internet service down a copper telephone line meaning, like SOGEA, it is asymmetric with a maximum 78mbps download and 20mbps upload (maximums again determined by the length of the cable) but, like leased line, is fully dedicated to your property. By now, we know that means it has a zero-contention ratio but also has the added benefit of being protected by an SLA. Because GEA is copper-based, it is not fast, but because of the other business-like characteristics, it is reliable. The price point for GEA, like the service itself, is nestled somewhere between the costs for SOGEA and leased line.

Local Area Network (LAN)

Hopefully, you will have a better understanding of both WiFi and internet options, but there is one other element that can affect your internet/WiFi performance and reliability – your LAN. Your local area network or LAN typically comprises your router, network switch(s) and data cable (Cat5e, Cat6 or Cat7). Using sub-standard local network equipment can and will wreak havoc with any internet service and any WiFi hardware option. The router is the core/root of every network; using a sub-standard router (typically supplied by an ISP) or poor-quality network switches or cable can cause slow performance and the need to continuously restart your equipment.

PC Man can help!

If you are in the market for a professional internet and WiFi solution, for either a home or business setting, it is highly likely you’ll require professional assistance to not only configure your network from the outset but also to manage and maintain it going forward. Drop us a line at info@ilovepcman.com or call us on 020 3369 0669 to find the right solution for you.

This article was updated in October 2022