I live in Canada, and my ISP is Telus. I’m subscribed to their gigabit plan.
However, I only ever really get 250mbps. This is adequate, but I’d like to get closer to the speeds I’m paying for.
I get that peak times might have slower speeds, but I can do a speed test at 3am and it’s the same. Hell, even if I was getting 750 I’d be happy.
Called Telus up, and the only thing the guy would say is its because I have a third party router and not their own. I have a TP-Link Archer C7 with openwrt. It’s a gigabit router. My PC is connected to this via a gigabit switch.
My ISP does allow third party routers, I’ve been using it for years before upgrading to gigabit.
On the plus side they’re sending out their newest router for free so I could at least give them the benefit of the doubt, but I’m suspecting I’m gonna get exactly the same speeds more or less.
The guy kept touting its “wifi capability”, even though I don’t use wifi for anything except cellphones. All my heavy downloads are on wired devices.
So am I correct in that the guy is talking out of his ass and I’m likely stuck on a 2 year term paying $30 more than I should be?
It’s absolutely possible. It’s not that you’re using a third-party router, but rather the one you’r using may be too slow. I ran into this personally – I had a Netgear R7900 that wouldn’t get anywhere near the gigabit speeds I was paying for. Connected directly to the ISP’s fiber ONT, I got the full 940 up and down. Connected through my Netgear router, I’d get maybe 330 maximum using the same Ethernet cables.
Factory resetting it would fix it for a few hours, then it would slow down again. QoS was switched off. Finally, replacing the router with an Asus RT-AC86U completely solved the problem for me. That was a few years ago, so I’m sure there’s better stuff out there now, but this one keeps right on trucking. (And I’m like you, I only use wireless when I have to. Everything that can be wired, is.)
One other thing that was slowing me down a bit: the little Anker Thunderbolt dock I use to connect my laptop couldn’t really do the full gigabit. It’d top out at maybe 650 Mbit. Mostly adequate, but it was definitely slowing down my laptop. I doubt that’s your issue as slow as you’re seeing, but something else to check on.
I didn’t realize it might be the specific router. I remember buying it after reading rave reviews on Reddit lol. I will try out the ISP router at the very least when it comes.