People ask, "Is Wi-Fi and broadband the same thing?".
No! Wi-Fi is a wireless technology that 'carries' the broadband round your house. The two terms Wi-Fi and broadband are often used interchangeably. This confusion mostly arises because we associate connecting to a Wi-Fi network with gaining access to broadband internet.
If your wi-fi isn't getting round your house then you won't get any broadband because there is no wi-fi to carry it. BT have guaranteed strong wi-fi in every room of our house. That is what we have, and it is constant. That is not the same as having a fast broadband round our house.
Our broadband comes from the BT exchange in Weston down 'optical' cables to green junction boxes dotted about. Our green junction box is at least half a mile from us, so from that point it comes down a copper telephone wire. Losses down optical connections are just about zero, whereas copper wires? Not good! So by the time it gets to us it has dropped off quite a bit.
The other thing that affects the amount of broadband you get is whether other people are using it from the same source. In our area, our broadband signal drops right down when people come in from work, and when too many people are using it we get 'buffering' .. arrows that go round and round while your device is trying to pick up the signal. Once or twice I have had the message 'No internet connection' showing on my device. This does not mean the wi-fi. It means that the broadband coming down the line is not even registering. When everyone has gone to bed our broadband is fine.
I use an on-line speed checker.
If you want to, do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab.
https://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/
When I get there I see this:
Clicking on START SPEED TEST it ends up with this:
The Ping is how long it takes from clicking on something to it being picked up on the website (milliseconds).
Note that broadband Download speed is always very much greater than Upload speed.
Download is the important one as that refers to things you are watching/listening to.
So my download speed is 30.24Mb/s (Megabytes per second).
Yesterday at this time it was 35.78Mb/s. At this moment my wife is watching sport on her iPad so is using the broadband too. Hence the drop.
This last week we have been staying with our son and daughter-in-law at Kewstoke, about 5 miles out of Weston. They have a caravan site for tourers (up to 12 pitches). Their wi-fi is used by the campers as well as themselves, and their broadband comes down a telephone wire about 3 miles long. They always have a terrible time trying to connect to things via their broadband, so I checked their speed. During the day it was about 6Mb/s; and went up to 8Mb/s late in the evening. But at about 5:30pm their speed was 0.06Mb/s. Yes, 0.06Mb/s. Only just enough to receive an email and look at the forum. No way of listening to music or logging in to a bank account.
I have spoken to Torben, who lives in Copenhagen, and he says his speed is 500Mb/s. I don't know anywhere in UK where you can get those sorts of speeds.
Now .. can you please click the POSTREPLY button and let us know what speed you are getting for your broadband?
Hugh