I recently upgraded to a WiFi 7 router that's supposed to support both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. I was super excited about the potential speed boost and I'm getting decent speeds of about 100-200 Mbps. However, I've been facing an annoying issue where my laptop experiences random lag spikes. It seems to happen out of the blue, causing me to lag on Discord while my friends can still hear me just fine. I've done a ping test and noticed some spikes in the response times, with some going up to over 600ms! The lag can come and go, sometimes every five minutes or not at all for hours, but when it does occur, it's a pain.
I've tried a bunch of troubleshooting steps: updating and reinstalling the network adapter, switching channels on the router, and even restarting both my router and laptop. But nothing has worked so far. Anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this?
2 Answers
Have you checked what channel width you're using? For the 2.4 GHz band, you typically have 20 or 40 MHz options, while 5 GHz goes up to 160 MHz. A wider channel can give you faster speeds, but might also lead to more interference, which could cause those lag spikes you're experiencing.
First off, what's the make and model of your router? Knowing that can help narrow down some potential issues you might be facing.
Thanks for responding! I checked with Wifi-Analyzer and it shows the bandwidth is set to 20 MHz, but there's a note that says the bandwidth can't be detected due to a missing API. Not sure what that means, though.