I've recently been dealing with some frustrating Wi-Fi issues at home. My parents set up an additional router for me to use, but they unplug it at night to help me sleep, which is fine. However, the internet speed is painfully slow—streaming on YouTube or just browsing simple websites almost feels impossible due to constant buffering. The new router creates a secondary Wi-Fi network called "____ (Original wifi name) Guest". I have access to this guest network and its password, but I'm trying to find the password for the main Wi-Fi and can't locate it anywhere. The only devices connected to the main Wi-Fi are the TV downstairs, my mom's PC, my dad's PC (both connected via Ethernet), and their phones, which makes it tricky to access. For context, the secondary router is a TP-Link model TL-WR802N, and our main internet is through Rogers, but the main router is older and doesn't have a display to show the password.
1 Answer
First off, check how the secondary router connects to the primary one. If there's an Ethernet cable linking them, there might be some Quality of Service (QoS) settings on the main router that limit how much bandwidth your secondary router can use. You could ask your parents for the login details of the main router so you can take a look at those settings yourself.
Also, take a look at the signal strength your devices are getting from the secondary router. Are you connected to the 2.4GHz or the 5GHz band? If you're using the 2.4GHz band, ensure that both routers are on different Wi-Fi channels. If the primary is on channel 1, set the secondary to channel 11 to avoid interference.
Good point about the single band! The secondary router might just be a tiny travel router; it likely won’t give you great performance. If it's on the same channel as the main router, it can really slow things down since it has to switch between communicating with the main router and your devices. Whatever the case, you’re probably not getting more than 20-30 Mbps at best.