Topic: Abysmal wifi connection, anyone?

The signal strength looks a little low but performs fine. Perhaps they need to roll-out an update that just adds +1 to to the meter

Well, I did lots of tests yesterday - my general connetion is said to be 140mb
Right next to my router: 40mb download 20mb upload - full three bards
5 feet away - two bars and less bandwidth
upstairs - probably around 15 feet away (?? cant rightly say how much) its 20mb download and 10mb upload.
The place where I have my wii u in my room - 4mb download and around 2mb upload - the connection is prone to get lost here - thats annoying.
My pc hotspot workaround worked actually quite well and provided me with 20mb download and 10mb upload at two bars. That should be enough for online play.

I decided not to send the console back - not sure if this is the right decision but in the end I want to play zelda... damn, that game is good

@ThatNyteDaez I hear that. My PS4 is probably equally bad as the Switch if not worse on WiFi. They clearly intended that thing to be wired. Switch seems to be roughly as bad as 3DSXL, but the big winners were N3DSXL and WiiU that had impeccable WiFi.

I'm guessing the real issue isn't that it has low reception but that it has too much: The big metal plate is probably pulling in too much interference. With my headphones running it took over half an hour to download the 240mb Zelda patch or similarly sized Shovel Knight: Spectre. Competing signals seems to torture it.

And that's what makes it so hard to test if there's a legit defect or if it's just specifically picking up interference.

FWIW, I got the wired adapter yesterday. Did a wifi speed test without headphones (but lots of other WiFi) and got 18/1, did a speed test wired, got 32/9. Did a speed test with my headphones turned on, got 3/.5 I'm guessing it's doing a speedtest out to Japan, not local like speedtest.net, because even wired those numbers are low.

I wouldn't rely on the built in speed tester app, and I also would not rely on bars. I toggle between 1-3 "bars" but signal remains constant, barring interference, even next to the router. I think bars are including low-power mode on the NIC, not just input gain on the antenna.

@Andrzej777 It sounds like it might be a normal Switch after all given your tests....weak but working signal most places and it seems like the signal loss happens to be really only at that location.

And like I said above I don't think we can rely on its actual speed tests as I think it's testing out to Japan. Online play might in "real" numbers play better (game downloads won't because they're coming from Japan, and Splatoon won't because, the only people playing are in Japan )

I've been meaning to set up 2 Wireless AC routers in bridge mode and just run everything but phones/tablets/handhelds/Switch undocked run wired for a long time....PS4 WiFi is even worse than Switch's, and I have it in an even worse location under the rack... I honestly should have done that for my WiiU too. Wireless was pretty good on it, but for high level (S/S+) Splatoon, that little difference can be big.

Probably a good call on keeping it. And yeah, it's just too darned fun a system to want to be without

Here's to hoping they can tweak the NIC drivers a bit and get a lot more performance out of it still. Still a new console so plenty of room for driver improvements.

@NEStalgia
Hard to tell if u cant compare between consoles. If this is a working wifi machine then its pretty bad quality imo. Wii u had better quality in this regard.

I thought about getting the wii u version of zelda as I wouldnt be really missing out on anything until mario odyssey but I got to like the switch and gonna keep it.

@Andrzej777 Yeah, WiiU had very good WiFi. I haven't tried an XBox One's WiFi, but I'm going to guess WiiU is the pack winner. New 3DS XL is pretty good too. Switch seems to be pretty bad (so far) at WiFi, and PS4 might as well not support WiFi at all, it's so bad there's no point. it spends 8 hours downloading a 7GB patch my laptop in the same location could do in an hour. I am hoping they can improve the Wifi via driver adjustments. I can't imagine they'd not have noticed antenna positioning issues in testing on a mobile device. Especially in Japan where there's radio signals everywhere.

WiFi frustrations aside, it's still already my favorite console ever in just 3 weeks. I keep picking it up all the time

Try changing or matching the MSU settings from the router and the Switch. OR, you can also tweak your router channels, which could help lower interference, and increase distance and strength of your WIFI.

This requires you to go into your router controls from a computer browser to find your MSU and channel settings. Changing your channels will take time to test numbers, but once you find a good one you will notice a big difference. I hope your service provider offers wave graphs, which will help you pick a new channel faster.

Well it's very easy to tell if you have a bad Switch with faulty Broadcom WiFi adapter.

With my first Switch, the WiFi connection kept disconnecting and connection tests failed most of the time or I would get a max of 1-7mbit download speed ( on a 100 mbit line ).

With my new "good" Switch I have a stable consistent connection now and every connection test runs smoothly with average 50-80 Mbit download speeds.

Are you connecting to a 2GHz WiFi or 5GHz WiFi? As on 2GHz WiFi getting max 20-50Mbit download speeds seems right to me.

@Jeronan
Yes. Its 2,4 ghz.

I was already getting worried when u mentioned 50-60mb speeds. Guess you are using 5ghz?

@NEStalgia

Well, not sure if its my favorite yet but zelda is definitely one of my favorite games other than that there isnt really much for me to buy. Mario odyssey might be a winner. Not really looking forward to splatoon or mk8, probably because I have played these games quite a bit especially mk8. Xenoblade and the new fire emblem(not warriors) might push the switch into that region.

Just btw did more test today and it seems my workaround is not that great. I measured 5-12 mbs download speeds. However I had steady two bars which might provide stable online gaming.
Does anyone know how much mbs are needed for good online gaming?

@Andrzej777 I agree on MK8...and Splatoon I did play a lot of already so I'm on the fence there too. Personally not just Xenoblade, FE, and SMT, but also Skyrim (skipped out on it after playing only briefly on X360), and DQ are all big for me. I'm sure there will be some more big things announced but the whole handheld/console thing is just so great for the way I want to play I just kind of wish every game could be on Switch. First time in ages I've liked a platform for the hardware itself!

(Excluding the wifi )

Your download is fine, but what's the upload? That's where mine really suffers when dealing with weak signal. Also do the test without a suspended game (it cautions that might slow the reported speeds), and keep in mind even on a WIRED connection it seems to report slow speeds so it's probably a speed test to a server in Kyoto (I.E. it will always be slower than a laptop/phone would report for speedtest.net)

@NEStalgia

Well the upload is about half the download speed. Maybe a tiny bit more.

Well, I didnt really like skyrim. Too gritty imo. Weird, but the older I got I started to appreciate lightheartex and relaxing games. Thats why I like nintendos first party games so much. So no skyrim to me. Gaming steals a lot of time so I am rather picky what I choose.

@Andrzej777 2.5-6....that should be fine for online gaming so long as the latency isn't bad (the test panel doesn't show the latency.) Gaming generally doesn't use that much bandwidth, it's the latency that's the killer.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I'm generally at the same place. But I just happen to have a long history with The Elder Scrolls and RPGs in general going waaay back in the day, so I wanted to love the latest TES game, but it wasn't the grit, it was just something "soulless" about it that turned me off. Switch is giving me a chance to maybe poke at it again. And I love any soundtrack by Jeremy Soule. Got the signed limited edition of the soundtrack years ago.

I still think Oblivion was the high point of the TES series though. Morrowind was very fantastical too (giant mushroom forests, hard to go wrong!) Skyrim did try to go gritty....but not sure if it really stays like that or not...I didn't give it a fair chance last time I think, I was just turned off it didn't meet my initial expectations.

@NEStalgia

Exactly! This game just didnt feel right to me. Why should I force myself to go through this gritty world.
Still, I would consider bethesda games much higher than any ubisoft games lol. Not really for me but still sort of a great games I think. Did I ever mention I hate ubisoft?
Funny thing, shortly after I got my wii u I bought zombi u for cheap but couldnt grt myself to open it. It was the first ubi game I bought in years. Sold it this week, new and sealed for about the same price as I bought it
Ea and ubi are the worst of the mainstream bunch for me.

Yes I use 5GHz WiFi. So there is your answer.

Especially if you live in an apartment building in a city and/or in a big neighborhood, the 2GHz WiFi will be strained and reduce your download speeds significantly and even cause instability.

This was a serious problem for me with the WiiU, when I lived in the capital city before and was unable to download nor play online games in Splatoon, as we constantly got kicked out of matches or unable to join even.
So I had to use a USB to JR45 dongle and connect to wired network to solve the problems.

So it's huge improvement that Nintendo finally catched up with time and put a 5GHz capable WiFi adapter in the Switch, as I was highly disappointed when I traded in my old 3DS XL for a new 3DS XL one and half year ago and it still only supporting 2GHz WiFi.

@Jeronan

I see! I live in the country but its rather a big village with lots of neighbors and everyone has internet...

Any respectable decent WiFi/Broadband router supports 5GHz these days and can run dualband (both 2GHz and 5GHz).
So you really shouldn't use 2GHz anymore, unless you really have to.

@Jeronan

Well, first of all I am no tech expert - a couple of days ago I didnt even know there were to frequencies to begin with

I have heard that 5ghz speed comes at the price of range. My 2,4 ghz range is already limited as it seems, so I believe that 5ghz will be even worse, or not?