Odd 2.4 / 5ghz behaviour in my M2 Mini Pro

[deckard666]

I have been tidying up my workspace and just moved my mini to this position from the corner of the desk which has dropped my wifi speed considerably from my BT router which is 9 feet with one internal wall away - like halved it so not getting more than 55mb now (although the upload hasn't changed at 70) - my iPhone 14 gets 190mb in the same room (on 5ghz) so something aint right - annoyingly the smart hub (really) from BT doesnt let me assign different names to the 2.4 and 5ghz bands so I cant run them both and connect the phones to the 5ghz and the mini to the 2.4 for a consistent speed either so at the moment I am paying for 1/2 gig speeds but only able to use 2.4ghz and getting 60mb in the house - Funny enough I can use my iPhone as a wifi hotspot and get 70 ! (On 5ghz I wont be doing that)

I will have a bit more of a play with the location of the mini and tbh 55 is fine ish as I dont really want to get a home plug or wifi extender if I can help it but come on BT where is the new Wifi 6 router you were talking about 2 years ago ?

Any way if you lot have any ideas ?

 

[skottichan]

Was the Mini in the stand before? Because that looks like a potential point of interference, also I had an issue with an older HDMI cable looped behind the Mini killing wifi.

 

[deckard666]

No it wasn't....def something I thought might be an issue.

 

[PaulD-UK]

The Mini's wifi antenna is in its base. If you are placing it on a metal mesh - a 'faraday cage' - then its not surprising you get reduced performance.

 

[deckard666]

Well I moved it on top and now getting 90 so i am happy -

 

[skottichan]

Congrats on fixing the issue, and nice setup, BTW.

 

[deckard666]

Yeah the mouse is going soon as I have a kensington trackball I bought last year....and I will get a black leather cover for the desk too.

 

[HDFan]

my BT router which is 9 feet with one internal wall away

You might consider trying a separate WiFi router (NetGear, Asus, TPLink) to see if you can get even faster speeds.

 

[deckard666]

Yeah I managed to snag an actual BT mesh extender for not very much so hoping to get my lounge wifi speeds of 250 plus later this week.

 

[b.lam]

Had a similar issue with my Mac Mini just recently: switching from DSL to fiber meant I had to move the wifi access point and it was no longer in the line of sight of the Mini. Throughput and signal quality dropped significantly (in both 2.4 and 5GHz) and I couldn't get full speed of my internet access any longer. MacBook and phone at the same location have much better signals, so the wifi antennas of the Mini are really bad/outdated.

The solution was to get a vertical stand for the Mini. I played around a little bit with different positions and with a vertical position I was able to get a much better bandwith and the wifi icon now shows all bars again. It's not perfect, but sufficient enough to make use of my 100MBit internet connection. Even standing behind the display the signal strength is good (beforehand it was sitting flat on my wooden desk next to the display), I'm now happy with this solution, since I also got more space on my desk.

 

[ashleykaryl]

I had something similar a while back that started under Sonoma, but far worse. The fix for me was to install power line adaptors and bypass wifi entirely for connecting the mini to the internet, though it is still needed forAirDrop.

 

[Fishrrman]

Ethernet cable will solve the problems...

 

[b.lam]

Ethernet cable will solve the problems...

In my case that would have meant to draw a cable from one end of my apartment to the other end, not a choice for me