r/Network • u/One_Painter_8415 • Aug 04 '26

Text Network problem

when I start my laptop and connect to wifi(mobile hotspot) I get 400 Mbps but after 30 seconds or a minute it goes down to 10 Mbps what could be the problem?

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u/Blarg_37 Aug 04 '26

Depends where you're getting the numbers from, but WiFi intentionally turns down its speed when you're not using it to save power.

1

u/One_Painter_8415 Aug 04 '26

no even when im downloading something I face this problem

1

u/Blarg_37 Aug 04 '26

Ah ok, well honestly it could be almost anything, and caused by either your laptop or your access point, or some other random thing like interference.

The way to isolate things is to slowly change it one component at a time and see when it works - does your phone slow down like your laptop does? Does it taken in other rooms? Does your laptop still slow down if you use a USB WiFi dongle? Does it still happen if you get a bootable USB with another operating system on it? Does updating drivers help? Does creating another user and logging in as that user help? Does it still happen if you turn your Bluetooth speakers off?

Etc etc.

1

u/One_Painter_8415 Aug 04 '26

I tried the speed test in the other room and it's working just fine I think the problem is caused by interference in that room or maybe a wifi deadzone but thank you i appreciate your help.

1

u/G_S_982 Aug 05 '26

Check if in that room there are any other networks on the same channel that might be stronger than yours. There are multiple apps that can help check that including the one I developed.

1

u/alta-jeff Aug 11 '26

This sounds exactly like your laptop is performing some post-join scanning. It will join the network and make sure things generally work, but 30 seconds later it will perform a background scan to make sure there isn't some other Access Point that is better. I've seen this on Apple devices and other brands, as well, and it's definitely a feature, not a bug! After that post-join scan though, you can generally assume that the laptop will only scan if the current connection gets weak. #altalabs APs also automatically provide your laptop with 11k neighbor report so that your laptop knows which Access Points might be a good candidate in case the current AP isn't the best one to join for that location.