topic Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds in Arlo

Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

Mitchinpa — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 19:30:19 GMT

Hello,

I have a smarthub, hardwired directly to my wifi router. All cameras show strong signal, and work just fine. My problem is, it appears the smarthub may be routing all my internet traffic, or is seriously taking large amounts of the bandwidth.

I have fiber into my house, gig speed up and down. When the smarthub is disconnected, I get speeds in the 750 to 850 down, and 900+ up. As soon as I plug the smarthub back into the router, it drops to 250 down and 300 up.

I have 7 cameras active, 5 of which are Pro2, all work just fine. The only change made to the wifi router is the port forward. Everything else is stock from the ISP.

Should the smarthub be eating up that much bandwidth?

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

StephenB — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 23:27:03 GMT

@Mitchinpa wrote:

When the smarthub is disconnected, I get speeds in the 750 to 850 down, and 900+ up. As soon as I plug the smarthub back into the router, it drops to 250 down and 300 up.

Are you testing over wifi or using a PC connected with ethernet? If over wifi, then this sounds like wifi interference.

How far away from the router is the smarthub? Does this happen when the smarthub is as far away as the supplied cable will stretch?

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

Mitchinpa — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 18:14:55 GMT

The smarthub is as far away from the router as the ethernet cable will allow. I've tested over wifi, using multiple devices, all with wifi6. I've even separated the smarthub to its own 2.4 network with no change as well.

The pattern is always the same, disconnect the smarthub, get great spped, plug it back in, and within 2 or 3 minutes, the speeds goes back down.

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

Edinburgh_lad1 — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 21:53:31 GMT

Do you have any traffic priority rules in place, such QoS or something similar? Another thing to consider is that in highly congested WiFi areas, your speeds may be affected if there is another device broadcasting on the same WiFi channels as the SmartHub does by design. In this situation, there is nothing you can do about it, though sone users put their SmartHubs as far as away from the router as possible. You could even try powerline devices if you're on FTTP.

From what you're saying, it sounds like you're only disconnecting the ethernet cable and leaving the SmartHub to continue broadcasting its WiFi networks, at which point the speeds are affected. This could be done kind of QoS issue, but without having any logs or data about your network and router settings, it's hard to diagnose.

You could also enable traffic monitoring in your router, if you have such an option, to see what is going on with the traffic.

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

Mitchinpa — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 11:41:53 GMT

No QOS, and really, the isp has the router pretty dumbed down. About the only options available for me to change are the wifi network names, channels, and port forwarding.

The only port forward is for the smarthub. I have tried other channels, but it made zero difference.

And yes, I leave the smarthub active, and simply disconnect the ethernet cable from the smarthub to the router to get better speeds.

I just ordered a new router and will be changing isp this week, on a trial basis. I'm very curious to see if the issue follows.

As for the logs, again, what is available to me are very limited.

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

StephenB — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 17:56:31 GMT

@Mitchinpa wrote:

And yes, I leave the smarthub active, and simply disconnect the ethernet cable from the smarthub to the router to get better speeds.

Did you try rebooting (power-cycling) both the hub and the router?

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

Mitchinpa — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 19:15:56 GMT

Yes, many times. Behavior remains the same, speeds are normal after a reboot until a minute or two after the smarthub reconnects, then speeds degrade.

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

Mitchinpa — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 13:58:46 GMT

The problem did not follow to the new router/isp (xfinity).

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

BrookeN — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:04:54 GMT

So you are not seeing the same behavior you were previously seeing correct?

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

Mitchinpa — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 23:18:59 GMT

That is correct.

Re: Smarthub kills home wifi speeds

BrookeN — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:23:58 GMT

Thank you for the update.