Guide
Your travel router is slow in Airbnbs? Here's why.
You hand the rental's Wi-Fi to your router and everything crawls, even though your phone is fine on the same Wi-Fi directly. It's almost always the 2.4 GHz band, and it takes a minute to fix.
Measured in one of our tests with a GL.iNet router in a holiday rental with 2.4 GHz-only Wi-Fi. Your result depends on the network.
One radio, too many jobs
A travel router in repeater mode receives the rental's network with one of its radios. If that network is 2.4 GHz only, it uses the 2.4 GHz radio. And on that same radio it also broadcasts its own 2.4 GHz networks: the main one, often one for guests and one for smart devices, plus the MLO network on Wi-Fi 7 models.
A radio talks to one device at a time, on one channel. Every packet crosses the air twice, from the rental to the router and from the router to you, and the other networks take their share of time with their own announcements. On a band as crowded as 2.4 GHz, what's left for you can drop to almost nothing.
How to tell it's happening to you
- In the router's panel, under Internet or Repeater, the rental's network shows a 2.4G tag, or a channel from 1 to 13.
- Your phone on the rental's Wi-Fi directly is much faster than through the router.
How to fix it by hand
- Move your phone and laptop to the router's 5 GHz network, not the 2.4 GHz one: you're about to turn that off.
- Open the router's panel (usually 192.168.8.1) and go to Wireless.
- Turn off the 2.4 GHz networks: the main one, the guest one and the one for smart devices, if they're there. On Wi-Fi 7 models turn off the MLO network too.
- Keep 5 GHz on and run the speed test again.
- When you move on and the next network is on 5 GHz, turn everything back on: otherwise devices that only see 2.4 GHz, like many smart plugs and bulbs, stay offline.
And the sign-in page that never shows?
Another hotel and airport classic: encrypted DNS is on in the router and the network's login page never opens. RouterSync notices, puts the router's DNS on Automatic while you sign in, then turns the encrypted DNS back on. That part is free.