Resolved speed increase -hardwired or wireless?

Do they have their own ISP account or are they borrowing yours?

Often times after a change from an ISP - unplugging the modem/router for five minutes resets to the newer speed.

 

A speed increase from the ISP will not affect wifi signals at all. The speed increase affects how much data can be downloaded or uploaded per second. Signal strength is controlled by the wireless card in the wifi router's access point and the comp wifi cards.

The speed from the ISP can be affected by the coax cable from the street to the house, the splitter, the coax from splitter to modem, other splitters and inline amps in the house, etc. Also, there are different packages from cable ISPs. Verify your neighbors are actually paying for the same Internet package as you have.

 

The wife will be slower because the stated rates for wifi modes exist on paper only and do not take into consideration the drivers, operating system configurations, access point settings, etc.

For example, 80211g, on paper, can do 54 mbps (megabits/second). But the connection rate to a wifi access point is not static, the rate changes every second. WEP encryption reduces the rate too, WPA even more. Any wifi connection that gets half the stated rate is doing good.

With 2 bars, the person is probably conected at 24 mb/sec at best. Cut that in half and that's about the download rate he will get at speed tests.