Super weird situation.
So my wife and I got an IPTV box (MAG324) a few weeks ago. We have 1GB download speed on our Wi-Fi. Whether the box was hard-wired or on Wi-Fi, the signal was buttery smooth. No lag whatsoever.
That all changed about a week ago. Almost every channel starts chugging. (Before you ask if it's the stream provider having issues, the person we bought the box from sold identical boxes to two other friends of ours. Their boxes work perfectly as we speak).
So then my wife and I started thinking ... what could've possibly changed in the past week that our IPTV box starts suddenly chugging? The ONLY thing I could think of is that I introduced a laptop from my work into our home network. It connects to a VPN server in Toronto. (I'm in Windsor.)
Last night, in an effort to try and fix our IPTV box, I performed a factory reset of our modem. Changed passwords, all that stuff. I did not reconnect the VPN laptop at this point.
When we tested the IPTV box last night followng the factory reset on our modem. the IPTV performed much better. A few hiccups here and there, but it was pretty smooth for the most part.
This morning, I reconnected the VPN laptop to our home network. I go back to our IPTV box. Sure enough, it's lagging again.
My question is: How is this possible? How is it that introducing a VPN laptop can somehow cause my IPTV box to lag? I've even connected my VPN laptop to a guest network on my Wi-Fi and my IPTV box is HARD-WIRED. Still, my IPTV is lagging.