Question 5GHz Wifi Speeds slower than internet speeds

[jamesm113]

Cox just gave everyone a speed boost, so now I'm getting 500Mbps (megabits).

Testing with a computer connected over Ethernet on fast.com, I get speeds over 500Mbps, so I know the connection and modem (Arris SB8200 / DOCSIS 3.1) are good.

However, testing on my phone (S22+) or an older Dell laptop, I'm maxxing out around 320Mbps, even within 10 feet line of the router (no obstructions - direct line of sight). Link speed is being reported as 866 Mbps on the laptop and 1.3 Gbps on the phone.

Router is a Netgear R7800 (AC2600) running OpenWRT configured to have a 160MHz channel bandwidth (DFS channels 100-128). One neighbor is on 100-112, but signal is faint.

Is this the expected result or is something wrong with my setup?

Thanks

 

[lvt]

Did you check with this ?

Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test

Use Speedtest on all your devices with our free desktop and mobile apps.

www.speedtest.net

Try different servers to see.

 

[jamesm113]

Same result.. ~320Mbps

 

[lvt]

However, testing on my phone (S22+) or an older Dell laptop, I'm maxxing out around 320Mbps, even within 10 feet line of the router (no obstructions - direct line of sight). Link speed is being reported as 866 Mbps on the laptop and 1.3 Gbps on the phone.

Could you please elaborate this, I'm not sure if I fully understood.

 

[jamesm113]

Could you please elaborate this, I'm sure if I fully understood.

On the laptop, the link speed is being reported as 866 Mbps, which in theory, should be enough for 500 Mbps internet. However, I'm only getting 320 Mbps on fast.com or speedtest

 

[bill001g]

This is because that number is not really a speed it more represents the way the data is encoded. In some magic lab test situation maybe it might represent a speed but in the real world it comes nowhere close.

First wifi is half duplex so you have to cut that so called speed in half. In addition there is a lot of overhead in the wifi data protocol that is using up extra bits in the transmission that can not be used for actual data.

You need to be extremely happy you get 320. You must be sitting on top of the router to get a speed like that using a connection encoding of only 866. Most people get closer to say 150mbps at more normal distances with wall etc in the path.

In addition the 866 clearly means you are only using 80mhz data channels.
So a couple reasons you are not getting 160mhz data channels.
1st you are running 802.11ac (ie wifi5). Even though technically it could support 160mhz few if any vendors implemented it and some of them that did used non standard methods so it was almost impossible to find matching end devices.
2 Even with wifi6 that does support 160mhz there is the problem of DFS. This means the device actively must avoid things like say weather radar. This means you may not be able to get 160mhz channels when other services like weather radar or the military is using the radio bandwidth.
3. Many/most end device only support 80mhz. This was again to avoid the DFS complexity. Rather than try to comply with different DFS rules in multiple countries the end devices just decided to not support 160mhz.
4. Even if you get past all the above there is really only 1 block in most countries you can run so you compete with everyone else attempting to use 160mhz. It greatly increases your chance data gets corrupted.

......in the end wifi6 turned out to be all marketing gimmick to get people to buy new stuff.

If you really want to use 160mhz you are going to have to get wifi6e which uses the the 6ghz radio band that has lots of bandwidth with out the DFS restrictions.

BUT you need to step back and ask why do you really need it to run faster. For most application used on portable device that can only use wifi you do not need more than say 100mbps. Things like even 4k netflix only need 25mbps. Normal web surfing uses far less and games even less...you should never play online games on any wifi though.

The only thing that uses large bandwidth is downloads and you should really have a ethernet connection for devices like that. For most people on this forum it is game downloads that "need?" high bandwidth.