Question Getting 250 to 350 Mbps of 500 Mbps out of TP A7 1750; would the AX 1800 have less range decay?

[digital_ecologist]

Hi, just set up a new network in a new space, I'm getting between 250 to 350 Mbps on Wi-Fi out of my 500 Mbs connection. Been doing a little bit of research, and noticed that the TP Link AX1800, formally double the price of my 1750, is now on sale, would doing the return and $16 mini-upgrade decrease the range decay?

Pragmatically, 250 is plenty fast enough, but on principle, I'd love to be getting closer to the speeds of actually paying for on Wi-Fi.

For reference, the wired connection flies between 520 and 560 Mbps.

 

[bill001g]

It might be slower. Your end devices are 1/2 the connection and if they can't use wifi6 it will drop back to wifi5. Your current wifi5 router can use 3x3 mimo but the ax1800 only has 2 antenna so when it drops back to wifi5 it can only use 2x2 which is the same as a router with a 1200 number.

That is only wifi6 router in name. It does not support the key feature than makes wifi6 faster and that is support of 160mhz radio bands. It runs only 80mhz which is the same as wifi5. Note you must also have end devices that also support 160mhz wifi6 even if you were to buy a router.

The distance the signals go have nothing to do with the radio encoding being used. It is purely a function of radio transmit power and that is the same for all types of wifi. There is no magic solution to solve the issue of radio signal being absorbed by the walls/ceilings and even the air.

 

[digital_ecologist]

ax1800 only has 2 antenna

The router has 4 antennas not 2.

That is only wifi6 router in name. It does not support the key feature than makes wifi6 faster and that is support of 160mhz radio bands.

You're right about missing the 160 MHz band though, thanks for pointing that out, getting good budget stuff gets tricky quickly.

In terms of devices, my phone actually supports Wi-Fi 6E
but my laptop, where I'm actually noticing the bigger speed drop doesn't have the AX Wi-Fi standard listed, only AC, when I run
netsh wlan show drivers
Although it does support the 160 MHz band?

Does any of that change the conclusion? Or is it still not worth the miniupgrade ?

Here's the link to that router showing the four antennas as well.
AX 1800 router

 

[kerberos_20]

The router has 4 antennas not 2

what wifi module your PC has?

 

[bill001g]

The router has 4 antennas not 2.



You're right about missing the 160 MHz band though, thanks for pointing that out, getting good budget stuff gets tricky quickly.

In terms of devices, my phone actually supports Wi-Fi 6E
but my laptop, where I'm actually noticing the bigger speed drop doesn't have the AX Wi-Fi standard listed, only AC, when I run
netsh wlan show drivers
Although it does support the 160 MHz band?

Does any of that change the conclusion? Or is it still not worth the miniupgrade ?

Here's the link to that router showing the four antennas as well.
AX 1800 router

I was being overly general since many people don't understand the technical lingo. That router only supports 2x2 mimo.

 

[digital_ecologist]

Hi, following up

Wi-Fi receiver: Intel(R) Wireless-AC 9560 160MHz
bands showing:802.11b 802.11g 802.11n 802.11a 802.11ac
computer model: Dell Inspiron 7786.

I think at least some of this is broadcast weirdness, if I set my phone right behind my laptop, it get similar numbers, but there's a spot approximately 12 feet to the right where I can pull 450, which is kind of what I was expecting overall from the set up. Had 300 Mb per second Internet in the old place, and could pretty consistently pull 250 from it on Wi-Fi on an old Netgear r6220 router.

At the bottom of the advanced settings, on my current TP link it says 1000 Mbps full-duplex.

Also, found courtesy of's speccy that my Wi-Fi strength is 85 where my laptop is sitting. Assuming that's out of 100?

Hope some of that's informative.

 

[bill001g]

That card is using a form of 802.11ac nobody implemented. It is very similar with wifi6 but is different enough it is incompatible.
Another one of those feature they put on the box to make people think is better even though almost no routers supported it.

TPLINK speed between the router and the modem will be 1gbit. All ethernet works that way. The data is transferred to a buffer in the modem and then sent at a slower rate to the ISP.

Signal strength number mean very little like that. Better if you get them in db but even 3 db change is 2 times the power so it is confusing.

If you are going to buy anything buy wifi6e. It runs in the 6ghz radio band where there is lots of bandwidth so less interference from neighbors. Much easier to get 160mhz radio bands. Very technically there are no 160mhz on the 5g band because of issue of possible weather radar avoidance rules.
Because of the complexity of the rules many device only implement 80mhz to avoid the issue.

You stand a much better chance of getting the full rate you pay for using wifi.

I would be careful about chasing things that don't really matter. Wifi mostly is used on portable device where the portability is more important than the performance. Its not like you are going to download some 20gbyte game into your phone.
For desktop machines you really should try to use any other technology than wifi especially if you play online games. The speed makes no difference to games it is the quality and all wifi is subject to random interference which will cause lag spikes in games.

 

[gggplaya]

Hi, just set up a new network in a new space, I'm getting between 250 to 350 Mbps on Wi-Fi out of my 500 Mbs connection. Been doing a little bit of research, and noticed that the TP Link AX1800, formally double the price of my 1750, is now on sale, would doing the return and $16 mini-upgrade decrease the range decay?

Pragmatically, 250 is plenty fast enough, but on principle, I'd love to be getting closer to the speeds of actually paying for on Wi-Fi.

For reference, the wired connection flies between 520 and 560 Mbps.

You'll see a small speed increase going to wifi 6 from wifi 5. But it won't be worth spending money one. However, if your wifi is congested with traffic, wifi 6 will be more efficient in delivering bandwidth thanks to OFDMA.

 

[kerberos_20]

im on wifi5 aswell, have few devices connected to it, most of them shows on router connected with 533mbit (5GHz), on pc if i disable SMPS in wifi settings, it shows connection at 833Mbit on router (2.4+5GHz)
so maybe you just need to tweek your wifi settings

 

[gggplaya]

im on wifi5 aswell, have few devices connected to it, most of them shows on router connected with 533mbit (5GHz), on pc if i disable SMPS in wifi settings, it shows connection at 833Mbit on router (2.4+5GHz)
so maybe you just need to tweek your wifi settings

That's your connection speed, wifi is half duplex and there are other variables that can affect performance. I believe the OP was using a speedtest to determine speed.

 

[kerberos_20]

That's your connection speed, wifi is half duplex and there are other variables that can affect performance. I believe the OP was using a speedtest to determine speed.

thats true, but half duplex doesnt mean that you get half bandwith, it just hammers your download speed/high latency if you start to upload something, second antena does help a bit

 

[bill001g]

thats true, but half duplex doesnt mean that you get half bandwith, it just hammers your download speed/high latency if you start to upload something, second antena does help a bit

The problem here is there is no such thing as a pure download. Pretty much every 2 packets or so your pc is sending back a acknoledgement so the wifi has to constantly reverse. So the faster you download the more you upload in effect....packet wise not actual rates but the overhead to do that is massive and is a large part of why you tend to see about 1/2 the rate. You can of course do what the wifi vendors do and use a application that only receives data but nothing really works that way in real use cases.

 

[gggplaya]

thats true, but half duplex doesnt mean that you get half bandwith, it just hammers your download speed/high latency if you start to upload something, second antena does help a bit

In my real world experience, it's about half, maybe upwards of 60%. As Bill said, with every packet you download, some back and forth response takes place.

With a perfect wireless AC connection in the same room as my 2x2 access point at 5ghz with 80mhz channel width, you should be about to get about 400-450mbps of download speed. With wifi 6 and the same 5ghz with 80mhz channel width and a 2x2 antenna, you should be able to achieve about 600mbps in the same room as your access point. Add some distance and your speeds will be lower.

 

[digital_ecologist]

Hi, stopped chasing better Wi-Fi performance a while ago, but also recently ran across some content that proves y'all are right. Nick from the Linux experiment was doing some Linux versus Windows testing; he ran an Internet speed test for both on his Wi-Fi and wired connection (he was comparing the two operating systems, so the difference between the connection types isn't what he was focused on, but he ran both tests.) Seems like he's actually got a steeper drop off than I currently do, moving from wired to wireless connection. That tells me I am well within normal parameters. Certainly suspect that if there's a trick to losing less performance to Wi-Fi, he would know.