Question How Fast is My Home Wi-Fi?

[bill18163]

Is there a way to find out what speed my home wi-fi is running at? I have a Netgear Nighthawk AC 1750 Smart WiFi router Model R6700v2 and a Nighthawk x6s AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi Range Extender Model EX8000. My download speed from the internet is usually around 250-275Mbps but I am wondering what my network is running at in the house. I am getting pauses when streaming videos on my TV.

 

[kanewolf]

Is there a way to find out what speed my home wi-fi is running at? I have a Netgear Nighthawk AC 1750 Smart WiFi router Model R6700v2 and a Nighthawk x6s AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi Range Extender Model EX8000. My download speed from the internet is usually around 250-275Mbps but I am wondering what my network is running at in the house. I am getting pauses when streaming videos on my TV.

I am not sure I understand your question, because WIFI depends on many factors, signal strength (both receive and transmit), frequency band used, bandwidth configured on the router, they protocol (AC, AX, N), the number of channels a specific client can use at once (MIMO), and interference from other people's WIFI
For a specific device, you can look at the link speed in the properties of your WIFI connection.
You can look at the configuration of your router. If you live in a detached house, you can probably run 5Ghz bandwidth of 80Mhz which for most people would provide 350 - 400Mbit throughput.
How is your X6S connected to your primary router? Wired or wirelessly ?

 

[lantis3]

My understanding AC3000 = 450 + 1300 + 1300. and your individual client device can only connect to one of the bands and have 3 antennas to take full advantage of the bandwidth. Most client devices only have 2.

And as suggested, wifi depends on a lot of factors (line of sight, wall materials, environment noise, distance, location, etc. ). The wifi signal strength will fluctuate 24/7.

Your Nighthawk® X6S Tri-Band WiFi Router spec. or EX8000 extender, should be similar or the same.
https://www.netgear.com/media/R7900P_tcm148-54005.pdf P.12

Technical Specifications
• AC3000† WiFi-

Band 1: 450 Mbps @2.4GHz-​

Band 2: 1300Mbps @5GHz-​

Band 3: 1300Mbps @5GHz​

• Simultaneous Tri-Band WiFi-

Tx/Rx 3x3 (2.4GHz) +​

3x3 (5GHz) +​

3x3 (5GHz)-​

IEEE® 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz​

IEEE® 802.11 a/n/ac 5GHz​

​

Even if you know the link speed, it's not the real speed.

Page @bill001g for details.

 

[kanewolf]

Even if you know the link speed, it's not the real speed.

Link rate is the best rule of thumb. Throughput is generally 1/2 the link rate. If you have an 866Mbit link rate, then you have about 420Mbit throughput, for example.

 

[lantis3]

Link rate is the best rule of thumb. Throughput is generally 1/2 the link rate. If you have an 866Mbit link rate, then you have about 420Mbit throughput, for example.

Due to wifi's half duplex?

 

[kanewolf]

Due to wifi's half duplex?

YEP.

 

[lantis3]

Found one review that's pretty extensive for EX8000

And it's spec

https://www.netgear.com/media/EX8000_DS_tcm148-77853.pdf

Same AC3000, but different 5G bandwidths to the AC3000 router, even 2.4G is a slightly different.

AC3000 WiFi

Band 1: 400Mbps @2.4GHz - 256QAM​

Band 2: 866Mbps @5GHz - 256QAM​

Band 3: 1733Mbps @5GHz - 256QAM​

IEEE® 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz​

IEEE 802.11 a/n/ac 5GHz​

IEEE 802.11 k​

NETGEAR EX8000 Nighthawk X6S Tri-Band WiFi Range Extender Reviewed - SmallNetBuilder

NETGEAR's EX8000 Nighthawk X6S Tri-Band WiFi Range Extender is a big, but pricey, step forward in Wi-Fi extender design.

www.smallnetbuilder.com

 

[bill001g]

Wifi reviews are almost useless. Every house is different and every combination of end user devices is different. Very tiny difference in the placement of the router, sometime rotating it, can also affect results even run to run.

Very controlled testing like the fcc requires also tends to be useless, you find the radio power is almost the same for every router that is using the same internal chip set. The problem is with the fcc tests is they don't test the ability of the router to receive data.

In most cases the problem is the end device. There are many issues with antenna placement not being optimal..like on the back of a desktop machine or on mobile device they trade performance for portability issues like battery life.

Wifi is mostly trial and error unfortantly.

Note wifi7 actually allows you to bond together 2.4,5 &6 radio sessions. There are still issues with this and not a lot of devices support it. But this is mostly chasing big speedtest numbers. Most portable devices do not have enough storage space to download large stuff.

The main posters problem though is not the speed. The reason he is seeing pauses is he is getting large amounts of data loss. Likely the signal level is too low and at certain times some other device from a neighbors house or a device inside the house has a higher signal level and is interfering.

No real new solutions. Can't move the tv or change the antenna position unfortantly. What is left is change the radio channels and maybe force a connection to 2.4 or 5 and see if it makes a difference, assuming the tv supports both. Even if tv can run netflix at 4k it should not need much over 30mbps.