Netgear AC600 download speeds slower than expected.

[advancedmixedgaming]

Hi, yesterday I bought a netgear AC600 wireless adapter for my desktop pc and so far I have been very disappointed. It says I should be able to get up to a 433Mbps download speed, but I've been maxing out at 75kbps. I am running the wifi through my hotspot on my phone at 5ghz, but the download speeds fluctuate at a max of 75kbps. Any ideas on why it's acting like this?

 

[Paul NZ]

Unless it's connected to something that supports 11.AC, you wont get 11.AC speeds

 

[advancedmixedgaming]

Unless it's connected to something that supports 11.AC, you wont get 11.AC speeds

My hotspot is capable of putting up 15MB/s speeds on my ps4, why wouldn't it be maxing out speeds on my USB?

 

[Paul NZ]

So whats the phone contented to at 5 ghz?? If it's a modem/router, why dont you connect to that?

 

[advancedmixedgaming]

So whats the phone contented to at 5 ghz?? If it's a modem/router, why dont you connect to that?

The phone is connected straight to the USB adapter, outputting at 5ghz

 

[vmfantom]

Hi, yesterday I bought a netgear AC600 wireless adapter for my desktop pc and so far I have been very disappointed. It says I should be able to get up to a 433Mbps download speed, but I've been maxing out at 75kbps. I am running the wifi through my hotspot on my phone at 5ghz, but the download speeds fluctuate at a max of 75kbps. Any ideas on why it's acting like this?

There are at least two issues here. One is Netgear advertising the Phy rate of the adapter as though it were the actual throughput. The other is the bottleneck created by your phone's hotspot.

First, look at mcsindex.com. 433.3 Mbps is the Phy rate for 256-QAM 5/6 at 80 MHz width on 1 spatial stream. The Phy rate is what the adapter's wifi radio can do before applying wifi's anti-collision features. Because of the TDMA transit window spacing out each frame transmission, a 433 Mbps Phy rate could range in throughput from 75 Mbps to 292 Mbps before taking into account attenuation or interference, which would lower the throughput even more. All manufacturers lie to consumers in this way. Just apply the 40% rule to whatever they say is the "up to speed" for a given frequency band, and that would get you the average throughput at zero distance from the router.

Second, your phone is probably a bottleneck. If you're using its hotspot feature to transmit internet packets via wifi, then you're at the mercy of your cellular provider's network and whatever bandwidth they can deliver to you. If that happens to be 75 kbps, then that's the bottleneck. Your adapter won't exceed the bandwidth at the bottleneck.

In any case, even if you were using a very capable wifi router instead of your phone's hotspot feature, you shouldn't expect more than 75 Mbps-292 Mbps in total throughput with a lousy adapter like the AC600. I loathe those things for having fussy drivers that (at least in the past) wouldn't install on Ubuntu, but the bigger problem is that they use a very, very early 802.11ac chipset without MIMO.

 

[advancedmixedgaming]

Hi, yesterday I bought a netgear AC600 wireless adapter for my desktop pc and so far I have been very disappointed. It says I should be able to get up to a 433Mbps download speed, but I've been maxing out at 75kbps. I am running the wifi through my hotspot on my phone at 5ghz, but the download speeds fluctuate at a max of 75kbps. Any ideas on why it's acting like this?

There are at least two issues here. One is Netgear advertising the Phy rate of the adapter as though it were the actual throughput. The other is the bottleneck created by your phone's hotspot.

First, look at mcsindex.com. 433.3 Mbps is the Phy rate for 256-QAM 5/6 at 80 MHz width on 1 spatial stream. The Phy rate is what the adapter's wifi radio can do before applying wifi's anti-collision features. Because of the TDMA transit window spacing out each frame transmission, a 433 Mbps Phy rate could range in throughput from 75 Mbps to 292 Mbps before taking into account attenuation or interference, which would lower the throughput even more. All manufacturers lie to consumers in this way. Just apply the 40% rule to whatever they say is the "up to speed" for a given frequency band, and that would get you the average throughput at zero distance from the router.

Second, your phone is probably a bottleneck. If you're using its hotspot feature to transmit internet packets via wifi, then you're at the mercy of your cellular provider's network and whatever bandwidth they can deliver to you. If that happens to be 75 kbps, then that's the bottleneck. Your adapter won't exceed the bandwidth at the bottleneck.

In any case, even if you were using a very capable wifi router instead of your phone's hotspot feature, you shouldn't expect more than 75 Mbps-292 Mbps in total throughput with a lousy adapter like the AC600. I loathe those things for having fussy drivers that (at least in the past) wouldn't install on Ubuntu, but the bigger problem is that they use a very, very early 802.11ac chipset without MIMO.

What adapter do you suggest I get instead?

 

[vmfantom]

What adapter do you suggest I get instead?

If your phone is the bottleneck, it may not matter, but the list of USB wifi adapters below have 802.11a/b/g/n/ac support and have at least 2x2 MIMO, so the Phy rate and throughput could be double or higher versus the AC600. You can check if there are any new/used/refurbished deals and if they have the right drivers for your PC.

ALFA Network AWUS036AC
ALFA Network AWUS036ACH
ALFA Network AWUS036ACM
ALFA Network AWUS1900
Amped Wireless ACA1
ASUS USB-AC56
Aukey WF-R13
BearExtender Turbo
IpTIME A2000UA
Netis WF2190
Rosewill RNX-AC1200UBE2
TRENDnet TEW-809UB
YOTECE AC1200

 

[doolittle]

>netgear AC600
Sadly this is very overpriced and will not get better signal than the generic ones that are sub $15

Over the holiday I snagged a few TP-LINK AC1300 (Archer T4U V2) adapters on sale for $20, killer deal (about 1/2 price) highly recommend!

To solve your problem with the current adapter, one thing may be to try to use a USB extension cable to get the antenna away from the PC (a metal box is great at blocking signals) and see if it improves, did the exact same thing for both my kid's PCs that are upstairs and wifi is the only choice. Also had bad reception until I used the USB extension cord, they now get full signal / and about 8MB/s using the no-name generic AC600 adapters. Also using UniFi AC-AP-LR as my access point, the router WIFI was only about 1/2 the range of 5ghz.

In some situations a DIY dish like "Wok Fi" can also drastically improve reception and bandwidth, may be worth checking out - really helps the small adapters like the AC600s.

>I am running the wifi through my hotspot on my phone at 5ghz, but the download speeds fluctuate at a max of 75kbps.

Aha! So the hotspot performance can vary wildly between different adapters - if this is your only means to connect your PC, may need to upgrade to a dedicated hotspot and not rely on the phone, hopefully a new adapter will resolve that issue!

 

[advancedmixedgaming]

Forgot I had this thread haha, sorry for the late responses. I found out that changing my hotspot from 5ghz to 2.4ghz had increased the download speeds. I made a new thread however because suddenly my ping on all games and apps has gone through the roof if any of you could help with that as well. Thank you!