Thanks Sybawoods. I have additionally tested the speed by hardwiring my laptop and other devices, which does indeed give me speeds of 90-98Mbps which I’m thrilled with. However, I expected to get better speeds over WiFi, especially because the account is a capped one and my router is “capable” enough, according to my ISP.
My other concern was whether the devices that I am using are not 802.11ac compatible, which would mean the speed maxes out at 54Mbps download - this makes sense to me. Would something like a Ubiquiti LR AP help improve the speeds that I get around the house? I’m merely asking in terms of WiFi, because I connect all but one of my devices over WiFi. Thanks in advance
What you need to remember is that WiFi is a shared medium. Given a theoretical maximum of 54 Mbps (which is what 802.11g was back in the day), two devices using WiFi at the same time would achieve a theoretical maximum of 27 Mbps, three devices would achieve a theoretical maximum of 18 Mbps, and so on.
In reality, you'd never come close to any theoretical maximum, and some of the reasons are:
- Packet loss. Depending on signal strength, line of sight, etc. data transmitted by a wireless sender can be weakened and/or distorted enough by the time it reaches the receiver that the packet checksum will not match the packet content, and the receiver must discard the packet. The sender will retransmit the packet (a TCP/IP mechanism), but this obviously reduces throughput and additionally increases latency.
- Packet collisions. If two devices on the wireless network try to send at the same time, the signals will interfere with each other and the receiver will receive a garbled mess that it will almost certainly discard (so, essentially another form of packet loss). Wireless devices usually check that the channel is clear before sending, but this doesn't always work. For example, consider that you have a laptop and a tablet on the wireless network communicating with your wireless access point. Both laptop and tablet are within range of the access point, but the laptop and tablet are out of range of each other -- neither laptop nor tablet will know that the other is attempting to communicate with the access point, and packet collisions will be inevitable.
- Signal interference. Your neighbour's network will likely cause packet collisions on your own network if the two are within range of each other. Particularly if they're on the same (or neighbouring) channel.
There will be other reasons as well, but these are probably enough to make my point.
With wired connections on the other hand, every device will have dedicated bandwidth available to it. If you have a 1 Gbps network card, then your wired device has 1 Gbps of bandwidth on your local network. Your wired 1 GBps NAS will have 1 Gbps bandwidth available to it (which it will obviously share between all the devices on your local network simultaneously accessing it).
The home network building approach that I have personally taken is: if it's a fixed device on the network (e.g. the desktops, printer, smart TV, etc.), it has a cable running to it. Only mobile devices (laptops, tablets, mobile phones) are on the wireless network.
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