Wireless speeds

[JerryMungo]

.

 

[TheMightyQuin]

I understand that 5Ghz WiFi generally has a higher bandwidth than 2Ghz. but looking at this:

AC900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router

The AC900 Wireless Dual Band Router delivers simultaneous 450 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band and 433 Mbps on the 5 GHz band for family entertainment.

www.tp-link.com

View attachment 920847

This is an AC 750 router... in this case, the ac band has less overall bandwidth than the n band... really? Do you reckon that would be the case in reality? I imagine if I put half the clients on ac and half on n it would balance it better... assuming that there aren't too many clients of course - like 3 on each.

Make sure those you put on ac, are the closest to the AP without any other interference...

 

[Hamish McPanji]

I've never , ever gotten N to get connected at 450. It's very chipset specific. It's typically 150 or less

 

[Smokey mcpot]

I've never , ever gotten N to get connected at 450. It's very chipset specific. It's typically 150 or less

I struggle to get 100mbps on N for some reason. But then again it’s plug and play without really setting up properly.

 

[Smokey mcpot]

With MikroTik hap ac2 I managed 430mbps on wireless using Samsung s8.
On unifi I’ve gotten up to 600mbps.

mother devices I’m around the 300-400mbps max.
All units being ac1200.

all the above devices I don’t get more than 80mbps on N

 

[Genisys]

With MikroTik hap ac2 I managed 430mbps on wireless using Samsung s8.
On unifi I’ve gotten up to 600mbps.

mother devices I’m around the 300-400mbps max.
All units being ac1200.

all the above devices I don’t get more than 80mbps on N

802.11n (2GHz) is very slow. For most people its ok, especially if they don't worry about speed but range rather. At the end of the day AC is way better, however then there is the issue of the AP and the device supporting MIMO. Hopefully WiFi 6 fixes some of the WiFi issues currently out there, however, it seems WiFi 6 is not really widely adapted yet.

 

[SauRoNZA]

I struggle to get 100mbps on N for some reason. But then again it’s plug and play without really setting up properly.

Many devices will only use the 20hz band and ignore the 40hz band.

Which means they get no more than 144Mbps.

 

[SauRoNZA]

I understand that 5Ghz WiFi generally has a higher bandwidth than 2Ghz. but looking at this:

AC900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router

The AC900 Wireless Dual Band Router delivers simultaneous 450 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band and 433 Mbps on the 5 GHz band for family entertainment.

www.tp-link.com

View attachment 920847

This is an AC 750 router... in this case, the ac band has less overall bandwidth than the n band... really? Do you reckon that would be the case in reality? I imagine if I put half the clients on ac and half on n it would balance it better... assuming that there aren't too many clients of course - like 3 on each.
You have to love the way it says "3 times faster than wireless N" when in fact it's saying that n is 450.

I’m willing to bet someone just made that graph wrong.

 

[Soul Assassin]

I’m willing to bet someone just made that graph wrong.

It looks like there are different versions of that router, the AC750 with 300Mbps N and 433Mbps AC and the linked version AC900 with 450Mbps N and 433Mbps AC.

 

[Smokey mcpot]

Many devices will only use the 20hz band and ignore the 40hz band.

Which means they get no more than 144Mbps.

I keep wanting to call you to assist with the unifi setup... I just never get the time to be available myself hahaha. Kids can use the 2.4ghz and I suppose best performance for them won’t be a bad thing without having to log onto 5ghz

 

[SauRoNZA]

It looks like there are different versions of that router, the AC750 with 300Mbps N and 433Mbps AC and the linked version AC900 with 450Mbps N and 433Mbps AC.

Very odd.

That 802.11n speed likely only works with devices that have TP-link specific wireless cards in and some select others with the same chipsets.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Very odd.

That 802.11n speed likely only works with devices that have TP-link specific wireless cards in and some select others with the same chipsets.

Yeah it’s generally a thing that most people don’t need to worry about and especially mobile clients are unlikely to ever use it to capacity.

I’m at advocate for having all on one SSID and letting the Unifi sort itself out.

You’ll lose your mind if you get too stuck on the stats.

If every device in your house has a rock solid 144/144 link then I reckon you are winning.

 

[Smokey mcpot]

Yeah it’s generally a thing that most people don’t need to worry about and especially mobile clients are unlikely to ever use it to capacity.

I’m at advocate for having all on one SSID and letting the Unifi sort itself out.

You’ll lose your mind if you get too stuck on the stats.

If every device in your house has a rock solid 144/144 link then I reckon you are winning.

I feel so robbed when I’m only getting 144 on a gig line haha

 

[Hamish McPanji]

I feel so robbed when I’m only getting 144 on a gig line haha

What I've found really odd is that some people are paying like R2k for their internet connection, yet when you check their router it's like a R699 one

 

[CataclysmZA]

I understand that 5Ghz WiFi generally has a higher bandwidth than 2Ghz. but looking at this:

5GHz routers are "faster" because of how many spatial streams it can support. You've seen the term MIMO used before (Multi-Input-Multi-Output), and that's how many individual data/spatial streams the chipset can support at 5GHz speeds. Some devices, like my Galaxy S7, are 2x2 MIMO capable on 5GHz networks.

Thanks to the IEEE, the 802.11 standard is a complete mess when it comes to advertising features to consumers. MIMO makes even less sense to consumers. I'm a network engineer and even I'm annoyed by it.

Some terms to note:

Single-radio dual-band: One radio, two bands, it's an either/or situation, shared bandwidth

Single-radio dual-concurrent: One radio, two bands simultaneously, shared bandwidth

Dual-radio dual-concurrent: Two radios, two bands, separate bandwidth

Blergh by Netgear with pictures: https://www.netgear.com/landing/dual-band.aspx

in this case, the ac band has less overall bandwidth than the n band... really? Do you reckon that would be the case in reality? I imagine if I put half the clients on ac and half on n it would balance it better... assuming that there aren't too many clients of course - like 3 on each.

So, this is the TP-Link AC900. The "900" in the model name is the maximum theoretical wireless link speed you could get out of it. But it's actually a AC750 underneath with some firmware tweaks.

The AC900 is a single-radio dual-concurrent design, which means that there is one software-defined radio available to run the WiFi networks. That single radio is designed to negotiate signaling for 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz devices at the same time. The Qualcomm Atheros QCA9563 chipset can drive a single 1Gbps connection to 900Mbps average Tx/Rx speeds, and it's basically allocating 1Gbps to drive both radios (minus some overhead).

This is useful if you have a mixture of WiFi devices and want to share as much of a 1Gbps network connection as fairly as possible. Having to choose between either 2.4Ghz or 5GHz networks doesn't help if you don't have interference from other networks, but would like to separate your devices otherwise.

However, there is a downside. By sharing a radio, there are fewer available data streams for clients on either network, so you're limited by how much bandwidth the chip offers for those data streams. If the 5.0GHz network was using the 80Mhz channel with a 400ns delay (or guard interval), the maximum amount of throughput you could achieve in lab conditions is 433Mbps.

Look at the table here, that's exactly matching the advertised speeds:

IEEE 802.11ac-2013 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If this had two data streams for the 5GHz band, then bandwidth for that network jumps to a theoretical 867Mbps. But that is just two data streams, it doesn't mean that it is MIMO capable. MIMO would allow you to combine them on the client device.

You have to love the way it says "3 times faster than wireless N" when in fact it's saying that n is 450.

Well, TP-Link isn't exactly lying here. but there are caveats. There are three wired antennae on this thing, and one radio is driving both bands at the same time. For this unit, think of it as having three data streams, one per antenna (more expensive devices have more data streams packed into a single antenna). There is one available data stream for the 5GHz network when active, which means there are two remaining for the 2.4GHz streams. TP-Link's spec table highlights this fact:

WiFi Speeds AC750
5 GHz: 433 Mbps (802.11ac)
2.4 GHz: 300 Mbps (802.11n)

Look at this table:

IEEE 802.11n-2009 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

MCS 30 on that chart lists a max throughput of 300Mbps on a 2.4GHz network with two data streams. If you had two 2.4GHz devices, they would receive 150Mbps bandwidth each (which is another marketing blunder, it is total cumulative bandwidth, so 75Mbps up/down).

If you had to disable the 5GHz network on this router, you could have three data streams, which yields 450Mbps on the 40Mhz band with a 400ns delay (MCS 23). That's 150Mbps for three devices.

Now if you had a laptop with MIMO support on the 2.4GHz band, then you could reasonably get 300Mbps out of it from this router. This router can't do beamforming, so there will be some weird things happening when you have multiple devices connected but only a few at a time actually transmitting data. It won't prioritise data streams according to which device actually needs bandwidth, it will just keep dividing it up.

I've never , ever gotten N to get connected at 450. It's very chipset specific. It's typically 150 or less

Indeed, most 2.4GHz chipsets in laptops are only capable of 150Mbps of throughput because they only support a single data stream.

I struggle to get 100mbps on N for some reason. But then again it’s plug and play without really setting up properly.

It is likely that some tweaking would help with this, but otherwise you probably have a router that isn't capable of beamforming and doesn't have a lot of spatial streams available, and your devices may not be configured optimally.

 

[CataclysmZA]

As a follow-up, let's look at an example. I own a TP-Link Archer C5 V1 AC1200. This is running OpenWRT and it's fully compatible. I moved to this because I wanted more granular control over network speeds and the QoS on the default firmware was awful. It is running the Qualcomm QCA9980 chipset.

QCA9980 | Qualcomm

www.qualcomm.com

If this was a fully unlocked design, it would be able to communicate over four separate data streams and it would be 4x4 MIMO capable. But the version I'm running here is only 2x2 MU-MIMO capable for the 2.4GHz network, which means that multiple devices are able to combine two data streams at the same time.



My 2.4GHz network is at 76Mbps on average, which is what a single data stream puts out. I also have the 5GHz radio active, and only a few devices are on it. OpenWRT always reports the bitrate at 6Mbps, but that's incorrect.



These are all the devices I have currently attached to it. You'll see that they have varying characteristics. MKR5V88 and PMPE4ID are both MIMO-capable devices, and the second one is actually a desktop with a PCIe NIC. The first is a Dell Inspiron G5.

192.168.0.10 is a printer. My Galaxy S7 is on the 5GHz network (and currently in sleep mode, as you can see). My mom's Galaxy S8 is the same. My brother's P40 lite is only able to connect to a single 2.4GHz data stream, but it can sleep deeper than other devices on the network (MCS levels will give you an idea about how much power the device requires to interface with the network. The Galaxy S8 at MCS 13 consumes much more power even with the screen locked). Every device has different MCS levels, but thankfully they are all on 400ns GI intervals.

For this reason, this is why WiFi is such a cluster****. You will never get exacting performance unless you have matching hardware that ticks all the boxes and is compatible. Some Routerboards have fantastic WiFi for Android and laptop clients, but performance will be poor on iPhones until you tweak a few things because Apple is aggressive about power savings. And even when you do have a decent router, having to negotiate things with all these different clients is going to affect throughput. Thankfully there are no 802.11g devices in the house, or else it would tank things further.

Also, that ****ing printer? Horrible WiFi speeds. It will only ever receive documents at 26Mbps, which means it will take more than two seconds to transfer an 11MB document over the network and then get to print it.

If the PS4 Pro was on, you'd see how poor that implementation is. If I had to force the network to 40MHz, I would also see a noticeable increase in speeds, but everyone is currently busy and I wouldn't want to ruin their gaming just to see what would happen.

 

[CataclysmZA]

When everyone was out of the house, I force enabled the use of 40MHz. Most routers will not default to 40MHz to avoid interference with overlapping networks.



But since I have no networks from the neighbours interfering on the same channel, and because I control all the ones in the house, I can force 40MHz. The only thing I can't avoid is the 20MHz network that the PS4 Pro throws up for connecting wireless devices directly instead of via Bluetooth. I don't have equipment to measure other RF interference on the 2.4GHz band, but I'm sure it's minimal.

Here's where implementation and setup matters:



With the 40MHz band forced, it won't automatically force all devices to use 40MHz of bandwidth. My Galaxy S7, the printer, my Dad's iPhone 11, and my mom's Galaxy S8 will remain on 20MHz. My brother's Huawei switches from 20MHz bands when in idle mode to 40MHz when data is being transferred. Our PS4 Pro (192.168.0.106) won't ever use the 40MHz band because it also runs a guest network for peripherals.

You can see now that the two desktops which were sitting at 144Mbps are now both at higher levels with the wider band. Both of them will hit 300Mbps.

But the other noticeable change with the switch to 40MHz is that the noise levels have all dramatically improved (not that anyone noticed on 20MHz anyway). They are all now getting a stronger receiving signal thanks to the wider band. It won't yield any noticeable difference here at home, but it's worth pointing out that noise levels improve with a wider band so long as you have the right environment for it.

 

[xodosman123]

Hard wire as far as possible.

 

[Geoff.D]

Many devices will only use the 20hz band and ignore the 40hz band.

Which means they get no more than 144Mbps.

20MHz and 40MHz bandwidth. .......
Many devices do not allow the selection of channels using the the 40 MHz bandwidth band plan in the 2400 MHz Wi-Fi allocation.

 

[SauRoNZA]

20MHz and 40MHz bandwidth. .......
Many devices do not allow the selection of channels using the the 40 MHz bandwidth band plan in the 2400 MHz Wi-Fi allocation.

Well the channels live inside the same spectrum of 2412 - 2462 ghz so they are one and the same.

When you use 40MHz you are using two channels at the same time. Usually the main channel and then one one higher or lower, which is why your throughput increases and effectively doubles.