Baffled with internet speeds
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Soldato
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And Ethernet cables aren't expensive.
Caporegime
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never run a speed test over wi-fi
Righto, got my hands on a 25m cat 6 cable and can report that there is indeed 120mb coming in from the fibre.
I also got a new ac1900 adaptor which gets me approx 90mb from upstairs.
What I want to understand now, is 1) why the windows network status reports an 800mb wifi connection to the router, yet I can only get 90mb of fibre? 2) why using a surface next to the router, so 100% signal, only gets 70-90mb of the fibre connection and why an iPhone 6s that shows a 350mb connection to the router only gets 50-60mb of the fibre connection?
Does everyone with fast internet simply only make use of bandwidth over say 60mb using a wired connection?! Makes fast fibre seem pretty pointless for use with phones / tablets etc!
Surely if I can transfer a file at much greater than 120mb over my wifi network, there must be a problem / setting that needs changing in order to get the full fibre bandwidth?
Soldato
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One of the main reasons to have fast internet is to support multiple users/devices.
I've never worried about the absolute speed my mobile devices achieve so long as it's enough to reliably stream video and the like. What are you going to use a phone/tablet for that needs massive bandwidth (apart from running speed tests).
Any fixed device that has an Ethernet port gets a cable.
I've never worried about the absolute speed my mobile devices achieve so long as it's enough to reliably stream video and the like. What are you going to use a phone/tablet for that needs massive bandwidth (apart from running speed tests).
Any fixed device that has an Ethernet port gets a cable.
Because wireless is unreliable. Its "handy" due to no wires but you are never going to get your full throughput over wireless (or home plugs) its really that simple. If you want full speed ALWAYS use a Ethernet cable. I can't tell you how many times I have said this to people on this forum. It doesn't matter if you have "AC" wireless or some fancy ass wireless router over the air = unreliable due to enviroment / weather you name it. Nothing else more to say
1) Because 800mb might be meaningless. Especially when reported by windows. Windows often will report a theoretical maximum of the detected hardware capabilities yes. Most wireless G will report 54mbps connection speed. Doesn't mean you get 54mb download. Often wifi is not full duplex so you can only get half the advertised speed at best. Take away overheads, distance, interference, objects....you get what you get in your environment. I don't think it is as simple as you are expecting. I understand why you think that way...totally logical. As an example, I have 200mbps download, and I think the fastest I ever saw that on wireless was still under 100mbps. I think that would have been on a laptop.
2) Different devices have different efficiency levels. If you test 10 mobile phones (with each having different hardware inside, mainly the wifi chip/controller) they will all be slightly different in speeds.
For the most intensive tasks, most people hard wire their fixed hardware. Like a PC, Console, Streaming/media player. That's where speed is required. For portable devices, they tend to be more a case of "fast enough" for what you use them for, which typically yes, 50mbps+ is enough for most uses.
Can you transfer a file wirelessly at over 120mbps on your network? How did you test that?
I'd strongly encourage everyone to please write bit or byte, not just "b", as it can remove a lot of confusion.
Taking the last example above, getting 120 Mbit/s over the LAN might indicate a problem while 120 Mbyte/s is full speed for a gigabit connection. Big difference.
Also in an ideal world it's M, not m. A mbit or mbyte is a very small unit.
Taking the last example above, getting 120 Mbit/s over the LAN might indicate a problem while 120 Mbyte/s is full speed for a gigabit connection. Big difference.
Also in an ideal world it's M, not m. A mbit or mbyte is a very small unit.
Don
That's just the nature of wireless, you won't get anywhere near max wireless performance unless you're about 1 foot away from the wireless device.
Wireless is for convenience, not performance.
Wireless is for convenience, not performance.
Caporegime
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+1
nail - head
wireless sucks for performance. it doesn't matter if you have a fancy router or a fancy bridge, etc. wireless is always inferior to wired and this goes for everything in life.
wireless charging - slower than wired
wireless speakers - worse sound quality than wired
wireless headphones - worse sound quality than wired headphones at half the price
wireless wasn't built for quality or performance
Caporegime
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your router only has a limited number of antennas.
basically lets say your router has 3 antennas and you have connected 50 devices to it.
how do you think that will work?
basically each antenna will then need to share itself with 15-20 devices each. so when it is being shared, no single device will ever get full performance.
what you could do is, go round your home and turn off wi-fi on every single device you own. mobiles, laptops, consoles, pc's, tv's AVR's, etc.
then reboot the router then use your surface pro in the same room and see the difference.
basically more wireless devices means more sharing means less performance.
Cheesy video but quite interesting anyway.
Doesn't address Psycho Sonny's point though - if anything 2:10 in the video agrees with him by suggesting more APs is exactly what you need with lots of clients.
Edit: I see your point though that the antennas are NOT split amongst clients, they are used in a very complex and dynamic way (thanks to MIMO). His point about the total theoretical throughput being divided by the number of clients (and note half duplex as mentioned by someone else) is good though.
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I'd strongly encourage everyone to please write bit or byte, not just "b", as it can remove a lot of confusion.
Taking the last example above, getting 120 Mbit/s over the LAN might indicate a problem while 120 Mbyte/s is full speed for a gigabit connection. Big difference.
Also in an ideal world it's M, not m. A mbit or mbyte is a very small unit.
Having a quick scan of this thread that's definitely the first thing that comes to mind.
OP appears to being confused at every step of the way by a basic misunderstanding of what to expect combined with a fundamental misunderstanding of the information he's looking at and trying to understand.
I'd strongly encourage everyone to please write bit or byte, not just "b", as it can remove a lot of confusion.
Taking the last example above, getting 120 Mbit/s over the LAN might indicate a problem while 120 Mbyte/s is full speed for a gigabit connection. Big difference.
Also in an ideal world it's M, not m. A mbit or mbyte is a very small unit.
I don't think anyone is confused about mega bits vs mega bytes though? In my post, I specifically wrote "mbps" to mean that I was talking about mega bits per second. If I wanted to talk about Mega Bytes per second, then yes, I would have used "MBps" or written it as "MB/s". In case the OP is not aware of the difference, then yes, this might be a good time to familiarize yourself with the very important difference.
About the only thing that hasn't caused issue is the unit of measurement.
The problem I have is being willing to understand why Windows / the router reports massively higher speeds than I am actually getting, which everyone seems to be saying is effectively windows / the router making these throughout numbers up.
Also I don't understand how an AC 2x2 mimo device like the surface (with a top speed of 800ish Mbps) connected to an AC 3x3 mimo router, cannot maintain a greater than 70Mbps connection to a 120Mbps fibre link (within 1 foot of the router), especially when the connection to the router is reporting a transfer rate of at least 400Mbps.
The facts I do have are (using the iPhone 6s as an example):
1) the external fibre connection is 120mb. As proven by connecting to the router via cat 6 cable.
2) the router's own config page and the SweetSpots app on the iPhone 6s (a 2x2 tx/rx wifi ac chipset) reports transfer rates between the router and the phone of approx 400Mbps.
3) speedtest on the phone only manages 60/70Mbps (with the phone the same distance as in fact 2)
Grumble grumble.
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Soldato
I don't think anyone is confused about mega bits vs mega bytes though? In my post, I specifically wrote "mbps" to mean that I was talking about mega bits per second.
"mbps" = milli bits per second
