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[Chrysalis]

Wow yeah 20mbit is pretty bad for 5ghz.

[banger]

Wow yeah 20mbit is pretty bad for 5ghz.

That was on my i5 laptop with SSD. I immediately tested on PC with ethernet and 60m which is all I can get. I swapped the connection to my N router and got 60meg straight away.

One weird thing checking the laptop adapter speed it said 433meg but looking at the details it said 2.4ghz channel 9. Yet I double checked the connection and it was 5g. So on the router I disabled 2.4ghz but windows 10 still insisted I was connected to 2.4ghz channel 9. Only after rebooting the router it changed to 5ghz channel 100.

[Alex Atkin UK]

WiFi can be such a weird beast.   I spent years where I couldn't hit my broadband speed over WiFi but I could access my NAS at much higher speeds than my broadband was.

[banger]

Current signal strength graphs upstairs and downstairs of the DSL-N55U. Get around 100 mbit lan transfer downstairs. See how the new router compares.

[banger]

The ac58u arrived and seems pretty good. Havent tested LAN speed on laptop yet but below is a speed test which is about the max I can get out of my line.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1582733408772004455

Edit: Lan speed is about 200mbit up and down on both PCs and TV seems to like 5ghz which was a problem with the 8924.

[banger]

Guess what. I have ordered another router from Amazon to try. I came across a review of the rt-ac58u against the rt-ac1200g+ and the 1200 performs much better in the review tests. If it performs better with my real world testing I will be returning the ac58u.

https://www.digitalcitizen.life/reviewing-asus-rt-ac58u-ac1300-router

[burakkucat]

   

[Alex Atkin UK]

The person who wrote that review doesn't seem very knowledgeable IMO.

I don't see any mention of what client they are using beyond the Surface Pro 3 (am I supposed to by psychic and know its specs?), what channel and width they have 5Ghz on, etc.

Also telling people to orient channels one specific way for optimum performance is also bad advice, WiFi is never that simple and in fact with antennas at an angle I've always had considerably worse performance than having them perfectly vertical.

[banger]

That is why I am going to run some of my own tests to prove/disprove the review. I think he does mention the desktop specs he is also using in the article.

[banger]

Something odd with my wifi network. ON first install I was getting 200 mbit on both LAN transfers on both Laptop and downstairs PC. Then today my laptop slowed right down to 40 mbit and PC downstairs was 100 up 200 down.

Checked the speeds again tonight  and the Laptop is 100 up 200 down, PC downstairs is 100 up 150 down. When the laptop was playing up I connected to the ethernet port on the router and was getting around 900 up 900 down but as soon as I connected back to wifi it was 40 but now 100/200.

Its very variable, any ideas?

[banger]

The plot thickens.

Speedtest from remote desktop on my main pc to laptop

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1582963938255948655

Physical speedtest when logged on locally to laptop

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1582964014233347255

The laptop is an HP 250 G7 i5 quad core with 8gb ram and SSD, connected on 5ghz at 433.33mbits but when I do a locally logged in speedtest over wifi its half the remote desktop.

LAN Speedtest from remote desktop

Date: 2020-02-29 08:19:40
Folder or Server IP: \\STUDIO-10X64\Temp\
Packet Size: 200 MB to 200 MB
Packet Size Avg: 200,000,000 Bytes
Packets: 1
Total Test Time: 19.81453 sec
Throughput: Average
Write: 11.0595 (144,672,656)
Read: 8.1311 (196,776,070)
Write Speed: 144.67 Mbps
Read Speed: 196.78 Mbps
Write Cache: Enabled
Read Cache: Disabled
Status: Finished...

Results of local LAN test when logged on locally

Date: 2020-02-29 08:21:57
Folder or Server IP: \\STUDIO-10X64\Temp\
Packet Size: 200 MB to 200 MB
Packet Size Avg: 200,000,000 Bytes
Packets: 1
Total Test Time: 61.3896 sec
Throughput: Average
Write: 35.2139 (45,436,539)
Read: 25.1103 (63,718,796)
Write Speed: 45.44 Mbps
Read Speed: 63.72 Mbps
Write Cache: Enabled
Read Cache: Disabled
Status: Finished...

What's goin on?

[Chrysalis]

Something odd with my wifi network. ON first install I was getting 200 mbit on both LAN transfers on both Laptop and downstairs PC. Then today my laptop slowed right down to 40 mbit and PC downstairs was 100 up 200 down.

Checked the speeds again tonight  and the Laptop is 100 up 200 down, PC downstairs is 100 up 150 down. When the laptop was playing up I connected to the ethernet port on the router and was getting around 900 up 900 down but as soon as I connected back to wifi it was 40 but now 100/200.

Its very variable, any ideas?

Neighbours could have auto scanning wifi, a lot of vendor devices do this now so they change channels often, so in other words interment interference.

[banger]

Didn't the BT home hub used to do this? I am sending the RT-AC58U back on Monday as a RT-AC1200G+ arrived today as I read it had a better signal. Also looking at the 1200G wireless log I noticed it changed channel from 100 to 36 as it was "out of service" about 8pm tonight. I have seen a BT hub in my network list.

[Alex Atkin UK]

They are supposed to switch to channel 36 when they detect a DFS hit but often fail to switch back once the frequency is clear.

Most auto scanning APs do a very poor job, they fail to take into account overlapping channels.  This was confusing on 2.4Ghz but its a thousand times worse on 5Ghz as it seems different vendors report channels differently.

Ubiquiti are particularly annoying about it as sometimes (such as in their Litebeam units) they report the actual channel frequency rather than the channel number.  It also entirely automatically picks the channel, seemingly with complete disregard for other networks.

Then there is the fact some APs report the first channel, some report the center channel, so what is channel 100 on one AP might be a completely different section of the spectrum to another AP.  Extremely annoying.

To further confuse things, I don't think Android can detect above 80Mhz channel width, and older Android couldn't detect channel width at all.  So WiFi scanners are often wrong about what frequencies are in use.

[banger]

Thanks for the explanation Alex. I live on the Newcastle Airport flight path, could it be a passing plane has made my AP jump from 100 to 36. I dont see any local 5ghz signals on the Acrylic scanner. It has been at 36 since last night.