Two Different Connection Speeds
- Thread starter Soft Cars
- Start date
You might check another item say your cell phone or a tablet to see if the results are similar.
The wireless signal from the router is like having a time of flight. The farther away you are from the radio, the longer it takes internet packets to go back and forth, resulting in slower speed.
EDIT: What actually happens is the access point and device communicate a signal strength value and the access point slows your speed down to a rate that can correct for the damaged data that occurs from poor signal. As you move farther away from the access point, your signal gets worse. Damaged data needs to be retransmitted until it comes back undamaged. If half your data is damaged, it's like a speed reduction of one half, or like taking twice as long to go back and forth.
If you go even farther away, your device may roam you to the 2.4ghz connection as it will have the best signal at long distance, but slower speed.
EDIT: What actually happens is the access point and device communicate a signal strength value and the access point slows your speed down to a rate that can correct for the damaged data that occurs from poor signal. As you move farther away from the access point, your signal gets worse. Damaged data needs to be retransmitted until it comes back undamaged. If half your data is damaged, it's like a speed reduction of one half, or like taking twice as long to go back and forth.
If you go even farther away, your device may roam you to the 2.4ghz connection as it will have the best signal at long distance, but slower speed.
Last edited:
likely the wireless link is slower due to being farther away/weaker signal.
ISP provided routers are not known for having the best signal or speed.. esp over longer ranges/through walls.
Normal, working as expected would be my answer to the OP..
So this is normal?
100% normal, and actually quite good performance for a consumer router.
It travels at almost the speed of light, for Wi-Fi the difference is imperceptible.
Yes. On a Mac I believe if you hit “option” then click the Wi-Fi symbol at the top it’ll show you the speed of the connection to the router itself.
This is true, but I'm keeping it layman on purpose. Explaining RSSI and packet loss isn't helpful here. In the end, it's practically equivalent to time of flight.
This. The result is solid. I’d leave it alone. You won’t be able to feel the difference between 400 and 700Mbps unless you routinely download large files. And even then the download servers/mirrors are often throttled.
See if you can actually use the 5Ghz band as that is about the top speed for 2.4Ghz. I routinely can max out my cell phone at home but I have an 802.11ac AP and a device that can use it.
Last edited:
Shoot, I read it as plugged into the actual router. Ya you are correct. FYI that is about 25ish ft away from mine with a wall in-between.
I am impressed that you get 450 Mbps 50 ft from router….My home from 1910 eats WiFi speed and it halves or quarters speed 25 feet away with horse hair plaster walls and center chimney etc. I have a hardwired backhaul Mesh system because of my home .
Yes, old houses can kill wifi. I gutted and redid my main floor bathroom in my 1949 house and I had a whole bunch of metal mesh in every corner and the complete ceiling in my plaster. So basically, I had a semi Faraday Cage in that section of house. I can only assume there is more like that through out the house.
If it's anything like my house I grew up in there may even be a room using diamond mesh backed plaster! Luckily that was before WiFi but it was nice to know I had my own built in faraday cage.
50 feet away with walls? Pretty much so. Walls and other obstructions are the big ones. Also placement of the wireless antennas, although many aren’t adjustable.
The commercial Wi-Fi at large businesses (like Target) is probably ceiling mounted and can travel long distances in a large space with less attenuation if there aren’t walls. There might be obstructions, but often I find maximum signal strength through most of a building.
Oddly should be thankful it works at all
Wi-Fi 2005 era barely worked unless you could see the router and still couldn’t be too far.
A single wall and it likely wouldn’t even work. I remember people walking around messing with speed back then.
Things have come a long way.
I’m in the basement below my router and only get 270mb up and down but 750 directly off the tap
Last edited:
My first home Wi-Fi was an SMC Networks 802.11b box I got in 2003. I got a rebate on it and actually got it before I could get my ASDL (1.5 mbit/sec) running. At the time I thought it was pretty fast. It was able to go through walls, but my Apple notebook was seeing about one out of three signal strength from my bedroom and it was inconsistent.
Still - 2.4 GHz theoretically has a long range. I had a Siemens Gigaset phone system. That thing had a tremendous run time (published 12 hours on 1200 mAh AA batteries) and maybe a 400 ft range. I took the handset outdoors and it never failed to work even up to 100 feet away and the signal going through the home/walls/trees. I think I took it for a walk once and it was still working 300 feet away.
The wave travels at the speed of light, but the signal strength to tell between 1s and 0s get weaker and weaker and they have to reduce the data rate between them (QAM) to still work, hence reducing "speed". MIMO and stronger error correction code will help but can only do so much, you have to go from 5GHz to 2.4GHz if distance is far. Going to 6GHz in the future would be even worse.
