Wireless bars don't accurately depict signal strength

radaralert

Honorable
Oct 8, 2012
13
0
10,510
Obviously it is just a symbol for easy user interface. But here is what I am wondering. Currently on my desktop I have a pci wireless-n card installed which transmits a 300 mbps data rate. On the other hand my laptop, which is also wireless-n, transmits 72 mbps. When I typed in "netsh wlan show all" in cmd, my desktop shows a signal of 70% while my laptop has 20% both to the same router. Thing is, my desktop always shows 3 or 4 bars and my laptop shows full 5 bars all the time. I figured that my desktop would always have a weaker signal because it is blocked by multiple walls and other things since it is on the ground. This also shows that my laptop, which is has less interference since it is higher up, gets a weaker signal. Is this due to the transmission rates?
 
They are only indirectly related. Signal strength on most device means exactly that. How strong of a signal are but most could care less if the data is corrupted or not. Some drivers have a second meter which represent signal quality which is a better indicator.

The speed is also somewhat a lie. It only represents the negotiated encoding that the devices think they can achieve. This is adjusted on the fly if it gets too many errors. Your other issue is there are many variations of N. This is why you see numbers like 150,300,450. It will negotiate the fastest it can get restricted by which features are supported. If the 72 number is a actual value (ie it would actually be 72.2) then it implies you have pretty good signal but are being restricted by lack of supported features on your laptop. This number represents the fastest possible speed for a radio that cannot run 40mhz channels and does not support mimo. Both those feature will double the speed if the PC actually had them so 4x72 or about 300.