Horrible Wifi, Blazing Fast Direct Connection?

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The White Knight

The White Knight

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Oct 20, 2013
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My TM-AC1900 is on all default settings. Despite disabling router firewall, switching to 5ghz and playing with other things I have no idea why i'm getting 180mb down directly connected to router and 30 down on its wifi.

Upload speed is unaffected.

No neighbors, no other competing wifi signals.

Modem and router is brand new. It's definitely the router. I used 3 devices to troubleshoot and drill it down.
 
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J


If you're using an 802.11ac router with an 802.11n adapter you won't be able to get the maximum speeds the router can give...
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jdcranke07

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If you are trying to send signal through a lot of walls or areas where HVACs or metal could be in the walls that could screw with your signal big time. Also, make sure that the wifi adapters you are using are capable of higher speeds. If you have a AC1900 router, then the best adapter will be the AC1300 Asus wifi card. Do not use USB wifi sticks. Their interfaces and or their firmware sucks. If you can install a wifi card into the motherboard via PCIe slots, that would be best if you must have wifi. Otherwise I would stay with the LAN line for now.
 
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The White Knight

The White Knight

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I've switch to lan, got out the extra long oldshool cat5e haha. There are 0 walls in between me and the modem/router I am only 20ft away. My network card is unknown. It's not usb it's on the board but it was a Realtek now Windows10 calls it just a Mediatek 802.11n LAN Card. I wonder if that's the issue. I mean generally speaking in all my experience I have been able to get near same speeds as wired but with maybe a little overhead for the portability. This is 1/5 of the speeds! That can't be right. I checked on 3 other devices which all get the same wifi speeds. 3 different LAN cards cant match wired speeds?
 
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jdcranke07

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If you're using an 802.11ac router with an 802.11n adapter you won't be able to get the maximum speeds the router can give you. You have to have an 802.11ac adapter in you computer in order to get better speeds. For now LAN will be best till you replace that card you currently have.
 
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jdcranke07

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All 802.11ac routers and adapters work together regardless of brand. However, the fastest on the market right now tops out at 1300mbps transfer speeds and it's the Asus PCE-AC68 wifi card adapter. I have one in each rig that I built and they're awesome. They even allow for an antenna extension to be connected and the antenna base is magnetized, so you can attach it to your case if you have a metal panel. There is a USB form of the same card, but please do not get that one since USB versions suck. Lol
 
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The White Knight

The White Knight

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I have a similar one on my other super build its magnetized to the outside but this is my first experience with crossing platforms I always just assumed they were backwards compatible. It's kinda dumb really, any good rig should be wired especially for optimum gaming results but wow never has wifi disappointed me so much. Technology is supposed to get better!
 
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jdcranke07

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Wifi is faster than LAN if you have the appropriate equipment. 802.11n is supported by your router, but here's the catch. 802.11n only goes up to 600mbps transfer speeds until you get the bigger AC5300 series routers where it will got 1000mbps. 802.11ac is the newer and faster bandwidth that will allow for the fastest wifi transfer speeds. On your router it will go up to 1300mbps total for the one 5Ghz band you have. Now that is split up between devices, so don't attach everything to it or you won't get good performance. Same goes for the 2.4Ghz band which is your 802.11n. If you had an AC3200 series router you would have a tri-band setup. Meaning you would have two 5Ghz bands that top out at 1300mbps each (I have this, the Netgear R8000). The extra band doesn't speed up the other, it just allows for more devices to utilize the 802.11ac bandwidth without seriously hurting your performance on other devices. Hopefully, this makes more sense. If not I can clarify a bit more.
 
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The White Knight

The White Knight

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I am confused why a 600mbps transfer speed does not allow the 802.11n card to reach those speeds, or are those local file transfer speeds only? It seems like you're talking about a setup with many devices too. I tend to restrict simple streaming devices to wifi and speed intensive devices like gaming rigs hard wired.

I know having an a/c router and an n card isn't ideal but why such a decrease in performance? I had performance internet that always got me 30mb down on wifi when I switched to the xfinity xtreme 150, the first 2 times I ran the test I got 80down then the next 3-5x it was like 40/50 down but again, while wired i'm seeing 180 down.

While writing this I tried switching the router to n only with no difference in results. I'll sleep better at night knowing the exact reason/obstacle in my way.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/5376426264.png
 
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The White Knight

The White Knight

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I had another idea, I realized switching to N only wasn't working because 5ghz doesn't operate for N or something like that. Anyway I switched to N only and back to 2.4ghz at the same time (again it's a dual band router with 3 antennas) and now my wifi speed doubled from 40 to 80 with my upload normal at 12. This is still less than half of my advertised speeds.

Why is it still not working even though I'm telling it to behave like a normal N router with my N network card?

Why is download affected only each time but never upload speeds?
 
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jdcranke07

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I have a feeling that there is a measurement confusion. What I'm talking about with Mbps is Megabit per second and not MB/s which is Megabyte per second. You will divide Mbps by 8 to get MB/s.
Also, the transfer speeds I was mentioning are only the communication between your adapter and the router, not your overall internet speed. Your speed test means you have a really fast internet connection and you don't have to worry about that. Keep in mind that most default Ethernet ports are going to be gigabit capable meaning you will be capable of 128 MB/s speeds just through one of those ports. You can use a Network Interface Card (NIC) to tether multiple together if needed, but I digress. Your "N" band is the 2.4Ghz band and you will only max at 600Mbps or 75MB/s for a single device. If you have more than one attached to that band, then you will divide that according the number of devices you have attached and that is your max potential for each device if all are used simultaneously. The same applies for your 5Ghz band ("AC" band), the literal difference is just the total bandwidth which translates to speed if you limit the number of devices to a select few if not just one only. That's why, theoretically, your wifi if faster than your LAN. But, it only works that way if you have one or two devices per band. That's also why I prefer to have the tri-band routers, if I'm more concerned with wifi performance per individual device.
 
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jdcranke07

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Yes, currently the "AC" or 5Ghz band is faster than LAN marginally for a single device. However, with the AC5300 series routers the "N" or 2.4Ghz band is topping out at 1000Mbps or 125MB/s for a single device. Disclaimer: this is all assuming you have no restrictions such as walls or HVACs or other routers having conflicting signals. So far, from what we know, your situation is ideal for the least amount of interference possible (as long as the gateway's wifi is still turned off).
 
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