Internet: 1Gb Ethernet connection becomes 80Mb WiFi

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dipen.a.patel

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Dec 18, 2017
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My landlord has a ~1Gb internet connection in the living room. Ethernet from my laptop straight to the modem is roughly ~900Mb (the WiFi is next to the modem). The WiFi signal in my room is terrible.

Long story shot, I got a second WiFi router and set up an access point in my room. Ethernet from my laptop to this second WiFi router is practically 900Mb too which is great.

Both WiFi routers are DLinks (868-L in the living room, 850L in my room, with a long Ethernet cable connecting both)

But despite the fact that the WiFi router is only 1 meter away from most of my devices, speed test shows I’m getting only ~80Mb via WiFi. I know WiFi is supposed to be slower but I was expecting at least around 400Mb

Is there any advice I can get to improve my speeds? Any help would be appreciated
 
Solution
V
With the DIR-850L, the "AC1200" chipset D-Link advertises means Phy rates of 300 Mbps at 2.4 GHz and 867 Mbps at 5 GHz. http://mcsindex.com/ shows that those correspond to 64-QAM 5/6 @ 40 MHz on 2.4 GHz and 256-QAM 5/6 @ 80 MHz on 5 GHz. This is via 2 spatial streams.

THe DIR_868L is an AC1750 chipset, meaning Phy rates of 450 Mbps on 2.4 GHz and 1300 Mbps on 5 GHz via 3 spatial streams. So that's superior in terms of the radio module.

Any attenuation caused by distance or obstructions will lower the modulation scheme negotiated between the router and connected device, so for instance, going from 64-QAM 5/6 to 16-QAM 1/2 would imply a drop in the Phy rate from 450 to 180 Mbps.

It's hard to say why the iPhone is that low, assuming...
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dipen.a.patel

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Dec 18, 2017
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I have 3 devices that connect to the 850.

Laptop 1 is always physically connected via Ethernet and should most of the time have a consistent 900Mb connection

Laptop 2 (connected to 850L via WiFi) shows 80Mb. It has an Intel Centrino Wireless N 1030

New iPhone also shows 80Mb

If it also matters, my WiFi router has two bands (regular and 5GHz) Laptop 2 seems to not be able to discover the 5GHz band whereas my iPhone can pick up both
 
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vmfantom

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Nov 28, 2017
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The Centrino Wireless-N 1030 is a single-input-multiple-output device (1x2), and the DIR-850L is 2x2 MIMO. So of the 300 Mbps Phy rate the DIR-850L can support, the N 1030 may be able to use only 150 Mbps. Multiply the Phy rate by 40% and you have a good average for throughput at zero distance. Laptop 2 can't pick up 5 GHz by design, unless you add a dual band adapter to it.

The iPhone should be able to receive both 2.4 and 5 GHz, but it's possible that band steering on the DIR-850L would make the iPhone get homed to the 5 GHz band instead. You could check the router's UI to see if that's a setting you can disable, and/or make a discrete 5 GHz SSID that the iPhone would stay on.
 
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dipen.a.patel

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Dec 18, 2017
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I think I understand. Regardless of my internet connection, I'm bottlenecked by the max rate of the wifi router I'm using (300Mbps) and the old wifi card I'm using means I can only support half of it maximum. So instead of expecting half of 1Gbps I should be expecting half of half of 300 i.e. roughly 80mbps which is what I'm already getting on Laptop2. That somewhat makes sense but where does 300 come from? I tried googling and couldn't find that number:
http://www.dlink.com/no/nb/-/media/consumer_products/dir/dir-850l/datasheet/dir_850l_datasheet_eu_en.pdf

As a solution to Laptop2, I assume I should find out what the "Phy rate" is for the router in the living room (the 868L) and consider swapping the routers around (and changing the access point arrangement where necessary), or consider finding a better wifi router?

With the iPhone, I specifically had it connected to the 5GHz band since if I understood correctly, this band is less likely to have interference and hence ideally i should have a better connection. So while i semi understand the issue with Laptop2 being on 80Mbps, I don't quite understand why the iphone is on 80Mbps too
 
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vmfantom

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Nov 28, 2017
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With the DIR-850L, the "AC1200" chipset D-Link advertises means Phy rates of 300 Mbps at 2.4 GHz and 867 Mbps at 5 GHz. http://mcsindex.com/ shows that those correspond to 64-QAM 5/6 @ 40 MHz on 2.4 GHz and 256-QAM 5/6 @ 80 MHz on 5 GHz. This is via 2 spatial streams.

THe DIR_868L is an AC1750 chipset, meaning Phy rates of 450 Mbps on 2.4 GHz and 1300 Mbps on 5 GHz via 3 spatial streams. So that's superior in terms of the radio module.

Any attenuation caused by distance or obstructions will lower the modulation scheme negotiated between the router and connected device, so for instance, going from 64-QAM 5/6 to 16-QAM 1/2 would imply a drop in the Phy rate from 450 to 180 Mbps.

It's hard to say why the iPhone is that low, assuming your Internet connection is higher than 80 Mbps and isn't a bottleneck itself.

One problem I'd have with either of the 'can' shaped D-Link routers is that it's not clear where the internal antennas should be pointed to avoid reflecting signal back into a heatsink on the PCB inside the case. I prefer routers with detachable antennas so that the antennas can be upgraded for higher gain (since the stock antennas are usually 2-3 dBi and you can find 10 dBi or higher replacement antennas). Bringing the 868L upstairs sounds like it's worth trying. If you're still not getting better than 80 Mbps on 5 GHz after that, let me know!
 
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Solution
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dipen.a.patel

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Dec 18, 2017
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So I swapped both 850L and 868L routers around. It’s been some time since I played around with the routers so I’m a litter rusty

The 850 is now in the living room. I factory reset it and tested the connection via Ethernet to make sure it works as expected.

LAN IP address 192.168.0.1
DHCP range is 192.168.0.100-199



For the 868, again I factory reset, I set it to

Wireless AP mode
Internet connection is now Static IP
IP 192.168.0.2
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Default gateway 192.168.0.1
Primary DNS Server 192.168.0.1
Secondary DNS Server is left blank.

Both routers are connected through ethernet cable via their one of four LAN ports (not the WAN port)

For the life of me I can’t get the internet connection working.

My laptop is Ethernet connected to the 868 in my room and I can access both routers pages, but no internet

With the original set up (the 850 in my room) I just had to disable DHCP server and set the the IP to 192.168.0.2 and it would work. But with the other way round, the 868L forces me to also fill in the Default Gateway and Primary DNS Server. Accessing this information would also give very strange numbers e.g
Something like
default gateway 39.233.xxx.x
Primary dns Server 172.17.x.xx

I’ve also tried finding the 868 manual:
ftp://ftp2.dlink.com/PRODUCTS/DIR-868L/REVA/DIR-868L_MANUAL_1.00_EN.PDF
And setting it up as per page 16 (point 1 could be ignored since the router assigns my computer IP)

But even after this I still can’t connect to the internet :??:

If I go into windows Network and Sharing center and let it diagnose the issue, it says “The DNS server isn’t responding”
 
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vmfantom

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Should the 868 be static rather than dynamic? It seems like you'd want to keep it dynamic, 850 LAN port to 868 WAN port.
 
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dipen.a.patel

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Dec 18, 2017
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I've tried many different arrangements and configurations over the last day or two, including upgrading the firmware but it just doesn't seem to work. It seems so strange that one configuration works fine for one arrangement of the routers but then it fails if i swap the routers around.

The only good news is that my phone seems to not be stuck on 80Mbps anymore after all the playing around i did, now around 250Mbps at 1meter away. While not ideal compared to the >500Mbps i was hoping for, it still certainly is better than before.


Thanks for your comments, it let me learn a lot more about the routers than I originally had, and I'll have a much better idea of what expected speeds are
 
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