Wireless set to 300Mbps but laptops only get 150Mbps.

[azazel1024]

All APs have issues if you load it down with too many clients at once. However, if you have 5-6 wireless devices...are they are heavily active at once? I have 7 wireless clients and 4 family members who use them (my 5th is a wee too young to be using anything yet). Even if all of my wireless clients are in use at once, the impact is generally mild. Ignoring the concurrent dual band, spread of devices, etc, even when I was on good old fashioned 2.4GHz 40MHz 300Mbps AP, I could have my tablet, laptop, my wife's tablet and phone and both my son's tablets going at the same time doing modest tasks and see little impact on, say, grabbing a big file off my server to my laptop even if we had, say, a couple of wireless network streams going and web browing my my tablet and my wife's at the same time.

Instead of 160Mbps from the 300Mbps connection I might see 130-150Mbps and a bit more intermitancy.

Sure, 150Mbps means you might see 80Mbps instead and with several devices all at once doing stuff, you might only see 50-60Mbps or something.

Older than 11n devices on your network will hammer stuff badly in terms of bandwidth. Slower 11n devices don't have nearly the impact, but a 65Mbps 11n versus a 450Mbps 11n will still slow the 450Mbps 11n device down a fair amount because the AP is trying to hand out air time, so the 65Mbps might get half the air time if sharing with that 450Mbps client and both are trying to stream data at max rates (IE big file transfers or something), so both see half bandwidth or something approximating that. If the 65Mbps client was faster, it could get its stuff done sooner and the other client could get all of the bandwidth back sooner, or vice versa.

I would see if the wireless card is replacable with a faster one, but you'll also need to add an antenna in to the laptop if there isn't already a second unused one installed.

 

[thiggins]

Your home network is limited by your Access Point, and not by the wifi adapters on laptops and cell phones.

Your Access Point puts out 300mps for all devices on 2.4ghz band.

300mps / 6 = 50mbps for each device on your home LAN network. 50*0.6=30mbps

Now take your ISP speed of 50mbps / 6 = 8.30mbps for each device. 8.30*0.6=5mbps


Wifi Access Point will always be the weak point when dealing with many devices connected to the AP.

Actually, wireless throughput is limited by the capability of the client devices. See How Much Throughput Can You Really Get From An AC Router?

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Actually, wireless throughput is limited by the capability of the client devices. See How Much Throughput Can You Really Get From An AC Router?

And that is with all 802.11ac class adapters which theoretically should be more efficient than 802.11n, although perhaps also less optimised drivers.

 

[KGB7]

Actually, wireless throughput is limited by the capability of the client devices. See How Much Throughput Can You Really Get From An AC Router?

We aretalking about different things all together.

 

[thiggins]

We aretalking about different things all together.

How so? From my understanding of your post, I thought this addresses it directly. Available bandwidth is not a simple matter of dividing # of clients by the AP's maximum link rate.

 

[KGB7]

How so? From my understanding of your post, I thought this addresses it directly. Available bandwidth is not a simple matter of dividing # of clients by the AP's maximum link rate.

OP forgot his AP is 300mbps and not 150mbps. He complained that his laptop with only 150mbps will slow down entire wifi network for all devices, because it wasnt connected at 300mbps. But instead, his AP will provide another 150mbps to share with other devices.
Thus i posted theoretical math, as what and how things should be.

What happens in real world situation is a whole new ball game, with too many variables to calculate.

Thus if OP wants multiple wifi devices to have better speeds on his network, he will have to use an AP/ wifi router that can do 600mbps on single band or get dual band router.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

OP forgot his AP is 300mbps and not 150mbps. He complained that his laptop with only 150mbps will slow down entire wifi network for all devices, because it wasnt connected at 300mbps. But instead, his AP will provide another 150mbps to share with other devices.
Thus i posted theoretical math, as what and how things should be.

What happens in real world situation is a whole new ball game, with too many variables to calculate.

Thus if OP wants multiple wifi devices to have better speeds on his network, he will have to use an AP/ wifi router that can do 600mbps on single band or get dual band router.

You're overcomplicating things for no good reason.

For all intents and purposes OP was correct, devices connected at 150Mbit WILL increase contention with each other (because all file transfers will take longer) compared to if they were connected at 300Mbit. That is all you need to know.

The specifics of how they might not share that bandwidth equally over all clients is not really the point. I don't think anyone would assume they would as every clients WiFi signal has a different path and interference, so naturally it won't share equally. But it doesn't alter the basic premise, that the faster the link speeds, the more bandwidth there is "likely" available per device.

 

[KGB7]

You're overcomplicating things for no good reason.

For all intents and purposes OP was correct, devices connected at 150Mbit WILL increase contention with each other (because all file transfers will take longer) compared to if they were connected at 300Mbit. That is all you need to know.

The specifics of how they might not share that bandwidth equally over all clients is not really the point. I don't think anyone would assume they would as every clients WiFi signal has a different path and interference, so naturally it won't share equally. But it doesn't alter the basic premise, that the faster the link speeds, the more bandwidth there is "likely" available per device.

You not seeing the bigger picture.


The current AP is a bottleneck when multiple devices are connected and share the 300mbps. He suggested having 5-6 devices connected to AP. At that point, it doesnt matter if his laptop is connected at 150 or 300, the bandwidth at that point will be none existent.
Even if 4 devices are connected at 300mbps, they all have to share 300mbps among each other.

The math is very simple. More devices = less bandwidth.

So get a wifi router or AP that supports 600mbps.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Except, the OP didn't say 6 devices concurrently trying to use ALL available bandwidth.

I have an old Nokia N900 connected to my network at 802.11g speeds, but only as a VoIP phone. As its using barely any bandwidth, it doesn't make a big difference to the other devices even though "technically" its forcing the AP to constantly reduce its speed.

In an ideal world we would just have separate WiFi networks on their own channels for every high-bandwidth device, with 5Ghz for everything that can support it. However telling the OP to go out and buy more routers would hardly be the most helpful solution when all they wanted to know is how to get their laptops running at 300Mbit.

Personally I do have two 2.4Ghz 20Mhz networks (technically three but one is unused as its just a BTFON spot) and a 5Ghz 802.11ac network - so I split the load as much as possible. For most people that is totally overkill though.

 

[KGB7]

Except, the OP didn't say 6 devices concurrently trying to use ALL available bandwidth.

I have an old Nokia N900 connected to my network at 802.11g speeds, but only as a VoIP phone. As its using barely any bandwidth, it doesn't make a big difference to the other devices even though "technically" its forcing the AP to constantly reduce its speed.

In an ideal world we would just have separate WiFi networks on their own channels for every high-bandwidth device, with 5Ghz for everything that can support it. However telling the OP to go out and buy more routers would hardly be the most helpful solution when all they wanted to know is how to get their laptops running at 300Mbit.

Personally I do have two 2.4Ghz 20Mhz networks (technically three but one is unused as its just a BTFON spot) and a 5Ghz 802.11ac network - so I split the load as much as possible. For most people that is totally overkill though.

The can of worms was opened, so here we are.

Hi,



1- 150Mbps is a good speed for 1 or 2 laptops. But imagine i have 5 ot 6 devices including phones, all connected. They will all share the same 150mbps mbps bandwidth. So when dividing 150mbps by 6 devices i get 25mbps per device.



So any advices on any specific model or brand that i should buy?

Thanks

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

I guess that does describe using all bandwidth, but I don't believe they were suggesting that was an actual use case just that 150Mbit is a restriction if that DID happen.

It doesn't really alter the outcome that 300Mbit is better than 150Mbit but suggesting they upgrade their router is overkill. You might just as well say they should upgrade to 802.11ac because right now that is the best possible chance of a high speed.

Like I said, they were asking how to get the best out of the equipment they already own. The best bet likely being buying the Intel 802.11ac PCIe cards (if those laptops can be upgraded) because that also makes them somewhat future proof.

 

[KGB7]

Soon or later, OP will run in to issues and will ask us to recommend him a better AP or WiFi router. So might as well provide.him with info now and let him take the needed steps down the road.

 

[doliv]

Hi all,

I just wanted to thank you all that gave me advices and help me on this.

Now i do now wht i don't get 300Mpbs on my laptops, and that is because of my laptops wiffi card limitations that are only capable of 150Mpbs.

So this thread topic is solved, and in order keep this thread usefull for any other user that as the same problem or question that i had he can be clarify.

I will in the next days open some more threads for some moere questions and advices. All you guys where great helping me on this!

Once again thanks.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Soon or later, OP will run in to issues and will ask us to recommend him a better AP or WiFi router. So might as well provide.him with info now and let him take the needed steps down the road.

Not necessarily and if that was the case why wouldn't you suggest an 802.11ac model instead as that allows more leeway.

If they really were going to do heavy data transfer on a regular basis, there is still no substitute for good old gigabit ethernet.

 

[KGB7]

Not necessarily and if that was the case why wouldn't you suggest an 802.11ac model instead as that allows more leeway.

If they really were going to do heavy data transfer on a regular basis, there is still no substitute for good old gigabit ethernet.

So he has more options at lower price.