I just upgraded my internet to 1 gigabit and my provider gave me a new modem/wifi router. However when doing speed test my wifi only gets around 520 down. I connected ethernet to my pc and I get full speed I’m paying for. So I noticed my pc has wifi 6 and this modem doesn’t so I bought a wifi 6 router. I connected it to the modem and my pc even recognized it was wifi 6, great! Check my speeds and now my wifi get only 300 down with new router? I went into the modem setting to try to turn wifi off completely to only use the new wifi 6 router but none of the setting are editable, I can’t seem to change them. I assume having 2 wifi routers in the same house probably not good but my connection strength is fine on both. I don’t know a whole lot about routers and modems but any ideas on why the speed dropped instead of giving me the full speed like ethernet or even close to it?
500+ Mbps is really good for WiFi, really anything over 300 Mbps is more than enough for phones/laptops doing normal tasks.
For comparison, a 4k Netflix stream uses 15Mbps, and a 10GB file would download in just over 4 minutes on 300 Mbps
For devices that need low latency and more bandwidth, wired is the way to go
Here are the important variables for performance:
- Proximity to your WiFi router
- Your client radio’s MIMO capability
- Noise from other radios in the neighborhood
In all, 300 to 500 is what I’d expect with modern gear in a typical household. You may be able to consistently get more if you are in a radio-quiet area or very near the router.
