4 ms·

I recently bought an 802.11ac wifi adapter promising a nice theoretical 600Mbs in the 5Ghz band and all I was able to get from it was a practical 65-70Mbs (at 2

I recently bought an 802.11ac wifi adapter promising a nice theoretical 600Mbs in the 5Ghz band and all I was able to get from it was a practical 65-70Mbs (at 2 meters from an 802.11ac router) using the best drivers under Windows. Under Linux the (5Ghz)AC mode didn't work (buggy driver; no vendor support) so I was back in 802.11n mode. Quite underwhelming after spending 200 euros on router and adapter. I will definitely not "early adopt" wifi 802.11ah whenever it appears..

ghshephard 11y ago
If you get a reasonably good combination of hardware/drivers, 802.11ac works well. I'm able to get 407.99 Mb/s Down, 462.39 Mb/s Up on a 2012 Macbook Air + RT-AC87U WiFi Hotspot on 5 Ghz to speedtest.net in Singapore.
- pmjordan 11y ago
  I can confirm similar local measurements with MacBook Pros and a D-Link DAP-2950 across a room with a wood partition blocking line of sight. If the AP is advertised as 600Mbit/s, chances are it only supports 1 or 2 streams (MIMO antennas) per band. Most laptops only have 2, but even so the signal quality will be much better wih a 3- or 4- way MIMO setup on the AP end. (The D-Link has 6 antennas, so 3-way MIMO for both 5GHz and 2.4.) In addition to number of antennas, orientation also makes a big difference. Finally, wireless access points seem to be one of those things where quality varies a lot. I hated wifi for its unreliability until I bought a decent (professional/small-to-medium-business grade) AP 8 months ago. Not a single connection problem since, even with the notoriously affected Mac hardware and OSX software versions.
bcook 11y ago
I get ~180Mbit with my Asus RT-N66U (802.11n) with 2x2 clients and the RT-N66U is capable of 3x3. A friend recorded over 700Mbit with his Nexus 9 and an Asus 802.11ac AP. You should be getting muuuch faster speeds. snbforums is a good place for wifi help.
- leaveyou 11y ago
  My router is an asus rt-ac68u and I have tomato installed on it (I wonder if that's the problem..). The wifi adapter is netgear a6100. The testing was performed in an internal network. I will keep troubleshooting.
  - bcook 11y ago
    Stock firmware is known to have the best wireless. If you want a more featureful alternative firmware, try AsusWRT-merlin. It is practically an enhanced stock.
    - leaveyou 11y ago
      I tried merlin before and I'm really torn.. tomato does some things clearly better (dns-crypt, ftps, file sharing, bit torrent, UI, customization) and I wouldn't give up tomato if it wasn't strictly necessary.
dingo_bat 11y ago
I get ~90Mbps with 802.11n on my HP ultrabook. It seems there is something wrong with your setup.

ghshephard 11y ago

If you get a reasonably good combination of hardware/drivers, 802.11ac works well. I'm able to get 407.99 Mb/s Down, 462.39 Mb/s Up on a 2012 Macbook Air + RT-AC87U WiFi Hotspot on 5 Ghz to speedtest.net in Singapore.

pmjordan 11y ago
I can confirm similar local measurements with MacBook Pros and a D-Link DAP-2950 across a room with a wood partition blocking line of sight. If the AP is advertised as 600Mbit/s, chances are it only supports 1 or 2 streams (MIMO antennas) per band. Most laptops only have 2, but even so the signal quality will be much better wih a 3- or 4- way MIMO setup on the AP end. (The D-Link has 6 antennas, so 3-way MIMO for both 5GHz and 2.4.) In addition to number of antennas, orientation also makes a big difference. Finally, wireless access points seem to be one of those things where quality varies a lot. I hated wifi for its unreliability until I bought a decent (professional/small-to-medium-business grade) AP 8 months ago. Not a single connection problem since, even with the notoriously affected Mac hardware and OSX software versions.

bcook 11y ago

I get ~180Mbit with my Asus RT-N66U (802.11n) with 2x2 clients and the RT-N66U is capable of 3x3. A friend recorded over 700Mbit with his Nexus 9 and an Asus 802.11ac AP. You should be getting muuuch faster speeds. snbforums is a good place for wifi help.

leaveyou 11y ago
My router is an asus rt-ac68u and I have tomato installed on it (I wonder if that's the problem..). The wifi adapter is netgear a6100. The testing was performed in an internal network. I will keep troubleshooting.
- bcook 11y ago
  Stock firmware is known to have the best wireless. If you want a more featureful alternative firmware, try AsusWRT-merlin. It is practically an enhanced stock.
  - leaveyou 11y ago
    I tried merlin before and I'm really torn.. tomato does some things clearly better (dns-crypt, ftps, file sharing, bit torrent, UI, customization) and I wouldn't give up tomato if it wasn't strictly necessary.

dingo_bat 11y ago

I get ~90Mbps with 802.11n on my HP ultrabook. It seems there is something wrong with your setup.