4 ms·

Google Fiber has been pretty awesome for a few months. 100+ Mbps up and down consistently over wireless and wired. It's supposed to be 1 Gbps, but the fiber is

Google Fiber has been pretty awesome for a few months. 100+ Mbps up and down consistently over wireless and wired. It's supposed to be 1 Gbps, but the fiber is another room and I can't run ethernet to it. So, the Google WiFi APs mesh is what I use.

aksss 6y ago
Surely you can get over 100Mbps over wifi.. Maybe it's fine for what you do, but modern wifi should get you at least a gig half duplex, half that for 2.4Ghz, right? As far as no ethernet, if it were me I'd find a way. A lot of sins can be forgiven or forgotten with a little drywall mud when your lease is up. And full duplex wired speeds are worth sinning for (IMO). :D
- bscphil 6y ago
  > at least a gig half duplex, half that for 2.4Ghz, right That depends on quite a lot. The quite popular Ubiquiti AC-LITE access point which I use has a max bandwidth of 866.7 Mbps. At 2.4 GHz I can do only about 100 Mbps (there's a lot of traffic), and real-world bandwidth at 5 GHz tops out around 320 Mbps for me (tested with iperf). And the latter only became possible when I enabled 80 MHz channel width, which was somehow disabled on the Unifi firmware. And that's before you get to the issue of what your devices are capable of, especially if they're older. My understanding is that unless you're on WiFi 6, you're limited below 1 Gbps for link speed unless you've got 3 antennas or an extension that can operate with 160 MHz channel width. The first phones that support WiFi 6 are barely two years old. Ubiquiti's first WiFi 6 router still only does 1.5 Gbps, so it's questionable what you'll get in a real world scenario, and the 4x4 MIMO version is still only taking pre-orders.
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    I recently got a new PC, and temporarily moved the old one into a room with no ethernet. It connects to my 4+ years old Archer C1200 wirelessly over 5GHz on another floor in a diagonal room, and speedtest gives 3ms ping, 180Mbps down/164Mbps up. I have a lot of WiFi devices, but this is a single family residence.
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    I used TP link power line adapters for years to solve for this. Worked well.
    - aksss 6y ago
      This is a great point - I often forget about powerline Ethernet but it works great. I still have a couple 1Gbps units in a box somewhere and used it successfully years ago before doing proper cabling. This would be preferable to mesh WiFi if the ac wiring will let you get away with it.
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  With a bit of effort you can run cables that aren’t visible, the landlord wouldn’t even notice. In my leased flat I ran a 10m cable through a brick wall and across a room, fully hidden behind the baseboards. Totally worth it.
  - aksss 6y ago
    In a house I rented years ago, I told the landlord what I wanted to do with Ethernet cabling and jacks and he was more than happy to have me do it (for free), as it added value as far as he was concerned. Just do the job in a workman-like manner. So that might be another option if your landlord isn’t a faceless property management company.
- airhead969 6y ago
  Not with older WiFi cards and older mobile devices. 5.8 GHz is running on everything except cheap smart home devices. I'm plugged into a Google WiFi mesh AP via an 8 port GbE switch on my desktop, and only getting 106 Mbps down / 123 up. I tried plugging-in directly, and it's the same difference. 229 Mbps down / 243 up on an iPad Pro 10.5 from the couch, 268 / 356 near the wall where the main base AP is at, and 335 / 355 right next to the base AP. On the mesh AP, I'm getting 63 / 71. I think it's the physics limitations of 5.8 GHz because base-to-mesh is going 12 m / 40 ft through 2 walls.
i-have-six-arms 6y ago
Oh please, dear, consider higher speed WiFi mesh systems. You can surely achieve near Gbps speed. Although at a high price, potentially with a WiFi6 router (or two).

aksss 6y ago

Surely you can get over 100Mbps over wifi.. Maybe it's fine for what you do, but modern wifi should get you at least a gig half duplex, half that for 2.4Ghz, right? As far as no ethernet, if it were me I'd find a way. A lot of sins can be forgiven or forgotten with a little drywall mud when your lease is up. And full duplex wired speeds are worth sinning for (IMO). :D

bscphil 6y ago
> at least a gig half duplex, half that for 2.4Ghz, right That depends on quite a lot. The quite popular Ubiquiti AC-LITE access point which I use has a max bandwidth of 866.7 Mbps. At 2.4 GHz I can do only about 100 Mbps (there's a lot of traffic), and real-world bandwidth at 5 GHz tops out around 320 Mbps for me (tested with iperf). And the latter only became possible when I enabled 80 MHz channel width, which was somehow disabled on the Unifi firmware. And that's before you get to the issue of what your devices are capable of, especially if they're older. My understanding is that unless you're on WiFi 6, you're limited below 1 Gbps for link speed unless you've got 3 antennas or an extension that can operate with 160 MHz channel width. The first phones that support WiFi 6 are barely two years old. Ubiquiti's first WiFi 6 router still only does 1.5 Gbps, so it's questionable what you'll get in a real world scenario, and the 4x4 MIMO version is still only taking pre-orders.
- lostmsu 6y ago
  I recently got a new PC, and temporarily moved the old one into a room with no ethernet. It connects to my 4+ years old Archer C1200 wirelessly over 5GHz on another floor in a diagonal room, and speedtest gives 3ms ping, 180Mbps down/164Mbps up. I have a lot of WiFi devices, but this is a single family residence.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  I used TP link power line adapters for years to solve for this. Worked well.
  - aksss 6y ago
    This is a great point - I often forget about powerline Ethernet but it works great. I still have a couple 1Gbps units in a box somewhere and used it successfully years ago before doing proper cabling. This would be preferable to mesh WiFi if the ac wiring will let you get away with it.
benhurmarcel 6y ago
With a bit of effort you can run cables that aren’t visible, the landlord wouldn’t even notice. In my leased flat I ran a 10m cable through a brick wall and across a room, fully hidden behind the baseboards. Totally worth it.
- aksss 6y ago
  In a house I rented years ago, I told the landlord what I wanted to do with Ethernet cabling and jacks and he was more than happy to have me do it (for free), as it added value as far as he was concerned. Just do the job in a workman-like manner. So that might be another option if your landlord isn’t a faceless property management company.
airhead969 6y ago
Not with older WiFi cards and older mobile devices. 5.8 GHz is running on everything except cheap smart home devices. I'm plugged into a Google WiFi mesh AP via an 8 port GbE switch on my desktop, and only getting 106 Mbps down / 123 up. I tried plugging-in directly, and it's the same difference. 229 Mbps down / 243 up on an iPad Pro 10.5 from the couch, 268 / 356 near the wall where the main base AP is at, and 335 / 355 right next to the base AP. On the mesh AP, I'm getting 63 / 71. I think it's the physics limitations of 5.8 GHz because base-to-mesh is going 12 m / 40 ft through 2 walls.

i-have-six-arms 6y ago

Oh please, dear, consider higher speed WiFi mesh systems. You can surely achieve near Gbps speed. Although at a high price, potentially with a WiFi6 router (or two).