4 ms·

I have never seen a WiFi 5 device benchmark anywhere close to 866Mbps in real world scenarios. Most of the time, you're lucky to reach half of the "theoretical

I have never seen a WiFi 5 device benchmark anywhere close to 866Mbps in real world scenarios. Most of the time, you're lucky to reach half of the "theoretical" numbers for WiFi due to the way that they're calculated. I would almost be amazed if you could consistently max out your 300Mbps internet connection over WiFi 5, but that's probably just within reach of WiFi 5, assuming there isn't much interference for WiFi 5 to handle. EDIT: I checked on my old iPhone SE (1st gen), which is a WiFi 5 client device, and it was only able to achieve ~240Mbps down on the best run. Are you sure you're not bottlenecked by WiFi 5?

bradfa 3y ago
My iPhone SE 3rd gen is bottlenecked by my 500Mb fiber line in speed tests within my office room where the wifi AP is located. My AP is only a wifi 5 device.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  What do you stream to your iPhone that you're bottlenecked by 500 Mbps? Call of Duty ISOs?
  - bradfa 3y ago
    As mentioned, I'm just doing a speed test to show the bottleneck is my fiber line and not the wifi, hence my wifi is giving significantly better performance than was expected by the commenter I replied to.
- coder543 3y ago
  Testing with a WiFi 5 client device (iPhone SE 1st gen), I'm seeing only 240Mbps down and 122Mbps up, which is far closer to what I would expect from WiFi 5. I don't know how a WiFi 6 client (like your phone) might work around the limitations of a WiFi 5 access point, but I'm not seeing anywhere near 500Mbps out of WiFi 5 from a normal client device.
  - bradfa 3y ago
    But in this case, I am still getting what I'd consider great performance out of my wifi 5 AP while using an almost 2 year old device. Moving to a wifi 6/6E/7 AP is not going to appreciably make my Internet experience on my phone any better or faster. I felt this was relevant because the article is about wifi 7 access points.
    - coder543 3y ago
      I agree your comment was relevant. The person I was responding to said they weren’t using WiFi 6 at all, which I interpreted to mean that all of their client devices were also still WiFi 5, but my interpretation could have been wrong. If you can run docker somewhere in your network, you could consider running an OpenSpeedTest server and browse to that from your iPhone. This would let you remove your ISP from the equation and see just how fast your WiFi 5 connection can go. I’m also mildly skeptical that your access point is WiFi 5, but instead might actually support WiFi 6, since you’re already close to the maximum speeds I was seeing out of a WiFi 6 access point and WiFi 6 client device before I upgraded my network. Maybe WiFi 6 clients can do some serious magic with WiFi 5 access points, but it just seems… unlikely. But if you’re sure, then the numbers are what the numbers are. It just doesn’t make much sense to me.
      - bradfa 3y ago
        My AP is a Mikrotik hAPac2: https://mikrotik.com/product/hap_ac2 https://mikrotik.com/product/hap_ac2 Mikrotik claims it is a wifi 5 device on 5GHz bands. Qualcomm says the SOC used also only supports wifi 5 on 5GHz: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/internet-of-things/networking/wi-fi-networks/ipq4018 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/internet-of-things/network... Installing the OpenSpeedTest app on my iPhone and then running the test from my desktop which has wired Ethernet shows 646Mbps/472Mbps throughput. Thanks for the tip about OpenSpeedTest! I have been curious to get a tool like this for other easy local speed testing! :)
        coder543 3y ago
vetinari 3y ago
When I used the Macbook Pro (13", 2015) with Turris Omnia, my jaws dropped. I was getting gigabite over wifi. No wonder that the mbp had no ethernet. It turned out, that Apple at the time used 3x3 MIMO ac and Turris happened to also be one. With more common setup (2x2 mimo, 80 mhz wide channel), it is not a problem to achieve near 800 mbps speed with wifi5. 300 Mhz is too low; that must be either very noisy environment, or misconfigured AP (no mimo, narrow channel).
thomastjeffery 3y ago
It depends on how new/expensive your router is, how strong the signal is/close you are, and how congested the channel is (at that moment). Some Wifi 5 (802.11ac) routers are significantly faster than the average.

bradfa 3y ago

My iPhone SE 3rd gen is bottlenecked by my 500Mb fiber line in speed tests within my office room where the wifi AP is located. My AP is only a wifi 5 device.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
What do you stream to your iPhone that you're bottlenecked by 500 Mbps? Call of Duty ISOs?
- bradfa 3y ago
  As mentioned, I'm just doing a speed test to show the bottleneck is my fiber line and not the wifi, hence my wifi is giving significantly better performance than was expected by the commenter I replied to.
coder543 3y ago
Testing with a WiFi 5 client device (iPhone SE 1st gen), I'm seeing only 240Mbps down and 122Mbps up, which is far closer to what I would expect from WiFi 5. I don't know how a WiFi 6 client (like your phone) might work around the limitations of a WiFi 5 access point, but I'm not seeing anywhere near 500Mbps out of WiFi 5 from a normal client device.
- bradfa 3y ago
  But in this case, I am still getting what I'd consider great performance out of my wifi 5 AP while using an almost 2 year old device. Moving to a wifi 6/6E/7 AP is not going to appreciably make my Internet experience on my phone any better or faster. I felt this was relevant because the article is about wifi 7 access points.
  - coder543 3y ago
    I agree your comment was relevant. The person I was responding to said they weren’t using WiFi 6 at all, which I interpreted to mean that all of their client devices were also still WiFi 5, but my interpretation could have been wrong. If you can run docker somewhere in your network, you could consider running an OpenSpeedTest server and browse to that from your iPhone. This would let you remove your ISP from the equation and see just how fast your WiFi 5 connection can go. I’m also mildly skeptical that your access point is WiFi 5, but instead might actually support WiFi 6, since you’re already close to the maximum speeds I was seeing out of a WiFi 6 access point and WiFi 6 client device before I upgraded my network. Maybe WiFi 6 clients can do some serious magic with WiFi 5 access points, but it just seems… unlikely. But if you’re sure, then the numbers are what the numbers are. It just doesn’t make much sense to me.
    - bradfa 3y ago
      My AP is a Mikrotik hAPac2: https://mikrotik.com/product/hap_ac2 https://mikrotik.com/product/hap_ac2 Mikrotik claims it is a wifi 5 device on 5GHz bands. Qualcomm says the SOC used also only supports wifi 5 on 5GHz: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/internet-of-things/networking/wi-fi-networks/ipq4018 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/internet-of-things/network... Installing the OpenSpeedTest app on my iPhone and then running the test from my desktop which has wired Ethernet shows 646Mbps/472Mbps throughput. Thanks for the tip about OpenSpeedTest! I have been curious to get a tool like this for other easy local speed testing! :)
      - coder543 3y ago

vetinari 3y ago

When I used the Macbook Pro (13", 2015) with Turris Omnia, my jaws dropped. I was getting gigabite over wifi. No wonder that the mbp had no ethernet. It turned out, that Apple at the time used 3x3 MIMO ac and Turris happened to also be one. With more common setup (2x2 mimo, 80 mhz wide channel), it is not a problem to achieve near 800 mbps speed with wifi5. 300 Mhz is too low; that must be either very noisy environment, or misconfigured AP (no mimo, narrow channel).

thomastjeffery 3y ago

It depends on how new/expensive your router is, how strong the signal is/close you are, and how congested the channel is (at that moment). Some Wifi 5 (802.11ac) routers are significantly faster than the average.