9 ms·

From 400 Mbps to 1.7 Gbps: A WiFi 7 Debugging Journey

173 points by tymscar 11mo ago

tripdout 11mo ago
> Running iperf server on the router itself creates CPU contention between the WiFi scheduling and the iperf process. The router’s TCP stack isn’t tuned for this either. Classic mistake. Can you elaborate on this? I don't know much about WiFi so I'm curious what CPU work the router needs to do and what wouldn't be offloaded to hardware somehow (like most routing/forwarding/QoS duties can be).
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  It has nothing to do with WiFi even; when running a test you need a server that emits the test data - this could be a standard HTTP server on the internet (in case of public speed tests) or a binary like iperf that synthesizes the test data on the fly. You need to ensure the server is able to send the test data quickly enough so that the network link becomes the bottleneck. In his case he was running the test server on the router, and the router’s CPU was unable to churn out the data quickly enough to actually saturate the network link (most network equipment does the network switching/routing/NAT in hardware and so doesn’t actually come equipped with a CPU that is capable of line-rate TCP because it’s not actually needed in normal operation).
mattlondon 11mo ago
I had a similar issue but on unifi gateway lite after upgrading to 1gig fibre, I couldn't get above about 250-300mbps, even wired. Everything looked good in the unifi app. Turns out in the unifi web UI there was a "use hardware acceleration" checkbox for the gateway that was unticked and not even visible in the app. Ticked that and now I am getting 900+mbps I also sometimes have alerts saying more than one device is using the same IP address (DHCP issues) but it won't tell me which ones! At least give me the MAC addresses! Unifi's stuff is great, but the software is sometimes infuriating.
- scrps 11mo ago
  Other trap is some of the unifi features, IIRC their IDS is one of them, will cut throughput if you are running it.
  - tymscar 11mo ago
    You're right, however, that was one of the reasons I upgraded too. This one can handle the full 2.5 gigs even with IDS on.
    - nyarlathotep_ 11mo ago
      What hardware are you using? I'm not seeing near my advertised (and previously achieved, via Acer 'Gamer Router') with IDS on. IDS is probably overkill for a home network anyway. I recently replaced said router with a Dream Router 7.
      - tymscar 11mo ago
        The maximum routing speed Unifi Dream Router 7 can do with IDS on is 2.3Gbps according to their spec sheet
    - scrps 11mo ago
      Ah haven't looked at their current offerings in a while, I am still on the first gen USG 1000fdx but hand-rolling a 2.5 router (Radxa E52C, it's nifty) to replace it when I stop being lazy. You are right about Unifi's software being pain and I love that they keep changing the UI, the controller on the server side is dependency hell, and mongodb to boot just in case you need to manage n^webscale deployments.
rconti 11mo ago
I'm lazy so I just fire off the occasional speed tests using Ookla. It doesn't _really_ seem to matter what channel width or frequency I use, I tend to get around 600Gbps from my iPhone (17, pro). When you make it a point to ensure you're on the correct AP, line of sight from a few feet away, sometimes I break 1Gbps. I was surprised, watching TV the other day, to randomly get a 1.2Gbps speedtest which is one of the faster ones I've seen on WiFi. (10gbps internet, UDM Pro, UDM enterprise 2.5Gbps switch for clients, PoE WiFi 7 APs on 6ghz). Honestly, I'd say overall 6ghz has been more trouble than it's worth. Flipping the switch to WPA2/3 as required by 6ghz broke _all_ of my clients last year, so I had to revert and now I just have a separate SSID for clients I have the energy to manually retype the password into. 6Ghz pretty much only works line of sight and from a handful of feet away. There were bugs last year in Apple's "Disable 6e" setting so it kept re-enabling itself. MLO was bad, so it would stick to 6ghz even when there was basically no usable signal. Over the course of the past year, it's gotten pretty tolerable, but sometimes I still wonder why I bother-- I'm pretty sure my real world performance would be better if I just turned 6ghz off again.
- manquer 11mo ago
  >> get around 600Gbps from my iPhone 17 ! What kind of magic iPhone you have? I don't think there is any device to achieve anything close to that today[1] --- [1] The recently(2024) record is claimed to be at 938 Gbps but it is only to a 12cm distance[2] [2] https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196331/1/938nbspGb_s_5-150nbspGHz_Ultra-Wideband_Transmission_Over_the_Air_Using_Combined_Electronic_and_Photonic-Assisted_Signal_Generation.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196331/1/938nbspGb_s...
  - vardump 11mo ago
    Obviously he/she meant 600 Mbps.
- TexanFeller 11mo ago
  I just tested 1700mbits/s from my iPhone 17 PM in the next room over from my Ubiquiti E7 and I don’t even have MLO enabled. Something’s very wrong if you’re only getting 600mbit.
eqvinox 11mo ago
> Set transmit power to High Do NOT do this if you live in a densely populated area (e.g. apartment complex). You'll create noise for yourself and everybody else. Classic prisoner's dilemma - a few people could be assholes and profit from it, but if everyone's an asshole everybody suffers. General rule on TX power: start on low and increase only if you know (or can confirm) it helps. Go back down if it doesn't.
- neilalexander 11mo ago
  This may not help if you can’t control your environment. You will often benefit from nearby routers hearing you and each other if you are forced to share a channel with them, as that is what enables the carrier sensing to work correctly. Otherwise neighbouring APs that can’t hear your quieter use of the channel may shout over your devices rather than backing off, creating collisions and resulting in retransmits.
  - eqvinox 11mo ago
    You're describing the situation where the prisoner's dilemma has already gone wrong, with someone else not-nice shouting over you trying to be nice. In other words: you don't need carrier sensing to work if you're not getting drowned in noise to begin with.
    - Retric 11mo ago
      You can get this kind of interfere even if the signal from the router to your device is sitting just above the noise floor and the property next to you is doing the same thing. Both signals are so weak they get drowned out by an even weaker signal. The router on the other hand can’t tell the message is corrupted until your device responds.
  - appreciatorBus 11mo ago
    If you’re using the same channel as a neighbouring router that’s close enough to overpower yours then you’ve already lost, pick a different channel. If you stick to 20 mhz there are plenty options, even more if you are able to use DFS channels.
loloquwowndueo 11mo ago
Why do people need 2.5Gbps internet access or 1.7 Gbps on a home wifi network? What are folks doing at home?!?
- vardump 11mo ago
  To transfer files? Like large virtual machines, huge video files. Backup their files quickly. To support a homelab to learn new skills. To stream uncompressed video. To download 300 GB monster games. Some people can manage with slow network speeds at home, even though 100 Gbps single mode fiber is perfectly doable nowadays. And it's reasonable, because new SSDs do almost 120 Gbps. 1 Gbps made sense 20 years ago when single hard disks had similar performance. For some weird reason LAN speeds did not improve at the same rate as the disks did. But then again, I guess many could also still manage with 100 Mbps connectivity at home. Still enough for 4k video, web browsing and most other "ordinary" use cases.
  - noir_lord 11mo ago
    > For some weird reason LAN speeds did not improve at the same rate as the disks did. When it comes to wired, sending data 15cm is a very different problem than sending it 100M reliably - that and consumer demand for >1Gbps wasn't there which made the consumer equipment expensive because no mass market to drive it down, M.2 entirely removes the cable. I figured 10Gbps would be the standard by now (and was way off) and yet its not even the default on high end motherboards - 2.5Gbps is becoming a lot more common though.
    - Avamander 11mo ago
      Most software and CDNs also don't utilise fast connections properly. It's kind-of a chicken and egg situation where hardware doesn't improve because customers don't demand it because software and services can't handle it (and you can start from the beginning). It is very slowly improving, but by far the fastest widely used services I've seen are a few gacha games and Steam both downloading their updates. Which is rather sad. Windows Update is slow, macOS update is abysmally slow, both iOS and Android stores also bottleneck somewhere. Most cloud storage services are just as bad. Most of these can't even utilise half a gigabit efficiently.
qwertyuiop_ 11mo ago
Running $60 Mikrotik HEX S 2025 and getting 1.2 Gbps on a “1G” connection !
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  If that router has a 1Gbit port it’s physically impossible and likely a measurement artifact. Actual speed on a 1Gbit port is something like 940Mbps according to experience (I believe the theoretical max there is 970).
  - jonathanlydall 11mo ago
    Not sure what GP’s situation is, but I have a 100Mb/s fibre internet package but all hooked up to 1Gbps capable equipment on my side. My typical speed test results are around 104Mb/s. Before being upgraded, on the 50Mb/s package I was getting 52Mb/s. My suspicion is that fibre network operator (OpenServe in South Africa) applies rate limits which are technically a little above what their customers are paying for, perhaps to avoid complaints from people who don’t understand overheads.
    - somehnguy 11mo ago
      104mb/s is well under the theoretical max of 1gig networking, so you're truly just being limited by your ISP based on the plan you pay for. The poster above is claiming to see a physically impossible speed on 1gig networking.
      - hdgvhicv 11mo ago
        The ISP sells a 100mbit package and delivers more than that, as the line speed will be higher and it’s just policed in some fashion
    - ssl-3 11mo ago
      That's pretty typical. It's similar in the States: Spectrum, for example, generally overprovisions their connections a bit just because customer support is expensive to provide, and when things [ideally] work even better than advertised, support costs go down. And on that ISP side of things, it's a software-defined limit; it's just a field in a database or a config file that can be tuned to be whatever they want it to be. But the fellow up there says that they got 1.2Gbps through a Mikrotik Hex S: https://mikrotik.com/product/hex_s https://mikrotik.com/product/hex_s And that's just not possible*. The E60iUGS Mikrotik Hex S's own hardware Ethernet interfaces are 1000BASE-T, and it's simply not possible to squeeze more than 1.0Gbps through a 1000BASE-T interface. (It does also have an SFP port that it has one of is branded as "1.25Gbps," but reality is that it, too, is limited to no more than 1.0Gbps of data transfer.) *: Except... the 2025 version of the Hex S, E60iUGS, does have a 2.5Gbps SFP port that could be used as an ISP connection, and a much-improved internal fabric compared to the previous version. But the rest of its ports are just 1Gbps, which suggests a hard 1Gbps limit for any single connected LAN device. Except... Mikrotik's RouterOS allows hardware to be configured in many, many ways -- including using LACP to aggregate ports together. With the 2025 Hex S, an amalgamation could be created that would allow a single client computer to get >1Gbps from an ISP. It might even be possible to be similarly-clever with the previous version of the Hex S. But neither version will be able to do end-to-end >1Gbps without very deliberate and rather unusual effort.
throwworhtthrow 11mo ago
It's wasted effort in the US, since the 2025 budget bill directs the FCC to sell off much of the 6GHz band on which WiFi 7 depends. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/trump-and-congress-finalize-law-that-could-hurt-your-wi-fi/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/trump-and-congre...
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  How would that work… will they have to force manufacturers to recall or issue mandatory updates to routers which already support it? FCC enforcement for interference can work for occasional troublemakers but there’s no way they can go after every single consumer who (most likely not even realizing it) bought a 6Ghz-capable router that is encroaching on the now-privatized frequency band.
- rpcope1 11mo ago
  I guess we're going to let AT&T, Verizon and everyone else just squat the entire spectrum. "5G" and the pillaging and theft of spectrum that seems to just sit idle anyways has been such a scam. If they wanted innovation there should be more ISM bands and less dependence being encouraged on wireless providers for "Internet access" as opposed to just biting the bullet and running more fiber and copper. But that would be bad for Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T's bottom line so obviously we can't do that.
- Phelinofist 11mo ago
  Germany also wants to sell the 6Ghz frequencies to MNOs
- astrange 11mo ago
  6GHz is blocked by almost all walls, so this would only be an issue if your network was outside.
hhh 11mo ago
6Ghz for me causes random latency increases every 10 seconds or so, just had to stop using it because it drives me crazy
- martinald 11mo ago
  Mac? https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/23/apple_airdrop_awdl_latency_research/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/23/apple_airdrop_awdl_la... It's been a problem for _years_. Basically the wifi card switches to another channel to see if anyone wants to do airdrop every so often. It's a bit of a joke to be honest that Apple still haven't fixed this.
  - hhh 11mo ago
    Windows, but a lot of Macs in the home.
SG- 11mo ago
the 2.5Gbit USB network adapters using Realtek driver are actually bugged on macOS and only max out at 1.9Gbit/sec or so. Sadly the solution has been to use non-realtek 2.5Gbit adapters or simply get the 5Gbit Realtek ones that sell for almost the same price.
- tymscar 11mo ago
  Are you sure? I just bought the Ugreen 2.5Gbps yesterday for this, and it uses a Realtek RTL8156BG chip. That’s the one I used to get way above 2Gbps straight to the UDR.
  - kalleboo 11mo ago
    I have a few cheap Realtek 2.5Gbps dongles spread around my house and get 2.3 Gbps TX and 1.9 Gbps RX (running iperf3 --bidir to a LAN machine with 10 Gbps). Still beats Wi-Fi by a mile so I'm not complaining.
  - SG- 11mo ago
    https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/anyone-seeing-speed-drop-on-a-2g-plan-since-upgrading-to-15-0.2437227/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/anyone-seeing-speed-dro...
Havoc 11mo ago
Just checked mine...getting exactly gigabit speeds. Weird because everything should be on 2.5. Guess I need to do some debugging of my own
kalleboo 11mo ago
I get 1.6 Gbps line-of-sight no trouble with my U7 Pro, but I haven't managed to get MLO working. My only device with MLO support is the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and it refuses to connect to an SSID with MLO turned on...
drnick1 11mo ago
> I recently upgraded from a UniFi Dream Machine to a UniFi Dream Router 7 What do these devices do that can't be accomplished by an OpenWrt One + an external AP for less money and fully FOSS? Another option would be a mini-PC running Linux, but it's perhaps overkill for a domestic router. Edit: Actually the OpenWrt One does have built-in WiFi, so you don't even need the external AP.
- ishanjain28 11mo ago
  Good band steering and roaming. I would not use openwrt if I had to use multiple APs to cover the area.
  - rubenbe 11mo ago
    OpenWRT does support 802.11r fast roaming for multiple APs. The problem with OpenWRT is/was the configuration of multiple APs. There is OpenWISP, but they mostly target very large setups (>100 APs). So I built OpenSOHO using the OpenWISP daemons on the AP and a pocketbase frontend. (https://github.com/rubenbe/opensoho https://github.com/rubenbe/opensoho). No band steering yet unfortunately.
    - ishanjain28 11mo ago
      This looks like a good project! Nice work. 802.11k/v/r on its own is not always sufficient for roaming specially if you have old clients on the network(5 years or older). Almost every wifi solution like Omada or UI comes with additional heuristics based mechanisms to trigger roaming. There are also bugs/missing features in 802.11r in openwrt. For example, it does not work if you are using 802.11w or Wifi 6 Also, during roaming it's supposed to do a shortened version of handshake for auth but right now it does a full 4 way handshake afaik or atleast that's what I see in the logs when a client switches to a different ap
      - rubenbe 11mo ago
        Thanks! I've noticed that the 802.11k/v needs extra daemons to be configured (e.g usteer) and overall the documentation is very spotty. (for quite most "modern" features actually). You almost have to be lucky to find the correct forum post of a random person that actually figured things out. WRT 802.11r, I've noticed handovers failing in my laptops dmesg when running different patch versions of 24.10 release in my network. I'm not yet on Wifi6 so not there yet ;) If you have some more resources on that (forum post/bug that would be nice!)
NoiseBert69 11mo ago
(TLDR: if you want to use bleeding edge technology you must use bleeding edge drivers and firmware blobs) We have tested WiFi-7 gear in our lab: from the cheapest TP Omada EAP783 to the latest most expensive Cisco AP+Controller. Our findings: - Driver quality from the modems is still below average on Linux. If you want to test Wifi-7 go with the Intel BE200 card - most stuff works there. Warning: this card does not work with AMD CPUs. - We have seen quite a bit of problems from Qualcomm and Mediatek cards. Either latency issues, weirdo bugs on 6GHz (not showing all SSIDs) or throughput problems - Always go with the latest kernel with the freshest firmware blobs - MLO is difficult to get running properly. Very buggy from all sides. Also needs the latest version of wpa_supplicant - otherwise it will not come up. And be aware: there are several MLO modes and not all of them offer "two links for twice the bandwidth". Also expect to hit problems from AP side. If you read the TP Omada firmware changelogs you see that they are still struggling with a lot of basic functionality. So keep them updated to the latest beta versions too. I use a Qualcomm QCNCM865 in my privat setup with an AMD CPU. Feels like the latest firmware blobs and kernel drivers brought stability into their components.
- NooneAtAll3 11mo ago
  > Warning: this card does not work with AMD CPUs. what causes that? (I have no idea how wifi cards work)
  - bcook 11mo ago
    I'm just guessing, but I would say Intel CNVi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNVi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNVi
    - NoiseBert69 11mo ago
      That's the reason. But I can confirm that the Intel BE200 works with the popular Intel n100/n305 Mini Computers.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
rcarmo 11mo ago
Went through a similar tuning process with Wi-Fi 6 on OpenWRT recently: https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/09/14/1630 https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/09/14/1630 In my case, I forgot I had to change encryption type to associate at higher speeds.
- tymscar 11mo ago
  Oh, good point. That was actually the first thing I missed, but when I created a new Wi-Fi 7-only SSID, Unifi wouldn’t let me pick anything lower than WPA3 if I only used 6 GHz. So that sort of fixed itself.
mstaoru 11mo ago
I brought my WiFi 7-capable ASUS RT-BE96U to Germany (from China) and I proudly notice that my average download speed is up to ~105 Mbit from ~95 Mbit with the stock Vodafone router. "Silicon Valley of Europe", my a*s.
fulafel 11mo ago
The wifi bottleneck is such a tragedy. We'd otherwise have 10G home broadband probably.
mannyv 11mo ago
There are times when low power is better, because it allows the router to ignore far away clients. In simple terms, far away = more work to communicate = more airtime = less throughput. It probably only matters with multiple devices.

173 points by tymscar 11mo ago

> Running iperf server on the router itself creates CPU contention between the WiFi scheduling and the iperf process. The router’s TCP stack isn’t tuned for this either. Classic mistake. Can you elaborate on this? I don't know much about WiFi so I'm curious what CPU work the router needs to do and what wouldn't be offloaded to hardware somehow (like most routing/forwarding/QoS duties can be).

Nextgrid 11mo ago
It has nothing to do with WiFi even; when running a test you need a server that emits the test data - this could be a standard HTTP server on the internet (in case of public speed tests) or a binary like iperf that synthesizes the test data on the fly. You need to ensure the server is able to send the test data quickly enough so that the network link becomes the bottleneck. In his case he was running the test server on the router, and the router’s CPU was unable to churn out the data quickly enough to actually saturate the network link (most network equipment does the network switching/routing/NAT in hardware and so doesn’t actually come equipped with a CPU that is capable of line-rate TCP because it’s not actually needed in normal operation).

mattlondon 11mo ago

I had a similar issue but on unifi gateway lite after upgrading to 1gig fibre, I couldn't get above about 250-300mbps, even wired. Everything looked good in the unifi app. Turns out in the unifi web UI there was a "use hardware acceleration" checkbox for the gateway that was unticked and not even visible in the app. Ticked that and now I am getting 900+mbps I also sometimes have alerts saying more than one device is using the same IP address (DHCP issues) but it won't tell me which ones! At least give me the MAC addresses! Unifi's stuff is great, but the software is sometimes infuriating.

scrps 11mo ago
Other trap is some of the unifi features, IIRC their IDS is one of them, will cut throughput if you are running it.
- tymscar 11mo ago
  You're right, however, that was one of the reasons I upgraded too. This one can handle the full 2.5 gigs even with IDS on.
  - nyarlathotep_ 11mo ago
    What hardware are you using? I'm not seeing near my advertised (and previously achieved, via Acer 'Gamer Router') with IDS on. IDS is probably overkill for a home network anyway. I recently replaced said router with a Dream Router 7.
    - tymscar 11mo ago
      The maximum routing speed Unifi Dream Router 7 can do with IDS on is 2.3Gbps according to their spec sheet
  - scrps 11mo ago
    Ah haven't looked at their current offerings in a while, I am still on the first gen USG 1000fdx but hand-rolling a 2.5 router (Radxa E52C, it's nifty) to replace it when I stop being lazy. You are right about Unifi's software being pain and I love that they keep changing the UI, the controller on the server side is dependency hell, and mongodb to boot just in case you need to manage n^webscale deployments.

rconti 11mo ago

I'm lazy so I just fire off the occasional speed tests using Ookla. It doesn't _really_ seem to matter what channel width or frequency I use, I tend to get around 600Gbps from my iPhone (17, pro). When you make it a point to ensure you're on the correct AP, line of sight from a few feet away, sometimes I break 1Gbps. I was surprised, watching TV the other day, to randomly get a 1.2Gbps speedtest which is one of the faster ones I've seen on WiFi. (10gbps internet, UDM Pro, UDM enterprise 2.5Gbps switch for clients, PoE WiFi 7 APs on 6ghz). Honestly, I'd say overall 6ghz has been more trouble than it's worth. Flipping the switch to WPA2/3 as required by 6ghz broke _all_ of my clients last year, so I had to revert and now I just have a separate SSID for clients I have the energy to manually retype the password into. 6Ghz pretty much only works line of sight and from a handful of feet away. There were bugs last year in Apple's "Disable 6e" setting so it kept re-enabling itself. MLO was bad, so it would stick to 6ghz even when there was basically no usable signal. Over the course of the past year, it's gotten pretty tolerable, but sometimes I still wonder why I bother-- I'm pretty sure my real world performance would be better if I just turned 6ghz off again.

manquer 11mo ago
>> get around 600Gbps from my iPhone 17 ! What kind of magic iPhone you have? I don't think there is any device to achieve anything close to that today[1] --- [1] The recently(2024) record is claimed to be at 938 Gbps but it is only to a 12cm distance[2] [2] https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196331/1/938nbspGb_s_5-150nbspGHz_Ultra-Wideband_Transmission_Over_the_Air_Using_Combined_Electronic_and_Photonic-Assisted_Signal_Generation.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196331/1/938nbspGb_s...
- vardump 11mo ago
  Obviously he/she meant 600 Mbps.
TexanFeller 11mo ago
I just tested 1700mbits/s from my iPhone 17 PM in the next room over from my Ubiquiti E7 and I don’t even have MLO enabled. Something’s very wrong if you’re only getting 600mbit.

eqvinox 11mo ago

> Set transmit power to High Do NOT do this if you live in a densely populated area (e.g. apartment complex). You'll create noise for yourself and everybody else. Classic prisoner's dilemma - a few people could be assholes and profit from it, but if everyone's an asshole everybody suffers. General rule on TX power: start on low and increase only if you know (or can confirm) it helps. Go back down if it doesn't.

neilalexander 11mo ago
This may not help if you can’t control your environment. You will often benefit from nearby routers hearing you and each other if you are forced to share a channel with them, as that is what enables the carrier sensing to work correctly. Otherwise neighbouring APs that can’t hear your quieter use of the channel may shout over your devices rather than backing off, creating collisions and resulting in retransmits.
- eqvinox 11mo ago
  You're describing the situation where the prisoner's dilemma has already gone wrong, with someone else not-nice shouting over you trying to be nice. In other words: you don't need carrier sensing to work if you're not getting drowned in noise to begin with.
  - Retric 11mo ago
    You can get this kind of interfere even if the signal from the router to your device is sitting just above the noise floor and the property next to you is doing the same thing. Both signals are so weak they get drowned out by an even weaker signal. The router on the other hand can’t tell the message is corrupted until your device responds.
- appreciatorBus 11mo ago
  If you’re using the same channel as a neighbouring router that’s close enough to overpower yours then you’ve already lost, pick a different channel. If you stick to 20 mhz there are plenty options, even more if you are able to use DFS channels.

loloquwowndueo 11mo ago

Why do people need 2.5Gbps internet access or 1.7 Gbps on a home wifi network? What are folks doing at home?!?

vardump 11mo ago
To transfer files? Like large virtual machines, huge video files. Backup their files quickly. To support a homelab to learn new skills. To stream uncompressed video. To download 300 GB monster games. Some people can manage with slow network speeds at home, even though 100 Gbps single mode fiber is perfectly doable nowadays. And it's reasonable, because new SSDs do almost 120 Gbps. 1 Gbps made sense 20 years ago when single hard disks had similar performance. For some weird reason LAN speeds did not improve at the same rate as the disks did. But then again, I guess many could also still manage with 100 Mbps connectivity at home. Still enough for 4k video, web browsing and most other "ordinary" use cases.
- noir_lord 11mo ago
  > For some weird reason LAN speeds did not improve at the same rate as the disks did. When it comes to wired, sending data 15cm is a very different problem than sending it 100M reliably - that and consumer demand for >1Gbps wasn't there which made the consumer equipment expensive because no mass market to drive it down, M.2 entirely removes the cable. I figured 10Gbps would be the standard by now (and was way off) and yet its not even the default on high end motherboards - 2.5Gbps is becoming a lot more common though.
  - Avamander 11mo ago
    Most software and CDNs also don't utilise fast connections properly. It's kind-of a chicken and egg situation where hardware doesn't improve because customers don't demand it because software and services can't handle it (and you can start from the beginning). It is very slowly improving, but by far the fastest widely used services I've seen are a few gacha games and Steam both downloading their updates. Which is rather sad. Windows Update is slow, macOS update is abysmally slow, both iOS and Android stores also bottleneck somewhere. Most cloud storage services are just as bad. Most of these can't even utilise half a gigabit efficiently.

qwertyuiop_ 11mo ago

Running $60 Mikrotik HEX S 2025 and getting 1.2 Gbps on a “1G” connection !

Nextgrid 11mo ago
If that router has a 1Gbit port it’s physically impossible and likely a measurement artifact. Actual speed on a 1Gbit port is something like 940Mbps according to experience (I believe the theoretical max there is 970).
- jonathanlydall 11mo ago
  Not sure what GP’s situation is, but I have a 100Mb/s fibre internet package but all hooked up to 1Gbps capable equipment on my side. My typical speed test results are around 104Mb/s. Before being upgraded, on the 50Mb/s package I was getting 52Mb/s. My suspicion is that fibre network operator (OpenServe in South Africa) applies rate limits which are technically a little above what their customers are paying for, perhaps to avoid complaints from people who don’t understand overheads.
  - somehnguy 11mo ago
    104mb/s is well under the theoretical max of 1gig networking, so you're truly just being limited by your ISP based on the plan you pay for. The poster above is claiming to see a physically impossible speed on 1gig networking.
    - hdgvhicv 11mo ago
      The ISP sells a 100mbit package and delivers more than that, as the line speed will be higher and it’s just policed in some fashion
  - ssl-3 11mo ago
    That's pretty typical. It's similar in the States: Spectrum, for example, generally overprovisions their connections a bit just because customer support is expensive to provide, and when things [ideally] work even better than advertised, support costs go down. And on that ISP side of things, it's a software-defined limit; it's just a field in a database or a config file that can be tuned to be whatever they want it to be. But the fellow up there says that they got 1.2Gbps through a Mikrotik Hex S: https://mikrotik.com/product/hex_s https://mikrotik.com/product/hex_s And that's just not possible*. The E60iUGS Mikrotik Hex S's own hardware Ethernet interfaces are 1000BASE-T, and it's simply not possible to squeeze more than 1.0Gbps through a 1000BASE-T interface. (It does also have an SFP port that it has one of is branded as "1.25Gbps," but reality is that it, too, is limited to no more than 1.0Gbps of data transfer.) *: Except... the 2025 version of the Hex S, E60iUGS, does have a 2.5Gbps SFP port that could be used as an ISP connection, and a much-improved internal fabric compared to the previous version. But the rest of its ports are just 1Gbps, which suggests a hard 1Gbps limit for any single connected LAN device. Except... Mikrotik's RouterOS allows hardware to be configured in many, many ways -- including using LACP to aggregate ports together. With the 2025 Hex S, an amalgamation could be created that would allow a single client computer to get >1Gbps from an ISP. It might even be possible to be similarly-clever with the previous version of the Hex S. But neither version will be able to do end-to-end >1Gbps without very deliberate and rather unusual effort.

throwworhtthrow 11mo ago

It's wasted effort in the US, since the 2025 budget bill directs the FCC to sell off much of the 6GHz band on which WiFi 7 depends. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/trump-and-congress-finalize-law-that-could-hurt-your-wi-fi/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/trump-and-congre...

Nextgrid 11mo ago
How would that work… will they have to force manufacturers to recall or issue mandatory updates to routers which already support it? FCC enforcement for interference can work for occasional troublemakers but there’s no way they can go after every single consumer who (most likely not even realizing it) bought a 6Ghz-capable router that is encroaching on the now-privatized frequency band.
rpcope1 11mo ago
I guess we're going to let AT&T, Verizon and everyone else just squat the entire spectrum. "5G" and the pillaging and theft of spectrum that seems to just sit idle anyways has been such a scam. If they wanted innovation there should be more ISM bands and less dependence being encouraged on wireless providers for "Internet access" as opposed to just biting the bullet and running more fiber and copper. But that would be bad for Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T's bottom line so obviously we can't do that.
Phelinofist 11mo ago
Germany also wants to sell the 6Ghz frequencies to MNOs
astrange 11mo ago
6GHz is blocked by almost all walls, so this would only be an issue if your network was outside.

hhh 11mo ago

6Ghz for me causes random latency increases every 10 seconds or so, just had to stop using it because it drives me crazy

martinald 11mo ago
Mac? https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/23/apple_airdrop_awdl_latency_research/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/23/apple_airdrop_awdl_la... It's been a problem for _years_. Basically the wifi card switches to another channel to see if anyone wants to do airdrop every so often. It's a bit of a joke to be honest that Apple still haven't fixed this.
- hhh 11mo ago
  Windows, but a lot of Macs in the home.

SG- 11mo ago

the 2.5Gbit USB network adapters using Realtek driver are actually bugged on macOS and only max out at 1.9Gbit/sec or so. Sadly the solution has been to use non-realtek 2.5Gbit adapters or simply get the 5Gbit Realtek ones that sell for almost the same price.

tymscar 11mo ago
Are you sure? I just bought the Ugreen 2.5Gbps yesterday for this, and it uses a Realtek RTL8156BG chip. That’s the one I used to get way above 2Gbps straight to the UDR.
- kalleboo 11mo ago
  I have a few cheap Realtek 2.5Gbps dongles spread around my house and get 2.3 Gbps TX and 1.9 Gbps RX (running iperf3 --bidir to a LAN machine with 10 Gbps). Still beats Wi-Fi by a mile so I'm not complaining.
- SG- 11mo ago
  https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/anyone-seeing-speed-drop-on-a-2g-plan-since-upgrading-to-15-0.2437227/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/anyone-seeing-speed-dro...

Havoc 11mo ago

Just checked mine...getting exactly gigabit speeds. Weird because everything should be on 2.5. Guess I need to do some debugging of my own

kalleboo 11mo ago

I get 1.6 Gbps line-of-sight no trouble with my U7 Pro, but I haven't managed to get MLO working. My only device with MLO support is the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and it refuses to connect to an SSID with MLO turned on...

drnick1 11mo ago

> I recently upgraded from a UniFi Dream Machine to a UniFi Dream Router 7 What do these devices do that can't be accomplished by an OpenWrt One + an external AP for less money and fully FOSS? Another option would be a mini-PC running Linux, but it's perhaps overkill for a domestic router. Edit: Actually the OpenWrt One does have built-in WiFi, so you don't even need the external AP.

ishanjain28 11mo ago
Good band steering and roaming. I would not use openwrt if I had to use multiple APs to cover the area.
- rubenbe 11mo ago
  OpenWRT does support 802.11r fast roaming for multiple APs. The problem with OpenWRT is/was the configuration of multiple APs. There is OpenWISP, but they mostly target very large setups (>100 APs). So I built OpenSOHO using the OpenWISP daemons on the AP and a pocketbase frontend. (https://github.com/rubenbe/opensoho https://github.com/rubenbe/opensoho). No band steering yet unfortunately.
  - ishanjain28 11mo ago
    This looks like a good project! Nice work. 802.11k/v/r on its own is not always sufficient for roaming specially if you have old clients on the network(5 years or older). Almost every wifi solution like Omada or UI comes with additional heuristics based mechanisms to trigger roaming. There are also bugs/missing features in 802.11r in openwrt. For example, it does not work if you are using 802.11w or Wifi 6 Also, during roaming it's supposed to do a shortened version of handshake for auth but right now it does a full 4 way handshake afaik or atleast that's what I see in the logs when a client switches to a different ap
    - rubenbe 11mo ago
      Thanks! I've noticed that the 802.11k/v needs extra daemons to be configured (e.g usteer) and overall the documentation is very spotty. (for quite most "modern" features actually). You almost have to be lucky to find the correct forum post of a random person that actually figured things out. WRT 802.11r, I've noticed handovers failing in my laptops dmesg when running different patch versions of 24.10 release in my network. I'm not yet on Wifi6 so not there yet ;) If you have some more resources on that (forum post/bug that would be nice!)

NoiseBert69 11mo ago

(TLDR: if you want to use bleeding edge technology you must use bleeding edge drivers and firmware blobs) We have tested WiFi-7 gear in our lab: from the cheapest TP Omada EAP783 to the latest most expensive Cisco AP+Controller. Our findings: - Driver quality from the modems is still below average on Linux. If you want to test Wifi-7 go with the Intel BE200 card - most stuff works there. Warning: this card does not work with AMD CPUs. - We have seen quite a bit of problems from Qualcomm and Mediatek cards. Either latency issues, weirdo bugs on 6GHz (not showing all SSIDs) or throughput problems - Always go with the latest kernel with the freshest firmware blobs - MLO is difficult to get running properly. Very buggy from all sides. Also needs the latest version of wpa_supplicant - otherwise it will not come up. And be aware: there are several MLO modes and not all of them offer "two links for twice the bandwidth". Also expect to hit problems from AP side. If you read the TP Omada firmware changelogs you see that they are still struggling with a lot of basic functionality. So keep them updated to the latest beta versions too. I use a Qualcomm QCNCM865 in my privat setup with an AMD CPU. Feels like the latest firmware blobs and kernel drivers brought stability into their components.

NooneAtAll3 11mo ago
> Warning: this card does not work with AMD CPUs. what causes that? (I have no idea how wifi cards work)
- bcook 11mo ago
  I'm just guessing, but I would say Intel CNVi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNVi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNVi
  - NoiseBert69 11mo ago
    That's the reason. But I can confirm that the Intel BE200 works with the popular Intel n100/n305 Mini Computers.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]

rcarmo 11mo ago

Went through a similar tuning process with Wi-Fi 6 on OpenWRT recently: https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/09/14/1630 https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/09/14/1630 In my case, I forgot I had to change encryption type to associate at higher speeds.

tymscar 11mo ago
Oh, good point. That was actually the first thing I missed, but when I created a new Wi-Fi 7-only SSID, Unifi wouldn’t let me pick anything lower than WPA3 if I only used 6 GHz. So that sort of fixed itself.

mstaoru 11mo ago

I brought my WiFi 7-capable ASUS RT-BE96U to Germany (from China) and I proudly notice that my average download speed is up to ~105 Mbit from ~95 Mbit with the stock Vodafone router. "Silicon Valley of Europe", my a*s.

fulafel 11mo ago

The wifi bottleneck is such a tragedy. We'd otherwise have 10G home broadband probably.

mannyv 11mo ago

There are times when low power is better, because it allows the router to ignore far away clients. In simple terms, far away = more work to communicate = more airtime = less throughput. It probably only matters with multiple devices.