A question about my router and its slow download speed

TrustMe · 03 Oct 2016

I have a question about my router, it's a Linksys 1900AC. It broadcasts 2.4 and 5. My laptop does not have a receiver to pick up the 5. My average download speed connected to 2.4 is around 10Mbp/s. I'm paying for 150Mbp/s.

If I connect my wife's laptop to 5, she gets a download speed of 122Mbp/s. My daughter's MacBook gets 138Mbp/s. If I connect theirs to 2.4, they get an average of 10Mbp/s. Do you think there is something wrong with the router and the 2.4 network? The download speed seems awfully slow to me.

I have tried changing channels 1,6,and 11
There is also a setting to pick
Mixed
B,G,N
B only
G only
N only

If I set it to N, my laptop will increase the download speed to about 30Mbp/s but I have older devices in the house so I keep it set to Mixed.

All the laptops were tested at a distance of about 35 ft.

Adalwar · 03 Oct 2016

Not router, probably your WLAN Card/Adapter is much slower than your Wife´s PC.
Look at Adapter Settings and see which speed it connects to Router. Compare that with your Wife´s PC.

In Windows there are 3 Different speed information: In File Explorer during File Transfer is MB/s, in Task Manager>Performace>WiFi the Unit is Mbps(Kbps), finally in Adapter>Prperties>General is also Mbps but this is the actual Router Connect speed.
For example, if the Adapter connects at 54Mbps in File Explorer you will see max. 1,44MB/s and in Task Manager it will show 11,52 Mbps

TrustMe · 03 Oct 2016

Thanks for the reply. I don't have any of our computers networked so I guess I can't check the transfer or connection speed. My main concern is download speed. When I connect the wife's computer to the 2.4 network, her download speed is 10Mbit/s. It's only after I connect her laptop to the 5GHz network that she achieves the faster speed of 122Mbit/s. I don't know but the 2.4 network just seems slow.

I have another question if you don't mind, this summer we watched Netflix's almost every night. I have a Sumsung smart TV and it was constantly buffering, up to 10 times a night. I ended up hard wiring the TV to the router. I used cat 6a cable and cat 6a wall plates. When I checked the download speed using the TV's web browser, my download speed was only 20Mbits/s. If I unplug the cable and check the download speed with the wife's computer, it's 180Mbits, daughters was 178Mbits. Why do you think there is such a big difference between the TV and the computers? Is there anything else I can do to increase the download speed of the TV?

According to Netflix's website they recommend a download speed of 5.0 Mbp/s for HD and 25Mbp/s for Ultra HD. I thought by hard wiring the TV, I for sure would have got the 25Mbp/s

Samuria · 03 Oct 2016

Max speed for g is 50meg n is 300 meg ac is 3 gigs that's only theory it will drop with range walls etc. You have to as a rough guide devide you max speed by number of users so 150 meg between three users is 50 meg. You also need to know the best channel if you download http://www.crewetown.co.uk/wireless.exe you must fight click on the file choose run as admin post results

Adalwar · 04 Oct 2016

@TrustMe
In every physical computer go to its Adapter Settings , in Status information there is the actual Adapter connection speed. You can not access this information over the Network.
In 2.4 GHz there are interference from other Devices like Micro oven. Also in Combo Adapters Wifi+BT 3.0/4.0 , the BT just negotiates the connection but the actual Data transfer is done over WiFI thus reducing speed of WiFI and in that cases is better to make WiFi connection on 5GHz.
About speeds: Pay close attention to the Units, do not confuse them : Mbp/s or Mbits/s as you say does not exist. The units that Devices may show you are MB/s, Mb/s, Mbps and even Kbps. As reference for you: 20MB/s=160Mb/s=160Mbps