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Forum Discussion
WNA1300 cuts speeds over half
I just bought a new router, a Belkin AC750, and it works just fine. when i speed test on my phone, i get 100mbps (which is what i'm paying for from my ISP). when i speed test it on lan, it gets 100mbps.
when i speedtest it through the WNA1300, i get 20-40 mbps. this thing says it is rated at 300mpbs, but can't even get a third of it?
anyways, i've been looking for a solution to this for days, and i know it has to be this WNA1300 that is the problem.
Is there some way to speed it up to how fast it should be going?
1 Reply
I assume you have a WNA3100, not WNA1300.
The WNA3100 is a 2.4 GHz, 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter. While it is rated up to 300 Mbps, this is the link speed. A lot of bits are used for things like error correction, frame synchronization, collision detection, etc. The actual data throughput is much less. A rule of thumb is to expect throughput to be no better than 50% of the link speed. Speeds are also affected by distance, congestion from other devices, signal degradation from walls and radio noise from non-Wi-Fi devices operating in the same frequency band.
But that's not the end of it. To achieve a link speed of 300 Mbps requires the use of 40 MHz wide channels. With 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, a 40 MHz channel can only be used if no other neighboring Wi-Fi networks are active. Otherwise, 20 MHz channels must be used. This drops the maximum link speed to 150 MHz. Couple this with the factors above and 20 Mbps to 40 Mbps is not that unusual.
You can experiment with changing Wi-Fi channels. Use Netgear's desktop Genie program, or free programs like Vistumbler, Acrylic Wi-Fi or Airport Utility to find the least congested channel.
Otherwise, you may need to invest in a dual band Wi-Fi adapter. Not only is the 5 GHz band must less commonly used, 802.11ac is only available at 5 GHz and wider channel widths are available (up to 80 Mhz on many AC routers). This translates to a whole lot more throughput. Your phone probably supports 802.11ac, which would explain why it can do 100 Mbps without any problem.
