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Forum Discussion
mitty1974
Oct 12, 2020Aspirant
Nighthawk AX8 Mesh Extender Max Download Speed
I recently bought a Nighthawk AX8 Mesh Extender to supplement my existing Nighthawk RAX80 Router. With the RAX80 router or even with a device connected to the router via WiFi, I can achieve download ...
plemans
Oct 12, 2020Guru - Experienced User
Which extender did you buy? Model?
a couple things that people miss on extenders is that they actually drop throughput 50%. reason why is they have to send and recieve on the same band/chip to router---extender---device and can't do both at once. The tri-bands can help mitigate this as they dedicate a 5ghz chip just for router----extender communication. But there isn't a tri-band AX extender yet.
the 940mbps that you're getting, is it wired?
And what speeds do you get hardwired into the extender?
mitty1974
Oct 12, 2020Aspirant
The extender model is EAX80 (AX6000 Nighthawk Mesh Extender).
I'm able to get 940Mbps wireless to the router, but only up to ~250Mbps wired or wireless to the extender
- plemansOct 12, 2020Guru - Experienced User
You should be able to check the connection back to the router via the status page.
What's it show for link speed back to router? (also, link speed isn't throughput speed, just using it to check)
What device are you testing on?
Again, keep in mind the speed drop you'll get.
have you tried on multiple devices?
- mitty1974Oct 12, 2020Aspirant
The link speed from the extender to the router is ~3000Mbps.
I rechecked, and I'm actually getting ~900Mbps down through a wired connection to the extender and ~400Mbps down through a wireless connection to the extender now. The slower download speed I was seeing earlier (~250Mbps) must have just been an inconsistency with my internet service.
The wireless speed still seems a little bit slow because the link speed between my laptop and the extender is supposedly 2100-2400Mbps, but I'm happy with the wired speeds I'm seeing now.
Thanks for your help!
- plemansOct 12, 2020Guru - Experienced User
link speed isn't the same thing as actual throughput speed.
Hitting 1 gig (ish) hardwired in is expected. And if you're rebroadcast speed is 400mbps, its a little more than the 50% speed hit I explained.