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truthlesshero's avatar
Aug 08, 2015
Solved

R7000 max speed problems (300mbps?)

Hi

I've tried googling the crap out of this problem, playing wiht settings, asking reddit for help, chatting with a tech support person and nothing seems to have resolved my problem.  

 

I was having a lot of trouble getting decent throughput LAN speeds on my network. I couldn't get past 200mbps. I finally have it so I'm averaging around ~275mbps on my network through A LOT of tinkering. 

 

Now it seems that the biggest limitation I have is with the router itself. Using acrylic wifi scanner, It keeps showing my 5ghz network only has a max speed of 300mbps. My settings are on channel 161, with "up to 1300mbps" selected. My 2.4ghz network shows 214mbps on the same scanner. I've tried different channels, I've tried going down to "up to 600mbps" and back up to 1300mbps to no avail. I've turned WMM on and off. The connection on my testing machine shows a max speed of 867mbps for the wifi adapter itself.   

  

I've been contemplating going to dd-wrt to see if I can play with the frequency range to see if that's the problem. Is there a setting or anything I need to try that I'm missing? Thanks...

Oh, and I've flashed and reflashed the firmware...reset the settings, etc. as well...

  • Update: apparently, the problem lies with acrylic. I downloaded a different wifi scanner and it shows 1300mbps. So i'm probably more limited by my adapter. So if anyone else had the same problem, it was a superficial problem. Hopefully I'll be satisfied with ~250mbps average rate, hehe

5 Replies

  • What is signal level on Acrylic? What is the number?  Did you set up antenna sticks like  \ I / ?

    middle one straight up, two side ones forming letter V. Router front or back should point to

    WiFi device, not side.  Playing with router/antenna position can improve WiFi signal.

  • Signal level is still really good. - 40db..
    Yes,thats exactly how the antennas are set up (based on pictures and reviews I had seen before)

    Thanks for the insight.. Hope this helps..
    • TheEther's avatar
      TheEther
      Guru

      TL;DR: 275 Mbps is pretty good at 5 GHz

       

      Keep in mind that there is difference between link speed and throughput.  Link speed is the physical connection rate whereas throughput is the rate of useful data transfer.  Throughput is always less than link speed due to protocol overhead, data loss and congestion caused by other nearby Wi-Fi networks and devices.  On Wi-Fi, it is not uncommon for throughput to be no better than 50% of the link speed.  Often, it is much, much worse.  The speeds used in router configuration and Windows adapter settings are link speeds.  The speeds reported by speed tests are throughput.

       

      I don't know what's going on with Acrylic.  Maybe it doesn't know how to report 802.11ac link speeds.  Anyway, if your testing machine is reporting a link speed of 867 Mbps then it's probably using a 2 antenna Wi-Fi adapter.  The R7000 is a 3 antenna Wi-Fi router.  Your PC's Wi-Fi adapter won't be able to connect at a link speed of 1300 Mbps.  867 Mbps is the best the PC can do.  3 attenna adapters are very rare.  Last I heard, only Asus makes one.

       

      If you look at the revised test measurements of the R7000 on smallnetbuilder.com, you will see that the reviewer was only able to achieve a maximum throughput of 530 Mbps using back to back R7000s.  This was achieved with 3 antenna setups where both routers were sitting next to each other.  At longer distances, throughput dropped off significantly.

       

      If we use 530 Mbps as a maximum, practical throughput, a simplistic guess of what a 2 antenna Wi-Fi device can achieve would be 2/3rds of that or 353 Mbps.  This assumes a near perfect environment.  At normal distances, throughput is going to be significantly less than 353 Mbps.  If you are able to get 275 Mbps, I'd say you're doing pretty well.

      • truthlesshero's avatar
        truthlesshero
        Guide

        Thanks for the reply. It does comfort me a little that the 275mbps speed is pretty good for 5ghz in real world settings.  

         

        I guess the main thing that I was left to wonder what was going on is why acrylic only saw 300mbps max speed on my network yet saw other networks at 450mbps (albeit 2.4 networks). And yes, my adapter is a two antenna adapter, so that would make sense. The theoritical max connection, according to specs, is 867mbps so I'm less worried about that and more concerned on the 300mbps on the network. Thanks again!

  • Update: apparently, the problem lies with acrylic. I downloaded a different wifi scanner and it shows 1300mbps. So i'm probably more limited by my adapter. So if anyone else had the same problem, it was a superficial problem. Hopefully I'll be satisfied with ~250mbps average rate, hehe