Wifi speed vs lan speed

[foolycooly86]

My Lan speed comes in at 250+ megabytes per second depending on the test, and my WiFi speeds are at best 80 megabytes per second from about 3 feet away and drop drastically from room to room all the way down to 4 megabytes per second about 20 feet away , even though the detailed statistics in the router login show that my wifi is around 216 megabytes per second. Now I know that the router is supposed to be capable of 450 with the 2.4 gigahertz and obviously higher with the 5 gigahertz, and my internet speeds are above 250 megabytes per second. So my question is why are my wifi speed so low when the router is capable of such high speeds and my actual internet speeds are over 250 megabytes per second? And what can I do to improve that? Thanks in advance.

[TheEther]

First off, all your figures are probably megabits per second (Mb/s).  A megabyte per second (MB/s) is 8x bigger than a megabit per second, so there's a big difference.

Second, real world Wi-Fi speeds are seldom anywhere close to what's advertised.  450 Mb/s with 2.4 GHz requires a device with high-end Wi-Fi in an isolated environment with no other neighboring Wi-Fi networks.  216 Mb/s is what you get when other networks are present.  Most smartphones do not have high end Wi-Fi and will actually connect at 144 Mb/s or less.  Finally, distance, obstructions and radio interference will cut that down.  A good rule of thumb is to cut everything in half.  That 144 Mb/s becomes 72 Mb/s, give or take, which is roughly what you got.