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Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
So, I ordered my Nighthawk lastnight, and somehow got it delivered this morning by 10 AM (yes on a Sunday), deliver within around 12 hours of buying it. Wow, great huh, I was shocked and like a kid in a candy store.
Now everything is all setup, and seems to be working well, but I noticed that my laptop (older) would not hookup to the 5 ghz band, ok no problem, so I hook up to the 2.4 band, and check my link speed, which before replacing my old router was 150 Mbps, and when I check my connection status now, it shows at 72 Mbps, and I have tried everything, that I know how, (I would like to think I know quite a bit about setting this stuff up, as I do work in IT and have for sometime), but I cannot seem to get my connection to negotiate any higer than 72 Mbps.
Re: Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
What's the model of the Wi-Fi adapter on your laptop? I'm guessing that it is single stream 802.1n. Such an adapter can only get a link speed of 150 Mbps when using a 40 MHz wide channel. Were you forcing your old router to use 40 MHz? You can try disabling 20/40 MHz coexistence in advanced wireless settings on the Nighthawk. There's no guarantee that those will work. Note: Using 40 MHz channels isn't very neighbor friendly because it consumes 2/3 of available spectrum at 2.4 GHz.
Re: Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
What's the model of the Wi-Fi adapter on your laptop? I'm guessing that it is single stream 802.1n. Such an adapter can only get a link speed of 150 Mbps when using a 40 MHz wide channel. Were you forcing your old router to use 40 MHz? You can try disabling 20/40 MHz coexistence in advanced wireless settings on the Nighthawk. There's no guarantee that those will work. Note: Using 40 MHz channels isn't very neighbor friendly because it consumes 2/3 of available spectrum at 2.4 GHz.
Re: Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
I no longer have that router hooked up, but do no believe that I had it forced to disable coexistence, as I do not believe it had that capability, but it is possible that I was forcing it to 40 mhz, I am not 100% sure enough to say either way with no doubt's. I get that reference of the bull with boobs, I do have many other connections in the house that are fully utilizing the 5g hence the reason I bought the router, but it just so happens that all devices in the house do not utilize the 5g for instance my wifi speaker, and my older laptop, so I have to use both channels.
Thanks for the info, do you have anything to contribute in the way of a solution to offer searay? as TheEther (Superuser) suggested?
Re: Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
Here is the Model of the WiFi NIC in my Laptop that is having the issue: Realtek RTL8191SE Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC, I do not believe I was forcing the 40MHz but it is possible that it was set to that, (no longer have that router hooket up to verify, but I guess if it becomes absolutely necessary to find out I can hook it up and login to it directly from a PC). I will take you suggestion to try this, and I am auto adjusting the channel that I am on, so if I am blasting @ 40MHz, it may not be an issue, as I live in a somewhat spreadout neighbor hood, with quite a bit of older people, and when testing I do not see a ton of competing signals, and I am always the only person on what ever channel I am broadcasting on, so I do not know if being neighborhood friendly will be a concern or not, but I am trying to not have to force it to be nice 🙂 and try to be the best neighbor I can be.
Re: Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
Another side question, can you suggest why windows firewall is asking that Netgear's Genie app would be asking for firewall acess on a Public network? I know this is not what my original question was, and that this is not what these forums are typically used to or allow, but just thought it was worth asking.
Thanks in advance for any help/assistance/guidance you could provide on either of or both of these items.
Re: Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
Oh, and I did switch to your suggestion to verify if the 20/40 coexistance was causing the slower negotiation, and it jumped up right away, I had thought that this may be it before posting originally, and considered checking it out, but really was not wanting to be a network jerk, if it was unecssary, and I am not really having speed issues, just wanted to see what I could do if anything about this.
Additionally, would updating my NIC's driver make any difference on the connection speed with the Model number I provided? Realtek RTL8191SE Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC
I am thinking that this will not matter as it is limited by hardware age, but if you know anything that I may be missing?
Re: Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
The Realtek RTL8191SE is an interesting adapter in that its theoretical transmit rate is slower than its receive rate (72 Mbps vs 144 Mbps with 20 Mbps channels). I'm guessing that the card reports the transmit rate to Windows.
I doubt that upgrading the driver is going to make much of a difference unless the version you are using has a major bug.
Re: Slow link speed on my 2.4 band for my Laptop during negotiation?
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond, with messages of added value. I could have guessed that the driver would not allow for much better performance, but figured it was worth asking for an opinion, thanks again. I am really not suffering that badly by the slower link speed, so I am continuing the "good neighbor" suggestions, and was really just stumped by the fact that the "better router", would negotiate a slower speed than my previous 5+ year old router would. oh well.
Oh yeah, and the link speed is what is being reported from the adapter by windows so, who knows what the real "speed" of the actual connection is at any given time.
