1700Mpbs backhaul much slower than 1000Mbps wire?

Question

So I've had the Orbi system for 3 days now and it's worked well for wireless clients but I was wondering if I'm doing something wrong in regards to placement or configuration.

My setup is the following: Orbi router in the basement connected directly to a FiOS ONT with a Windows 2016 Server and a Zigbee bridge connected to LAN ports 1 and 2. Orbi Sattelite on the other side of the house on the ground floor with LAN port 1 connected to a Windows 10 Pro desktop. I have about 16 other wireless clients like a few Windows laptops, a Linux laptop, some Android phones and Amazon FireTV devices.

The WiFi seeems to be working great and when I check the connection stats it shows that the backhaul is running at 1733Mbps. The hardwired server and desktop have 1Gbps links so in theory the backhaul should saturate the links (or at least come close to). When copying a large file from the server to the desktop I'm only getting about 30-40MBps which translates to 240-320Mbps. When the setup was hardwired on my R7000 router I was getting 100-110MBps which is 800-880Mbps. What could be the reason for such a huge disparity? I would expect the throughput to be much better than what I'm currently getting considering what the system tells me is available.

rhester72 · Answer

1733 is max theoretical, not real world. &nbsp;Reality is about half that under ideal conditions, less depending on the distance and obstructions between the router and satellite.&nbsp;Rodney

tomsliwowski · Answer

I know that 1733 was the theoretical max but I thought the days of WiFi overhead taking up half the available bandwidth died with 802.11g. I recall getting a LOT closer to max on 802.11n and definitelly close to the 866Mbps on 802.11ac.

st_shaw · Answer

tomsliwowski wrote:I know that 1733 was the theoretical max but I thought the days of WiFi overhead taking up half the available bandwidth died with 802.11g. I recall getting a LOT closer to max on 802.11n and definitelly close to the 866Mbps on 802.11ac.WiFi still has lots of overhead, so 50-60% of the link speed is all you will get.&nbsp; I measure 575 Mbs throughput over my Orbi backhaul using iperf3.

fbraz50 · Answer

Your speeds sound about right. Wireless is still a finicky thing all numbers are theoretical in ideal conditions. 50-60% is overhead feels about right.

Here is a good article explaining why it's still kind of terrible and is still worse then 1gbps wire speed.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/802-eleventy-what-a-deep-dive-into-why-wi-fi-kind-of-sucks/

tomsliwowski · Answer

rhester72,&nbsp;fbraz50&nbsp;and&nbsp;st_shaw&nbsp;thanks for the replies. So the starting point should be 50% or so of 1733 which is 866.5 or two of the 4 available 5GHz backhaul channels. Loosing another 20% for something like a wall would get me to about 693Mbps which is still double the rate that I'm actually getting.&nbsp;In your opinions, what would be the best way to maximize the speed available? Should I try to relocate the router? (not super easy but maybe I can move it 2 feet to the left where it'll be closer to the Satellite) Should I disable MU-MIMO and Implicit Beamforming? This isn't a deal breaker for the system since it's been working well so far but I would like to maximize the performance especially to my main workstation.

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1700Mpbs backhaul much slower than 1000Mbps wire?

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