Poor wifi throughput compared to Netgear R6300v2 router repurposed as AP
I'm looking to replace my Netgear R6300v2 repurposed from being my gateway router to an AP but I'm seeing some odd WiFi throughput that I'm trying to understand. Both it and the EAP225 are about 20 feet away from my laptop with no obstacles in the path and both are using channel 36 and 80MHz channel width. Windows 10 shows a link rate of 526.5 with either AP.
Measurements are done using iperf3 with default settings and with a server at the far end. Laptop has an Intel AC8265 which is a 2x2:2 card. Baseline throughput is about 920Mbps in either direction running over wired Gigabit Ethernet.
I administratively shut off the radio not being actively tested.
I measure 210-220Mbps in either direction using the Netgear and only half that with the EAP225.
What settings should I be looking at to debug this?
P.S.: InSSIDer shows -44dBm from the laptop with the EAP225 and -56dBm from the Netgear
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Bummer!
I'm now thinking of looking on Ebay for a whitelisted Qualcomm-Atheros NIC for my Lenovo.
And for a sale on another EAP225
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I had another go at this today at our 2nd site and the results are impressive. My downstream speeds for iPerf were around 650-670 Mbps and upstream 480-500Mbps upstream on my Galaxy S10. On my laptop I'm getting around 350 Mbps down and 280-300Mbps upstream.
This is a much better result compare to the first site and I now believe two things:
- My laptop has a poor WiFi card (AC8265)
- WiFi density matters - there's barely any 5G signals nearby and all the TP-Link APs farely spaced out.
All those tests were done about 5m away from the AP.
Hope this helps you.
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Hi @unmesh,
That's great to hear. I know the S10 has Wifi 6 (not that this really matters when connecting to a Wifi 5 AP) I haven't found if it is 2x2 or 3x3 yet (probably 2x2).
On your laptop, check the NIC. It's possible one of the Antenna connectors popped off or became loose. Try un-popping both an re-seating. Also, it's possible the connector wire that runs form the main board up into your display is damaged.
Many (not all) laptops run the Wifi antennas through the joint up into the screen areas.
-Jonathan
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AsankaG wrote
I had another go at this today at our 2nd site and the results are impressive. My downstream speeds for iPerf were around 650-670 Mbps and upstream 480-500Mbps upstream on my Galaxy S10. On my laptop I'm getting around 350 Mbps down and 280-300Mbps upstream.
Welcome to the club!
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Thanks for adding to the knowledge base
I did some reading on the Lenovo forums and it looks like people are even more unhappy with the Qualcomm NICs than the Intel ones but it is worth popping the back off and looking at the antenna wires.
If I was confident about a NIC that was substantially better, I'd consider approaching a guy online who, for a small fee, will modify the whitelist in the BIOS to accept a device ID of your choosing. You need to send him an image of your BIOS to modify since they are now apparently all unique. There seems to be some doubt as to whether the reprogramming can be achieved entirely through software or whether one needs to buy a programmer with IC clip. The latter approach would probably not be worth the cost/effort/risk for me.
The educational journey continues
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I realize it sux to have something sticking out of your laptop, but these work well. And they're not too big
TP-Link AC1300 (Archer T3U) $24.30 on Amazon. (2x2)
If you want 3x3 though they get much larger
Edimax EW-7833UAC AC1750 Dual-Band Wi-Fi USB 3.0 Adapter $42.90
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I looked up the Archer T3U and it is based on the Realtek RTL8812BU. Turns out I have a Comfast CF-812AC that uses the same chip but the transfer performance wasn't materially different from the Intel NIC.
I'm using the Realtek driver version 1030.38.328.2019 on Windows 10.
It could be that the TP-Link has better antennae though the size is the same as the Comfast.
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Guys,
Finally bought an Intel AX200 wifi card, downgraded the BIOS on my Thinkpad T440S to a version that had not implemented a whitelist and can now reliably do file transfers at 70MBps down and 61MBps up!
I've ordered a flash programmer to see if I can upgrade the flash on my Yoga 720 daily driver to also accept an AX200.
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