According to the specifications on the TP-Link website and in the user's guide of the Archer C50 it has only a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet interface. Therefore it will not be able to deliver more than 100 Mbit/s over an Ethernet cable.

estysoccer wrote

Shouldn't I expect a fast wifi?

Speed for WiFi radio frames is not the same as the speed for data packets travelling over a WiFi link. There will always be a loss due to protocols needed to communicate.

But for a WiFi to WiFi connection through the Archer C50 you can expect more than on the switch side of this model, sure. Please bear in mind that total speed depends on many factors such as your laptop's WiFi card, available AirTIme for the connection (only one device can send/receive at the same time), interferences due to neighbor's WiFi cells etc.

estysoccer wrote

For everyone's benefit, here's what I've learned from this router: the WAN interface can actually be slower than what the advertised wifi speed is (which blows my mind... I can't believe the "portal to the outside world" is designed as the slowest point!).

Sorry, but you did not get the point here.

First: it absolutely makes sense to have faster WiFi speeds than what is possible on the Ethernet switch ("the portal to the outside wordl"). Other manufacturers also produce such WiFi routers, for example Ubiquiti's AirGrid. Reason for this is: the AirTime (the amount of time you get for sending WiFi signals) in the 2.4 GHz band may be limited so much in a dense populated area, that you need to send the WiFi radio frames with much higher speed to hold up with lower data speed on the Ethernet site.

Second: if the router/AP is able to achieve 200 Mbps on the WiFi side, you never ever will reach this "full speed" on the Ethernet line. If you achieve about 50% to 70% (depending on modulation scheme), you have a pretty good overall throughput.

So, if buying WiFi equipment with a 100 Mbps switch built in, I would not expect any speed higher than that, no matter what the specs say about highest possible WiFi speed of this device. Only criteria for "outside world portal" speed should be the speed of the Ethernet switch, but not the speed of the radio adapter.

There are indeed router models with 1000 Mbps switches and up to 7 times this speed on the WiFi side (e.g. the new Talon AD7200). Would you blame TP-Link for this device also, b/c it has no 10.000 Mbps switch built in?