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I configured my new router and noticed that WiFi connection is way slower than Ethernet connection.

Ethernet connection giving a download speed of ~60Mbps and upload speed of ~30Mbps while the Wifi only giving download speed of ~20Mbps and upload speed of ~15Mbps.

This is a new router with 802.11n and it says it support 300Mbps.

Here are the Wifi settings of the router,is there anything I can change to get higher speed :

http://oi50.tinypic.com/fymmax.jpg

http://oi46.tinypic.com/2we9sph.jpg

http://oi45.tinypic.com/2j43pqc.jpg

http://oi47.tinypic.com/315o3tv.jpg

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  • 2
    Think this belongs superuser or systemfault. Not here
    – kingchris
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 5:14
  • The main point is that the 300 Mb/s is the maximum signalling rate of the interface in case you can use two channels and there isn't any interference from outside sources. There is also considerable overhead due to the way the WiFi itself works. A considerable percentage of data being transmitted isn't the actual data you're sending. Instead it's data related to the maintenance of the connection itself. In wired Ethernet, that overhead is somewhat lower.
    – AndrejaKo
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 5:43
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    TKIP and 802.11n are incompatible on most hardware. Use WPA2-AES. Many devices drop to 54Mbps if you use TKIP.
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 7:03
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    umanga, in the future, please never post the same question across multiple sites. This most likely leads to a mess like here.
    – slhck
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 7:08
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    Also @umanga I merged your migrated post into this one. If you ever ask a question on the wrong site by accident in the future, don't worry about reposting it - things tend to get migrated pretty quickly.
    – nhinkle
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 7:19

4 Answers 4

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Those 15-20 megabit/sec throughputs you're seeing are fine for 802.11g, which is what (unbeknownst to you) you're actually configured to use here.

The IEEE 802.11n spec requires that you do WPA2 (AES-CCMP) or no security, and it requires that you do QoS (WMM). You've blocked yourself from doing 802.11n by doing TKIP-only and disabling WMM.

Also, by setting your channel width the 20MHz only, you've limited your N data rates to 144.4 mbps max. (Don't get me wrong, using 20MHz-wide channels is the right thing to do from a "good neighbor" perspective in the crowded 2.4GHz band. If you wanted to use Bluetooth on a client machine that was also doing 40MHz-wide 802.11n in the 2.4GHz band, it might not work out very well.)

Also note that the rule of thumb for Wi-Fi TCP throughput—on an app that uses TCP in an optimal manner—is 50-60% of the signaling rate. So even if you made the 3 changes I suggested above, and you truly had a good 300mbps N client machine (2 spacial streams in both directions, support for 40MHz channels in 2.4GHz) within good range of the AP, you shouldn't expect to see performance much greater than 150 megabits/sec (about 18 MebiBytes/sec).

By the way, please tell me that these settings (TKIP only, WMM off, 20MHz-only) were not the factory defaults for this product. That would be really sad if they didn't know better and were accidentally effectively disabling their marquee feature by default.

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  • Your answer, is thought out, and w00talicious.
    – SpacemanSpiff
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 17:52
  • @SpacemanSpiff There can be only one!</highlander>
    – Spiff
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 18:33
  • @Spiff actually I changed the TKIP only,but others are factory default.By the way,I have "2.4Ghz(B)","2.4Ghz(N)","2.4Ghz(B+G)","2.4Ghz(G)" and "2.4Ghz(B+G+N)" for Band.I should go with "2.4Ghz(N)" right ?
    – Ashika Umanga Umagiliya
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 11:00
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    @umanga No, you should go with B+G+N. See my comment on WesleyDavid's answer below.
    – Spiff
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 16:36
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Change your band from b+g+n to strict N. Otherwise it will be in protective mode and you'll never see the full N / MIMO speed. This requires your clients to be N and support MIMO, but you knew that.

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  • thanks for the tip! I assume iPhone4S supports this ?
    – Ashika Umanga Umagiliya
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 5:01
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    @umanga Let me clarify. The iPhone has 2.4Ghz N, not 5Ghz N.
    – Wesley
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 5:17
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    Most modern (< 6 years old) devices are at least G. If you can disable B do that. Also consider setting the channel manually. Choose the one with the least overlap from your neighbor's channel(s). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels If you must overlap try to choose the one with the weakest foreign signal.
    – Chris Nava
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 5:19
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    5Ghz has more channels, shorter range, and less interference.
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 6:42
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    This is bad advice. The slight theoretic speed increase you could get in "greenfield" N mode isn't usually achievable in reality, and many (most?) consumer implementations don't really bother implementing greenfield mode. So there's not much upside to trying to do greenfield. Unfortunately, there's a big downside to turning off B/G rates, and that is that even N clients usually fall back to B/G rates at range. So disallowing B/G means your N clients can't necessarily get as much performance at range as they could on a B/G/N network.
    – Spiff
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 17:32
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Using say http://www.speedtest.net/ to verify speed You can generally expect only 50% of the channel speed for DL and less for UL, as it is a half duplex link.

You might try slowing down beacon rate to 1000mS. ensure no P2P services or Apps are running and verify your RSSI levels. Also try auto 20/40MHz

RSSI levels are often shown on some Wifi drivers in -dBm for signal and noise. You can't rely on bars.

With 54Mbps Wifi you need around -70dBm for full speed and -80dBm just to connect. Noise floor is usually -95dBm to -100dBm.

The higher the bit rate, the more bandwidth required for N speeds and the strong the signal must be.

I dont have all the answers and I know how to optimize the G rates, but not the N rates yet.

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If you are using a cabled Lan connection then switch to WIFI.... Yes WIFI will be slower

To correct this first unplug your Lan Cable then go and connect to your wifi. You will see the correct Wifi speed now. BUT NOT WITH LAN PLUGGED IN... OK??

Lan is being seen as a Ethernet connection and wifi will not disable it when you go to WIFI connection. Disconnecting has to be done Physically.

Note here: If you want to do speed tests on all 3 scenarios Do the following: First test your lan connection speed. then exit from and turn off Speedtest program (ACTUALLY DO THIS BETWEEN ALL 3 TESTS) now go and connect to wifi... leaving Lan connected. Make note to compare of all 3 tests here, being fair run 2-3 tests on each scenario, Exit and turn off speed test, now unplug Lan Cable and run speedtest again...

Did this visibly fix your issue? David

Hope this helps you! David

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