[AC86U] Lower than expected Wifi Speeds with Gigabit Fiber

[Zaptor99]

Hi,
I recently upgraded to Bell 1 gigabit fibre service and getting full 1.14 Gbps to my modem. The modem/router is Home Hub 3000 (Sagemcom). Connecting with Ethernet gives me around 950 Mbps. But with Wifi on 5Ghz it's been limited to around 200-250 Mbps on all my AC devices. My upload speed is around 400-700 Mbps.

So, I bought the AC86U and was hoping it gives me better Wifi Performance. I connected it to the modem using Ethernet and PPPoE session. I get around 900-950 Mbps on the router using Ethernet. But again, the Wifi from the AC86U is limited to 200-250 Mbps. My upload speed is around 400-700 Mbps.

I tested using official firmware and then Merlin's.

I'm not expecting 1Gbps on Wifi, but maybe something around 400-500 Mbps would be nice.

Here are some info and things I've tried.

1) I live in a condo and everyone now has the same 1 Gig service and modem. Please see picture. Mine is the Asus_5G.
2) I tried every combination of 20/40/80 and channel on the router. Everything is worse than the default of Auto settings which I think settles on 80 and channel 157.
3) My 2 wifi devices are Asus rog laptop with AC8260 and Galaxy S9+. You can see from the picture, they connect at 866+ Mbps.
4) I'm doing my tests with client right next to router.
5) I'm testing on Ookla. Testing on DSLReports HTML5 speed test site gives me better results at around 350 Mbps
6) I've disabled Windows Defender, windows firewall, Router's firewall, nothing changed.

I guess I want to know where the bottle neck here is:
1) Congestion? If I choose a channel that no one else is using, is there still congestion because of all the other channels being congested?
2) Any settings I need to change on the AC86U?
3) Are my clients limited in their Wifi speeds?

Any help is appreciated.

 

[ApexRon]

I get around 900-950 Mbps on the router using Ethernet.

With fiber, the subscribed speed will be greater than the actual measured speed. The measured speed variance you are getting is due to other data traffic in your neighborhood.

Having Google'd the Galaxy S9+ regarding wifi speed, I discovered that the connection speed is double what the effective speed is. According to multiple posts, this effective is about 400Mbps in both directions.

The problem with the laptop speeds is associated with the WiFi card. Not the card itself as much as how it's connected. NGFF itself is probably fast enough but the PCI bus it is connected to may not be running at it's chipset's full speed because of other components connected to the bus. My previous Apple MacBook had a CD drive that I very rarely used but none the less it forced the PCI bus to ½ speed. When I removed the CD drive the PCI bus returned to full speed.

Please specify which ASUS ROG laptop you have. Why are you using an AC 8260? Doesn't your laptop support AC?

 

[Zaptor99]

With fiber, the subscribed speed will be greater than the actual measured speed. The measured speed variance you are getting is due to other data traffic in your neighborhood.

Having Google'd the Galaxy S9+ regarding wifi speed, I discovered that the connection speed is double what the effective speed is. According to multiple posts, this effective is about 400Mbps in both directions.

The problem with the laptop speeds is associated with the USB WiFi card. Not the card itself as much as the fact that it is USB. USB itself is probably fast enough but the PCI bus it is connected to may not be running at it's chipset's full speed because of other components connected to the bus. My previous Apple MacBook had a CD drive that I very rarely used but none the less it forced the PCI bus to ½ speed. When I removed the CD drive the PCI bus returned to full speed.

Please specify which ASUS ROG laptop you have. Why are you using an AC 8260? Doesn't your laptop support AC?

Thanks for the reply. I'm ok with the Ethernet speed. The modem is getting the full 1gig and I'm getting 900-950 Mbps through Ethernet, so that's pretty good for me.

My laptop is Asus ROG GL702VS which came with the Intel AC8260 Wifi card. It's internal so I think it's M.2 not USB? The laptop and the S9+ are getting the exact speed of 200-250 Mbps download and around 400-700 Mbps Upload. My expectations were maybe around 400-500 Mbps on the download.

 

[ApexRon]

I edited my previous reply from USB to NGFF.

I have an AC86U as well. My subscribed cable internet connection is 200/11Mbps. When I use Ookla to my MacBook (802.11ac) the results are 234.16/11.61Mbps. However, when I transfer files to my network hard drive on the router the speed would burst to full WiFi speed.

Have you tried to use your laptop on another AC capable network? Or you could invite someone to your condo that has another type of laptop.

 

[Zaptor99]

I edited my previous reply from USB to NGFF.

I have an AC86U as well. My subscribed cable internet connection is 200/11Mbps. When I use Ookla to my MacBook (802.11ac) the results are 234.16/11.61Mbps. However, when I transfer files to my network hard drive on the router the speed would burst to full WiFi speed.

Have you tried to use your laptop on another AC capable network? Or you could invite someone to your condo that has another type of laptop.

I have to wait a bit to try other networks or laptops, but I found something interesting (and maybe stupid). While doing many tests, I hit 500Mbps+ with my laptop and Ookla. I tried to reproduce it and couldn't. Then saw the test results history and noticed the fast one was using a new test server.

So I decided to do a bunch of Ethernet and Wifi tests using 2 known servers and 2 less known ones. All are within < 4 km of me.

With Ethernet, all 4 perform well. With Wifi, the known ones (Bell and Beanfield) give me around 225Mbps where the unknown ones (ITeraTel and Frontier give me over 500 Mbps.

I'm with Bell and assume the Bell server would give the more accurate results. I tried these 4 servers multiple times with similar results. I don't know why the Bell server would show lower Wifi speeds even though it's capable of handling faster speeds when I test through Ethernet). Or maybe the 2 unknown servers have bugs.

Is there a more accurate way to measure Wifi speeds.

 

[ApexRon]

My goal is to rule your ASUS router in or out of being the cause. Many poor WiFi, even Ethernet sometime, performance issues are related to connection with ISP or ISP issues.

Since you mentioned Bell and Beanfield, I suspect you maybe in the Toronto area but that is immaterial. I don't know how Bell Canada does things but here in the US their AT&T counterpart does what I refer to as neighborhood network protection. When I run a speed test (Ookia) from my MacBook, I have a choice of about two dozen servers. While I haven't tested with every server, I have tested with university, other ISP, and private sites receiving about the same results but I am using Spectrum not a phone company.

It is possible that Bell is prioritizing traffic but unlikely. Google how to run ping tests to determine MTU size as that could be an issue. Another possibility is IPv6. If you have IPv6 configured on the ASUS, disable it. Here in the US AT&T IPv6 can cause issues due to incompatible configuration at their end. Please check the configuration of the Home Hub 3000 (Sagemcom) to see if you can configure the Ethernet port to the ASUS as 1Gbps rather than auto detect.

Something else just came to mind regarding the Home Hub 3000 (Sagemcom). If you don't have any other devices connected to it, disable its WiFi as well as firewall. In other words, turn off as much as you can to make it just a modem.

I encourage you to take your laptop to a hot spot and verify that the WiFi speed tests are consistent.

 

[heysoundude]

Something else just came to mind regarding the Home Hub 3000 (Sagemcom). If you don't have any other devices connected to it, disable its WiFi as well as firewall. In other words, turn off as much as you can to make it just a modem.

Amen.
The conspiracy theorist in me suspects that by using your media co/ISP/commo conglomerate's router/modem combo, you're just a firmware upgrade from becoming a 5G node on their meshnet. Time will tell, provided all the microwaves don't cook me first. ;-D