What's new

RT-AC66U B1 Wifi download speed

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

sirmclouis

Regular Contributor
Hey!

I have a similar issue as this poster here: rt-ac1750_b1-slow-wifi-speeds-on-gigabit-fiber-connection.66342 but in my case my router is a AC66U B1 with the 384.19 Asus Melin firmware.

I have a 10Gb/s connection and the router is connected the company router over a Cat6 LAN cable. When I do speed test over the company router wifi I'm able to get close to 600 mb/s download / upload, but when I do with the AC66U I rarely got more than 400mb/s download, but sometimes I manage to get close to 600mb/s upload. I'm doing the speedtest with a MBP 13-inch 2019. You can see also the speedtest here.

What is going on?

I just reset the router the factory defaults and the only thing I've custom configured is the name of the wifi and the password, also the IP range. All the rest is on default.

When I do the speed test I've checked the how the CPUs are behaving and seems that they aren't maxed out.

Screen Shot 2020-10-30 at 11.04.24.png
Screen Shot 2020-10-30 at 11.04.38.png


What can I do to get the maximum speed??
 
Hey!

I have a similar issue as this poster here: rt-ac1750_b1-slow-wifi-speeds-on-gigabit-fiber-connection.66342 but in my case my router is a AC66U B1 with the 384.19 Asus Melin firmware.

I have a 10Gb/s connection and the router is connected the company router over a Cat6 LAN cable. When I do speed test over the company router wifi I'm able to get close to 600 mb/s download / upload, but when I do with the AC66U I rarely got more than 400mb/s download, but sometimes I manage to get close to 600mb/s upload. I'm doing the speedtest with a MBP 13-inch 2019. You can see also the speedtest here.

What is going on?

I just reset the router the factory defaults and the only thing I've custom configured is the name of the wifi and the password, also the IP range. All the rest is on default.

When I do the speed test I've checked the how the CPUs are behaving and seems that they aren't maxed out.

View attachment 27296View attachment 27297

What can I do to get the maximum speed??
Your company has a better WIFI router than the AC66U_B1. I can get better WIFI speed from my AC86U than my AC66U_B1 simply because the AC86U has more radios to transmit and receive.
I don't understand why folks complain about speeds such as 400mbs when speeds over DSL in my area struggle to get to 10mbs. No sympathy from this quarter.
 
Hey!

I have a similar issue as this poster here: rt-ac1750_b1-slow-wifi-speeds-on-gigabit-fiber-connection.66342 but in my case my router is a AC66U B1 with the 384.19 Asus Melin firmware.

I have a 10Gb/s connection and the router is connected the company router over a Cat6 LAN cable. When I do speed test over the company router wifi I'm able to get close to 600 mb/s download / upload, but when I do with the AC66U I rarely got more than 400mb/s download, but sometimes I manage to get close to 600mb/s upload. I'm doing the speedtest with a MBP 13-inch 2019. You can see also the speedtest here.

What is going on?

I just reset the router the factory defaults and the only thing I've custom configured is the name of the wifi and the password, also the IP range. All the rest is on default.

When I do the speed test I've checked the how the CPUs are behaving and seems that they aren't maxed out.

View attachment 27296View attachment 27297

What can I do to get the maximum speed??

The max speed test you'll likely get will be with a wired PC. Expect less over WiFi. Check the client's WiFi connection link rate speed... expect your speed test to be around half of that max.

OE
 
Your company has a better WIFI router than the AC66U_B1. I can get better WIFI speed from my AC86U than my AC66U_B1 simply because the AC86U has more radios to transmit and receive.
I don't understand why folks complain about speeds such as 400mbs when speeds over DSL in my area struggle to get to 10mbs. No sympathy from this quarter.

That the router from my ISP is slightly better I knew. But as I mentioned on my OP the upload speed is pretty good and really close to my ISP's router. So, my educated guest is, that something is going on since the radios are the same on the download and the upload.

I don't understand why folks complain about speeds such as 400mbs when speeds over DSL in my area struggle to get to 10mbs. No sympathy from this quarter.

I didn't come here for sympathy, but for technical help. :p However, you are really welcomed to come to Europe where the internet speed in general is quite good —of course depending on the area— specially in Switzerland, where some ISPs are planning to unroll 50gb/s for the home market next year. I don't know what for… but the plan is there.

The max speed test you'll likely get will be with a wired PC. Expect less over WiFi. Check the client's WiFi connection link rate speed... expect your speed test to be around half of that max.

I know that he speed over wifi is less than wired one. I can give you a direct reference, but checking online, everyone says that a MBP 2019 is capable of delivering close to 900mbp if the router is good enough. And as I said on my OP, with the ISP's router I can reach around 600mbp easily on download / upload.
 
you need to remember wireless runs in half duplex not full. So lets use Asus RT-AC1750, if it advertises 802.11ac up to 1300 Mbps, realisticly you will only see 650Mbps in real world speed tests at best with no interfearance, or router using cpu or ram for other things. The AC1750 only has single core cpu at 600MHz and 256MB ram.
 
I know more or less all what you all are saying. But I don't know why the router is giving me more upload than download. Something that is doesn't happen with the ISP's router.
 
you need to remember wireless runs in half duplex not full. So lets use Asus RT-AC1750, if it advertises 802.11ac up to 1300 Mbps, realisticly you will only see 650Mbps in real world speed tests at best with no interfearance, or router using cpu or ram for other things. The AC1750 only has single core cpu at 600MHz and 256MB ram.
The "wireless throughput is half" is a good rule of thumb for real world situations, but it is not "half" because it is "half"-duplex. When performing online speed tests the volume of traffic is massively asymmetric. So on a quiet network at close range (ignoring any other limitations) you should be able to achieve up to 70%+ throughput.
 
Last edited:
@sirmclouis I have effectively the same router as you. Your throughput is being limited by the CPU in the router. The WiFi traffic for the speed test is mostly single threaded which is why one core is at 95% on downloads. Unlike Ethernet connections WiFi traffic can't exploit the router's hardware acceleration.
 
@ColinTaylor thanks a lot for the explanation, however, I sill don't understand the difference on download vs upload speed and how the router is able to get around 100mps more on the upload than in the download.
 
@ColinTaylor thanks a lot for the explanation, however, I sill don't understand the difference on download vs upload speed and how the router is able to get around 100mps more on the upload than in the download.
I don't know the reason for the difference. But consider that the transmit power of the MacBook will be much lower than that of the router resulting in a weaker signal.
 
I don't know the reason for the difference. But consider that the transmit power of the MacBook will be much lower than that of the router resulting in a weaker signal.

Well, now that you mention that, i would say that it's the other way around. The MBP perhaps is more powerful than the router and for that reason the upload is stronger than the download?
 
Well, now that you mention that, i would say that it's the other way around. The MBP perhaps is more powerful than the router and for that reason the upload is stronger than the download?
Ha!, maybe. Or maybe the MBP's WiFi chipset is more efficient. It could just be some poorly optimised code in the current Broadcom WiFi driver. Not a lot you can do about it unless to start experimenting with radically different versions of the firmware, like this one.
 
The "wireless throughput is half" is a good rule of thumb for real world situations, but it is not "half" because it is "half"-duplex. When performing online speed tests the volume of traffic is massively asymmetric. So on a quiet network at close range (ignoring any other limitations) you should be able to achieve up to 70%+ throughput.


Interestingly, MIMO-supported routers (multiple-input multiple-output) advertise much faster data rates. These routers utilize multiple antennas to transmit and receive multiple data streams simultaneously, which can boost the overall transfer rates. This is commonly found in 802.11n and newer routers, which advertise speeds from 600 megabits per second and higher. However, since they operate at half-duplex, 50 percent (300 megabits per second) of the bandwidth is reserved for transmitting while the other 50 percent is used for receiving.

Source:
 
Interestingly, MIMO-supported routers (multiple-input multiple-output) advertise much faster data rates. These routers utilize multiple antennas to transmit and receive multiple data streams simultaneously, which can boost the overall transfer rates. This is commonly found in 802.11n and newer routers, which advertise speeds from 600 megabits per second and higher. However, since they operate at half-duplex, 50 percent (300 megabits per second) of the bandwidth is reserved for transmitting while the other 50 percent is used for receiving.

Source:

This router is ac capable, not just n… perhaps there is the difference? I don't know
 
The statement in that article is clearly flawed, perhaps because it's so old and things like MIMO were new. It seems to be assuming that half the router's antennas are dedicated to transmitting and the other half to receiving. Maybe some routers did that in 2014 but certainly not now. Pick any random router, say the RT-AC86U, and we can see that it is using all its antennas for both transmission and reception.

Even at a practical level, this assertion can be disproved by simply doing a speed test next to my router. Performing a speed test using the 2.4 GHz band at 20 MHz bandwidth I can easily exceed 50% my link rate, and that's ignoring things like packet and protocol overheads.
 
@ColinTaylor what is flawed about the article? WiFi is a half-duplex process currently.

Getting a bit more than 50% of the link rate is possible because of more streams, but the biggest loss is the fact it is half-duplex.
 
@ColinTaylor what is flawed about the article? WiFi is a half-duplex process currently.

Getting a bit more than 50% of the link rate is possible because of more streams, but the biggest loss is the fact it is half-duplex.
The part that is flawed is where it talks about MIMO and says: "since they operate at half-duplex, 50 percent (300 megabits per second) of the bandwidth is reserved for transmitting while the other 50 percent is used for receiving".

They are conflating two different things, half-duplex and the number of transmit/receive streams.

I'm not saying WiFi isn't half-duplex, just that that specific statement is misleading.
 
Thank you for the clarification.

This is why WiFi is hard. Every single word means something. :)
 

Latest threads

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top