which speed is right?

[bradbort]

I've noticed on the 5G network, when I look at the clients self reported signal strength and speed, it tends to be higher than what the asus router firmware is reporting. For example, if I look at my fireTV, or Vizio TV, or various computers sprinkled around the house, they will report "good signal" and fast speeds (>800). When I look at the Asus router GUI, it generally reports one bar for 5g, but speeds that are in the ballpark of what the clients are reporting.

Which reading is more believable? I understand that calibration cutoffs for "how many bars" could be at work, but it seems interesting that the router says 1 bar, and the clients read 4 bars on their end.

Brad

 

[wouterv]

What is the ballpark?

Wireless networking works with radio signals. The network link requires a radio transmitter and radio receiver at each end of the link: one end is the router, the other end is the client device.
The number of bars usually is an indication for received signal strenght, these can differ at each end because the radio transmitting and the receiving conditions are different at each end.
The more with 802.11n and 802.11ac signal strength at is self is not a reliable measure, well of course: if there is no signal at all or too weak, there cannot be a good network connection.
More important is the indicated connection speed (in Mega bits per second or Mbps), the connection speed can be different for the receive and transmit signal. But receive speed at one end shall match with transmit speed at the other end.
The link may downgrade it self over time when idle, do not worry when you see a speed of 1 Mbps, when the connection becomes active (or the client is pinged) it should go up to optimal speed again.
And yes, different applications, or operating systems seems to differently interpret the numbers of bits per second. My laptop on 2.4 GHz 802.11n says the link is 75 Mbps and the routers says it is 65 Mps. For my tablet which is on 802.11ac the readings are qual.
The final maximum data throughput is in average half of the indicated connection speed.
Does this anwer your question?

 

[bradbort]

Thanks! Possibly. Are you saying that the number of bars being shown on the client side is how strong the signal it is getting, and the number of bars on the router side shows how strong the signal is going back from the client to the router?

I have noticed that the speed ratings both report are similar, but the bar ratings are very different, and was not sure if this meant I should start tinkering by adding repeaters and such.

 

[wouterv]

I should not look at number of bars.
The speed indications do matter, do you believe these are way below the maximum of weakest of both ends?
Repeaters do usually not much good, a good orientation of the router is crucial and do not expect it to cover one complete home.
Instead of repeaters you should hardwire access points to the router.

 

[bradbort]

I think the speed I'm getting is reasonable. I'll ignore the number of bars.