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Wi-fi link speed erratic, throughput constant

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Justinh

Senior Member
I have an Intel compute stick with Dual Band Wireless AC-7265 adapter connected to my ASUS RT-AC68P on the 5GHz band with an AC connection. I had to do a lot of setting changes on both the router and adapter to get what I have now.

The Win10 computer is behind the TV in the living room which is <50ft from the router behind one wall. The link speed constantly jumps around from 780 to 290, but mostly hovering between 580 and 390 Mbps. Throughput on the LAN is ~150Mbps symmetric.

1) Why is the link speed so erratic? The only other wireless stuff in the house is the 5GHz phone and a couple of cell phones.
2) Why is the throughput so low? And it seems to be pretty much the same no matter the link speed at the time.
 
Does performance change if you get the computer out from behind the TV?
 
1.) As Tim already asked, does the performance change when you pull it out from behind the TV...goal is to get as close to line of sight as possible to test.

2.) What method are you using to test your LAN throughput?

There are so many factors into WiFi performance related to hardware configurations/options, software configurations, and the overall airspace you are operating in.
 
1) It is a compute stick on a 5" HDMI cable, so I can't move it much. But, as you both expected, if I stick it out past the TV as much as possible and nearly get line-of-sight, the link speed avg goes up and the speed goes up.

2) I use LAN Speed Test to a share on an SSD or RAM disk.

You are right about too many factors. I have to set the router to use 80MHz and the client to use max power output just to get a decent connection. So many switches to test!

All the various numbers used to indicate connection status are crazy and not really adding up to me:
-66 RSSI
82 avg signal quality
520 avg link speed (really hard to say because it bounces so much)
no other 5GHz NICs on the radar
throughput doesn't change much even when the link speed is high or steady <<-- most mysterious part to me
 
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Throughput on the LAN is ~150Mbps symmetric ... Why is the throughput so low? And it seems to be pretty much the same no matter the link speed at the time.
What's low? 150 Mbps? Sounds like you've inadvertently tested "disk performance" rather than network performance? If so then speeds would be constant as long as varying link speeds remain above disk speeds.

I grabbed this from your Totusoft literature:

"LST Server is an additional feature for Lan Speed Test. By using this configuration the client talks directly to the server through the network with no hard drive limitations. This gives more accurate results of True network performance on the client screen. LST Server also makes it possible to test your WAN (internet) connection."
 
Well, not exactly. Any decent HDD can saturate a 1Gbps link, and I'm using a good SSD or RAM drive. So the bottleneck will be the net connection. I can get near 900Mbps over Ethernet.

However, just to verify the test, I just used TamoSoft's "Throughput Test" (which is client-server net test) and got an avg of 200Mbps (TCP only) on the compute stick.
During this test, if I observe the network activity in Task Mgr, I see a saw tooth pattern (with the tip cut off, with flat plateaus between valleys).
 
Well, not exactly. Any decent HDD can saturate a 1Gbps link, and I'm using a good SSD or RAM drive. So the bottleneck will be the net connection. I can get near 900Mbps over Ethernet.
Didn't know. Seemed worth asking. Thx for the reminder about task manager, I always forget to look there for metrics.
 
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