Why is my WiFi Speed slow?
Hi, everyone.
Leo Notenboom here for AskLeo.com. Let's dive right into this common question.
I have a strong WiFi signal, but I'm getting only 70 bps on my gigabit router.
Why? Shouldn't I get closer to a gigabit?
Probably not.
There are a number of reasons why that might be the case.
And perhaps more importantly,
the speed of your WiFi might not be as important as you think.
First, we have to define some
of the acronyms we're using, specifically Mbps and Gbps. Mbps,
where the B is a lowercase b stands for mega bits per second, or roughly,
the ability to transmit 1 million bits of information in 1 second.
Gbps, again with a lowercase b stands for gigabits per second,
or the ability to transmit roughly a billion bits in 1 second.
Now where the confusion lies is that
with an uppercase B in other words, MBps with an uppercase B means mega bytes
per second, and GBps with the uppercase B means gigabytes per second.
So it's an ability to transmit a million
bytes per second, or 1 billion bytes per second, respectively.
But given that a Byte is eight bits, the numbers are easy to confuse.
Remember that a 100 megabit per second is
the same as a twelve five megabyte per second.
I belabor this point only because it's
very easy to get the measurements confused.
To compare upper and lower case
measurements when you're actually comparing apples and oranges,
make sure that when you are comparing speeds or anything dealing with bits per
second or bytes per second, make sure you know what you're dealing with.
Make sure, if nothing else,
the capitalization of the letter B is the same in what you're comparing.
Now let's talk about WiFi for a minute.
Wifi has maximum speeds depending on the WiFi protocol you happen to be
using and the WiFi protocol supported by your wireless access point.
Here's a table.
802.11b, one of the oldest standards, can only do eleven megabits per second,
802.11n can do up to 600 megabits per second, and so on.
You get the idea.
Realize, though, that this is limited by both
the capability of the access point and the capability of the device you're using.
So, for example,
if you have an older laptop that is only capable of 802.11b, you're not going to get
any faster than eleven megabits per second.
Now, that's a pretty old laptop.
It's a pretty old WiFi interface.
But more commonly, 802.11g is something we should talk about.
But there you'll find that 54 megabits per second is your theoretical maximum.
So it doesn't matter how fast your router
is, whether it's 100 megabit router or a one gigabit router.
Your WiFi connection will never exceed
this theoretical maximum of the protocol that's being used.
You can tell which protocol is being used.
I call it out in the article
that accompanies this video, but it's in the command shell you enter
a command netsh wlan show interfaces,
and with that information will be something called radio type.
And that'll tell you which 802.11 protocol you happen to be using.
That way, you'll know exactly what
the maximum speed you should expect from your wireless connection is.
However, in all of these cases, I keep talking about theoretical maximum speed.
In reality, for all of those protocols,
the maximum speed is essentially never seen in the wild.
We never see a full, say, 54 megabits per second.
And that's because it varies depending on the signal quality,
the distance, and any obstacles in the way.
All of the protocols are designed specifically to fall back to a slower
speed rather than disconnect if at all possible.
So if there's interference from other radios, other wireless networks
that happen to be on the same frequency and channel other devices such as
microwaves or telephones that may be interfering at the same frequencies,
all of these things can interfere with the wireless.
The effect is not necessarily to kick you off, but rather slow down your connection.
Things like walls, metal in the walls can cause interference.
And of course,
distance is a very important factor when it comes to signal strength.
The weaker the signal,
the slower the protocol will end up running, the stronger the signal.
Of course, then the faster it can run.
But the bottom line here is
that regardless of what your theoretical maximum is for any of these wireless
protocols, the reality is always going to be less.
Even if it were perfect, it would still be less by a little bit.
And that's because built
into the protocol, built into the wireless protocol, there's overhead information.
So if, for example, you're running at a full 54 megabits per
second, which you would never see, then you would also see a slower speed
when it comes to your data, because there's administrative
and overhead information being transmitted as well.
Now, that might explain, in fact,
that probably explains why your wireless connection is limited to whatever it is.
Even though you're connected to a one gigabit router, chances are your protocol
doesn't support a full gigabit, and there may be other things interfering
with the effective speed that you are able to achieve in your specific environment.
There's one more thing that trips people
up all the time, and I actually am annoyed by ISPs that advertise this fastest WiFi.
The fact is, if you're doing something
online, there's a really good chance that the speed of your WiFi,
the speed of your router, the speed of your equipment has very
little to do with the speed of what you're doing.
And that's because everything is limited by the speed of your Internet connection.
If you've got a 100 megabit connection
to the Internet, then it doesn't matter that your router is capable of a gigabit.
It doesn't matter that your WiFi is capable of more than 100 megabits.
And that's because whatever you're doing online is choked it's throttled
at the router to the speed that you're paying for from your ISP now.
It doesn't mean that the gigabit router is pointless.
It doesn't mean that your faster WiFi is pointless.
It's useful for things that you're doing
locally like if you're copying something from one machine to another on your local
network, not involving the internet, then yeah, that can happen much, much faster.
But do be aware when you're measuring
speed that it's more often than not the speed of the internet that's actually
manifesting as what you might consider to be slow.
Now there are two other things that I do need to talk about.
They're less common, but they are important and that is simply this.
Your computer could be old. Not necessarily saying that you've got an 820 B connection
that's limited but the computer itself could simply be old.
The processor could be slow. It could be limited to Ram, you could be just faced
with hardware that is unable to keep up with today's advanced speeds.
It was built in a time where eleven
megabits was awesome and once upon a time it was now not so much.
Your machine could be part of the problem.
The other thing is that especially if your
machine is older or especially or if your machine isn't quite as capable as more
modern machines, more current machines, you could be trying to do too much.
It's very possible that all of the software you have running
simultaneously on your PC could cause it not to be able to respond to any
networking be it wired or wireless as quickly as you might want it to.
So that's something else to pay attention to.
If you've got an older machine or you consider to be a slower machine,
realize that that slowness may also impact its ability to communicate on the network.
Hope that's helpful. For updates.
For comments, for related links and more,
visit Askleo.com/145834 I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is Ask Leo.com. Thanks for watching.