I changed to wifi 6 router only little improvement

[Aw2006]

I just changed to wifi 6 router and realised my network only improved little.

On whizcomms 500mbps plan.
5ghz: before was around 300mbps, now 350mbps
2.4ghz: before was around 15mbps, now 45mbps.

Most of my laptops and devices not wifi6 yet. Seems like little benefit to me except more stable on 2.4ghz. Maybe 500mbps plan cannot see any difference.

Anyone the same? What is use of upgrading to wifi6?

 

[firesong]

I just changed to wifi 6 router and realised my network only improved little.

On whizcomms 500mbps plan.
5ghz: before was around 300mbps, now 350mbps
2.4ghz: before was around 15mbps, now 45mbps.

Most of my laptops and devices not wifi6 yet. Seems like little benefit to me except more stable on 2.4ghz. Maybe 500mbps plan cannot see any difference.

Anyone the same? What is use of upgrading to wifi6?

Changing one router wouldn't improve coverage. You need to understand how wireless works, the relationship between frequencies and range (v = λf) and coverage. The goal is to increase coverage properly by adding extra access points, or using mesh systems to achieve something somewhat similar.

a. The higher speeds are on the 5Ghz band. But as our secondary school physics formula taught us, the higher the frequency, the lower the penetrative power. So walls, furniture, other installations will block wireless signals. So they will slow down your network speeds.
b. The 2.4Ghz band maxes out at 300Mbps theoretical max. However, a lot of things are on the 2.4Ghz band, including cordless phone signals, microwave ovens, and other equipment.
c. There is also interference from neighbour traffic - the more wifi signals around, the worse the interference, the worse your network quality. This is true for all frequency bands.
d. To properly gain the promised speeds, add APs appropriately where needed, to provide for coverage. If the room door should be closed all the time (because of aircon), and the need is for a strong signal, consider adding access points nearer where the coverage is needed the most. Some people install one right in their studies/bedrooms for that purpose.

I'm on the old Wifi 5 (802.11ac) and get 550-600Mbps or so consistently via wireless. There are three APs in my home, two in the rooms and one centrally in the hall. There is also wireless coverage in the toilets.

---

In summary, don't think that changing a router will work magic. If coverage was poor in the first place, changing the equipment does not change it. Consider relocating the equipment or adding APs to more locations in order to improve coverage.

For static devices, consider connecting via ethernet cable instead.

===

In terms of internet plans, 500Mbps imo is more than sufficient for most homes. Upselling higher plans really does not make sense, especially if your wireless throughput is in the typical 500Mbps range.

 

[Aw2006]

Thanks for the input. Just wondering how do you achieve 550 to 600mbps for wireless?

My new router now can support up to 1200mbps, but I only hit 300+ max.

Yours is a 1gbps plan?

If that is the case, wonder to gain higher speed really is to subscribe to higher plan? And not so much on router upgrade, am I right?

 

[xonix]

Most of my laptops and devices not wifi6 yet. Seems like little benefit to me except more stable on 2.4ghz. Maybe 500mbps plan cannot see any difference.

Anyone the same? What is use of upgrading to wifi6?

Asked and answered
Theoretical speeds for your reference:

 

[iduncheckmail]

Wifi speed depend on client and wifi node. Client devices not upgraded also LPPL.
anyway no point chasing max theoretical speed of your router , even if achieved , you will not feel a perceivable diff .

 

[xiaofan]

Thanks for the input. Just wondering how do you achieve 550 to 600mbps for wireless?
My new router now can support up to 1200mbps, but I only hit 300+ max.
Yours is a 1gbps plan?
If that is the case, wonder to gain higher speed really is to subscribe to higher plan? And not so much on router upgrade, am I right?

No need to upgrade to 1Gbps but you may want to upgrade devices like laptop to WiFi 6. Intel AX200 based wifi card is cheap.

What is the router and device you are using for testing? It should be pretty easy to nearly saturate your 500Mbps plan with a wifi 6 device with any decent wifi 6 router out there.

And 500 Mbps is just the internet speed, majority of internet sites out of Singapore will not be able to sustain 250Mbps connection speed let alone 500Mbps. Wifi 6 router and device upgrade will bring the intranet (within home network) speed to 600Mbps-900+Mbps speed. In fact it may achieve 1Gbps+ intranet speed as well if you have good AX router and clients, regardless of your fibre internet plan (500Mbps, 1Gbps or 2Gbps).

I can easily get 600Mbps-900Mbps close range speed and 300Mbps-500Mbps far range speed just with a single Asus RT-AX82U router with my two laptops (one with Intel AC9560 2*2 AC adapter, one with Intel AX200 based 2*2 AX adapter, both support 160MHz channel) which can not be achieved previously with my AC routers. And actually the laptop with Intel AC9560 card is faster than the one with Intel AX200 adapter.

 

[xiaofan]

Asked and answered

Theoretical speeds for your reference:

The wave 1/2/3 for Wifi 6/6E does not seem to be correct. It is more meant for AC but not AX.

As far as I know majority of the AX device is 2*2 AX 80Mhz (1201Mbps max phy speed) and 2*2 AX 160MHz (2402 Mbps max phy speed).

Detailed phy speed table.
https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html

 

[bert64]

Thanks for the input. Just wondering how do you achieve 550 to 600mbps for wireless?

My new router now can support up to 1200mbps, but I only hit 300+ max.

Yours is a 1gbps plan?

If that is the case, wonder to gain higher speed really is to subscribe to higher plan? And not so much on router upgrade, am I right?

No if you are only hitting 300mbps on a 500mbps plan and you upgrade to a 1gbps plan without changing your equipment or environment you will still get 300mbps because the wireless equipment is the bottleneck not the line.

Your equipment (router, clients) as well as environment (ie sources of interference, distance between devices etc) are the important factors here.

Your maximum speed will be dictated by the slowest link in the chain.

 

[firesong]

Asked and answered
Theoretical speeds for your reference:

Decent table. It does need a bit of clarification when you factor in real-world devices.

It's important to remember that many "high end" laptops and phones are still 2T2R now. Those with 3T3R are still somewhat rare, if not practically nonexistent for most users even in semi high-end laptops. Hence, it's reasonable to just use the third row of data for estimates of current device throughput. The devices with more transmit/receive antennae are really routers and APs, but they don't actually do anything to affect the actual speeds laptops, tablets and mobile phones are capable of achieving.

Which gives us a theoretical max of 867Mb/s for 802.11ac (Wifi 5) and 1.1Gb/s on 802.11ax (Wifi 6). Practical real-world speeds in very good conditions is only about 70% of that, so most users are looking at 606.9Mbps and 770Mbps for ac/ax respectively. Lower in poorer conditions, so really, unless you have a good AP in the same room like I do, 50% of throughput is more like ideal speeds for many peoples' implementations with light obstruction from thin walls and furniture, and this number will drop. So back to the earlier point: location, location, location. AP location is very important, and the right number of APs makes a real difference, rather than having the most expensive cutting edge tech.

Which means that anyone thinking of anything more than 1Gbps internet plans while relying primarily on wireless connections is really wasting money since those max throughputs are well below the paid for service.

 

[irbadboyz]

I just changed to wifi 6 router and realised my network only improved little.

On whizcomms 500mbps plan.
5ghz: before was around 300mbps, now 350mbps
2.4ghz: before was around 15mbps, now 45mbps.

Most of my laptops and devices not wifi6 yet. Seems like little benefit to me except more stable on 2.4ghz. Maybe 500mbps plan cannot see any difference.

Anyone the same? What is use of upgrading to wifi6?
cloud administration it support

Wifi 6 is definitely an improvement. And yes, you won't really notice much a difference until your phone and laptop are able to accept such high level bandwidth.

It will definitely, get rid of a lot of chokeholds and all of your devices will notice much better download times and quicker updates.

Don't think a higher speed plan will change much of that.

By the way, do not the difference between mbps and MB/s.

 

[yusoffb01]

you will see the difference in thoroughput if you have devices that are in ax based as it can serve data simultaneously instead of taking turns in wifi ac.

if you have 50 devices in ac only 1 can transfer data while the rest wait. which is why in crowded places even of you have full wifi pages may not load

in your case you are still using ac and expecting a miracle, of course there is no difference

 

[firesong]

Wifi 6 is definitely an improvement. And yes, you won't really notice much a difference until your phone and laptop are able to accept such high level bandwidth.

It will definitely, get rid of a lot of chokeholds and all of your devices will notice much better download times and quicker updates.

Don't think a higher speed plan will change much of that.

By the way, do not the difference between mbps and MB/s.

The improvements are only visible for 802.11ax devices. In fact, the main improvements is not in terms of access speed but improved MU-MIMO access by multiple devices.

It's more likely to not see any improvement, if at all, as long as the devices are only on 802.11ac.

In wireless networks, 'you're only as slow as your slowest device on the same band" is a reality.

tl;dr - benefits from 802.11ax are only seen if ALL simultaneous access devices are 802.11ax. Else it's just a placebo effect.

PS: the negotiated speed Windows reports is not the actual speed you get. It's far more complex than that. Just because Windows says you are connected at 866Mbps does not actually mean you are. This is why speed test servers were made initially - to test actual speeds. Do an iperf in your LAN to get a better idea of real local network speeds.

 

[bert64]

The improvements are only visible for 802.11ax devices. In fact, the main improvements is not in terms of access speed but improved MU-MIMO access by multiple devices.

It's more likely to not see any improvement, if at all, as long as the devices are only on 802.11ac.

In wireless networks, 'you're only as slow as your slowest device on the same band" is a reality.

tl;dr - benefits from 802.11ax are only seen if ALL simultaneous access devices are 802.11ax. Else it's just a placebo effect.

PS: the negotiated speed Windows reports is not the actual speed you get. It's far more complex than that. Just because Windows says you are connected at 866Mbps does not actually mean you are. This is why speed test servers were made initially - to test actual speeds. Do an iperf in your LAN to get a better idea of real local network speeds.

Upgrading to wifi6 is a slow process. You will see small benefits initially, and increasing benefits as you upgrade more of your devices and your neighbours upgrade theirs.

If *all* your clients are wifi5 or lower, you will see no benefit from a wifi6 router (but also no detriment either so you should always opt for the newest technology unless theres a large price difference).

If *some* of your clients are wifi6, you will see performance benefits only on those clients. Clients which don't support wifi6 will continue to operate as before. The presence of pre-wifi6 clients will degrade the overall performance of your network for those devices which do support wifi6.

The presence of non wifi6 clients in your neighbourhood operating on the same channels will also cause a reduction in performance for you.

TL;DR the benefits of wifi6 will increase over time as everyone upgrades and older devices are gradually phased out, although these benefits might be offset by an increase in overall users and use.

 

[firesong]

Upgrading to wifi6 is a slow process. You will see small benefits initially, and increasing benefits as you upgrade more of your devices and your neighbours upgrade theirs.

If *all* your clients are wifi5 or lower, you will see no benefit from a wifi6 router (but also no detriment either so you should always opt for the newest technology unless theres a large price difference).

If *some* of your clients are wifi6, you will see performance benefits only on those clients. Clients which don't support wifi6 will continue to operate as before. The presence of pre-wifi6 clients will degrade the overall performance of your network for those devices which do support wifi6.

The presence of non wifi6 clients in your neighbourhood operating on the same channels will also cause a reduction in performance for you.

TL;DR the benefits of wifi6 will increase over time as everyone upgrades and older devices are gradually phased out, although these benefits might be offset by an increase in overall users and use.

While theoretically true, on a practical level in mixed networks, I haven't really observed any significant gains. I did observe gains in one test case when 802.11ac devices were removed from the network temporarily (cos they were switched off). They were somewhat negated once we switched on the smartphones, tablets and smartwatches on older wifi tech.

With ISPs still issuing 802.11ac devices, and with corporate laptops being a little backwards, along with smartwatches and tablets likewise being backwards in the upgrade curve, I feel it's still somewhat premature. I'm still looking forward to more widespread rollout of 6Ghz networks where neighbour interference is much reduced due to the weakened intra-apartment signals. But I'll concede that at the current pace of improvements it's still at least 10 years in the making (2 corporate tech refresh cycles) before this becomes widespread reality.

 

[xiaofan]

If *all* your clients are wifi5 or lower, you will see no benefit from a wifi6 router (but also no detriment either so you should always opt for the newest technology unless theres a large price difference).

Need to add some exceptions here, 2*2 Wifi AC devices with 160MHz support gets big boost in performances with AX routers supporting 160MHz channel, but there are not many devices supporting 160MHz, like Intel AC9560, Huawei Mate 20/P30/Mate 30 series. I have not encountered AC routers supporting 160MHz channel myself.

My best speed with RT-AX82U router is with a Dell laptop with Intel AC9560 card.

 

[xiaofan]

While theoretically true, on a practical level in mixed networks, I haven't really observed any significant gains. I did observe gains in one test case when 802.11ac devices were removed from the network temporarily (cos they were switched off). They were somewhat negated once we switched on the smartphones, tablets and smartwatches on older wifi tech.

With ISPs still issuing 802.11ac devices, and with corporate laptops being a little backwards, along with smartwatches and tablets likewise being backwards in the upgrade curve, I feel it's still somewhat premature. I'm still looking forward to more widespread rollout of 6Ghz networks where neighbour interference is much reduced due to the weakened intra-apartment signals. But I'll concede that at the current pace of improvements it's still at least 10 years in the making (2 corporate tech refresh cycles) before this becomes widespread reality.

I will venture to say many people will not have big interferences with the 5GHz already, at least for the older flats with thick walls. But of course 6GHz will even be better.

For example, I live in a 4-room HDB flat built in 1998 and I do not really see interferences from neighbors with regard to 5GHz. But then 2.4 GHz is kind of hopeless and I can see many 2.4GHz from neighbors, that is probably true for majority of people in Singapore. So I even disable 2.4GHz for my main RT-AX82U router, and have another router (Singtel Mesh Router) for the few 2.4GHz clients.

 

[firesong]

I will venture to say many people will not have big interferences with the 5GHz already, at least for the older flats with thick walls. But of course 6GHz will even be better.

For example, I live in a 4-room HDB flat built in 1998 and I do not really see interferences from neighbors with regard to 5GHz. But then 2.4 GHz is kind of hopeless and I can see many 2.4GHz from neighbors, that is probably true for majority of people in Singapore. So I even disable 2.4GHz for my main RT-AX82U router, and have another router (Singtel Mesh Router) for the few 2.4GHz clients.

I stay in a flat built in the late 70s, and there are quite a few 5Ghz networks visible from my place.

 

[bert64]

I stay in a flat built in the late 70s, and there are quite a few 5Ghz networks visible from my place.

I see quite a lot of 5ghz networks, and many more 2.4ghz... If i run a promiscuous wifi sniffer like kismet theres a LOT more. The networks you "see" with a typical client sending probe requests are those that are generally strong enough to connect to, but there will be many more that are too far away to actually use but still close enough to cause some level of interference.

Thick walls are a mixed bag too... A lot of people try to use a small number of access points to cover multiple rooms, which of course works very badly if your internal walls are quite thick. This causes people to crank up the tx power, and external windows generally offer much lower resistance than walls so you end up polluting the neighbourhood.

 

[bert64]

While theoretically true, on a practical level in mixed networks, I haven't really observed any significant gains. I did observe gains in one test case when 802.11ac devices were removed from the network temporarily (cos they were switched off). They were somewhat negated once we switched on the smartphones, tablets and smartwatches on older wifi tech.

With ISPs still issuing 802.11ac devices, and with corporate laptops being a little backwards, along with smartwatches and tablets likewise being backwards in the upgrade curve, I feel it's still somewhat premature. I'm still looking forward to more widespread rollout of 6Ghz networks where neighbour interference is much reduced due to the weakened intra-apartment signals. But I'll concede that at the current pace of improvements it's still at least 10 years in the making (2 corporate tech refresh cycles) before this becomes widespread reality.

Yeah any gains in mixed networks are small, so the 6ghz band will perform better simply because there won't be any older devices using it.

One option is maintaining separate wifi6 and legacy networks on different channels. I've done setups like that before, but wouldn't really consider it here due to it being inconsiderate to neighbours (the previous setup didn't have any neighbours within range).

I have 5 devices here connected to wifi, 4 of them don't support wifi6 and are waiting to be cycled out. One of the phones is dying (battery bloating) so will be replaced soon.

Yeah uptake of new technology is generally slow, and slow uptake hurts everyone, but it's also difficult to justify upgrading when there are significant costs involved to replace existing equipment. The sooner people upgrade the better for everyone, especially for things like SSL and IPv6 where there's usually no cost involved from a user perspective.

 

[Henry Ng]

I just changed to wifi 6 router and realised my network only improved little.

On whizcomms 500mbps plan.
5ghz: before was around 300mbps, now 350mbps
2.4ghz: before was around 15mbps, now 45mbps.

Most of my laptops and devices not wifi6 yet. Seems like little benefit to me except more stable on 2.4ghz. Maybe 500mbps plan cannot see any difference.

Anyone the same? What is use of upgrading to wifi6?

The devices like laptop will need to be wifi 6 too to enjoy more. Your speed should be about 800mbps on a 1Gbps network. Now you are about 700mbps on 1Gbps network. However to be honest, you will not benefit for this wifi 6 router upgrade because you only need 25 to 35mbps for 4k UHD video streaming like Netflix 4k. For most people do not need to use such high bandwidth for wifi. No point upgrading. That is no reason why I am using Starhub EA8100 router and can even stream 4k UHD video on Netflix and Disney+ on my Samsung series 8 4k TV.