wireless network speed reading

[Simba23]

Hi everyone,

Can someone help on this issue. My wireless router output is 300mbs but when you look at the speed on my Linux Mint 12 KDE Desktop and in the terminal is reads only 150mbs.

thanks for your help.

[Aging Technogeek]

Are you connected to your router through a repeater? This will cut your speed in half.

Also, what is the speed of the internet signal from you Internet Service Provider? Your router will not speed up the ISP signal. If your ISP is only providing 150 Mb/s, that's as fast as your router will run. I can tell you that few, if any ISPs in the US provide a signal at anywhere near 300 Mb/s. !00 Mb/s is about the best you will get in most locales.

A third possibility is distance. The farther your computer is from the router, the slower the signal will be.

[AlbertP]

If your ISP is only providing 150 Mb/s, that's as fast as your router will run.

Not really true. If the router supports 300 Mb/s it does not mean that the actual internet connection is that fast. 300 does make sense in local network traffic for example, if the ISP doesn't provide internet that fast. My SpeedTouch 780 WL router supports 802.11g 54Mbps wireless, but does not support internet over 8 Mbps.

Also, 300Mbps hardware running at half speed because of bad signal is still better than 150Mbps at half speed.

You can use iwconfig to see the actual speed of your wifi link. If it's lower than what the hardware supports, the signal quality is probably not good enough for 300Mbps. My connection for example is often shown as 36 or 48 Mbps instead of 54 when I'm not near the router.

[Simba23]

You are right AlbertP as I'm talking router speed and not internet speed. I understand what you are saying AlbertP but I have tried my router right next to my computer and it still only reads 150 mbs but the router says its outputing 300 mbs. I'm wondering if its a driver issue as it can't display a 2 channel system, maybe I'm at 300 mbs but the linux driver can only display 1 channel of the band.

[AlbertP]

What wifi card do you have in your laptop, and are you sure that it supports dual-band? You can run this in terminal to see some network card info:

Code: Select all

inxi -N

[Simba23]

Yes my wifi card support dual band. My router and my card has two antennas. my card is a Rosewill RNX-N180PCe which supports up to 300 mbs.

[Simba23]

I found out it must be the way the driver looks at the card, 1 channel and not 2 channel. the reason I say this is because I found a program to measure my network speed (not internet speed) its 300 mbs.

Thanks for everyones input.

[AlbertP]

Probably the iwconfig tool doesn't understand multi-channel configurations. Could you paste the output of iwconfig?

[Simba23]

Sorry but I found out that my network test was not correct so it made my reading way off from what I thought. I did find a website that might be of some help on the issue. compnetworking.about.com/od/wireless/f/80211n-300-mbps.htm

Here is the info from iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"XXXXXXXXXXXX"
Mode:Managed Frequency:X.XXX GHz Access Point: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Bit Rate=150 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=69/70 Signal level=-41 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:1363 Missed beacon:0

[AlbertP]

Ok, iwconfig clearly doesn't understand the two stream setup you use. Might be a wifi driver issue, but I don't have two stream hardware here to test it.

[Simba23]

Ok, thats fine as 150 mbs is ok for what I do on the internet/network here at home. I was just trying to get the maxium speed out of my wireless router and to make sure everything is working correctly.

thanks again for your help on this issue.