Forum Discussion
lozcozenge wrote:I ordered !gib broadband and that is what the router is reporting as its speed.
But my iPhone wifi speed is less than 500Mbs even when close to the router. My MacMini is only 300Mb (in a different room).
Other devices are much less further away.
I dont think I will gain the benefit of 1Gig speed unless I cable up all devices in my house.
Considering wifi speed is less than 500Mbps would downgrading the Virgin packagte speed to 500Mbps lower the wifi speeds in the house? My assumption is it wont but want confirmation.
Thanks
Wifi is a really, really odd thing! When considering ‘speed’ it’s best to think of it all as a chain of connections - a bit like a bucket-chain if you like. At one end is the source server, and at the other is your device, iPhone, Mac etc. The connection is only as fast as the slowest component. Imagine a bucket chain with nine fairly fit fifty-year old and one eighty-year old with arthritis. No matter how many times you replace the nine with twenty-year old olympic athletes, overall, it’s not getting much quicker - for obvious reasons!
So you have 1 Gbit coming into the hub, fine, what model hub is it? What iPhone is it, what speed does its WiFi support? For example if you have a Hub 4, then it only supports WiFi 5 which maxes out at a theoretical maximum link rate of about 866 Mb/s - it can never, ever go faster than that. Even worse, this is assuming an ideal situation in a chamber insulated from and and all external signals (I bet you don't live in one of those). Allowing for the overheads in WiFi, then 500 Mb/s is about right!
Similarly the Mac Mini, it’s further away. WiFi signal strength falls off rapidly with distance - 300 Mb/s, honestly I don’t think that’s too bad.
Bottom line, it’s down to the ‘weakest link’ in the chain; reducing the underlying speed coming in won’t affect the speed to devices as long as everything else stays the same.
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