I just upgraded my home Spectrum connection. Getting 250-300 mbps download on the main computer which is connected by ethernet. The wi-fi that the laptop and other devices rely on are receiving about 1/3 of that speed. My modem is an Asus about 5 years old. Is the degradation caused by an old modem or is this the norm for wi-fi modems in general?
Maybe/probably. The speed of the WiFi devices is going to depend on what WiFi standards they mutually support. The “lowest” standard largely dictates the speed. The latest standard is 802.11ax (aka “WiFi 6”), but even if you upgrade your WiFi, if your laptop is only capable of 802.11n, you won’t necessarily see any improvement.
What’s the model designation of the Asus modem? A five-year-old device may or may not support 802.11ac. With certainty, we can say that upgrading your modem will improve your WiFi. The open question is whether the devices you care about can take advantage of the upgrade. Take a look at the chart in the middle of this page to get a sense of what you’re likely to see with varying standards:
Thanks for the info and the link! Very helpful
If you’re getting actual throughput of ~100mbps over wifi, that’s pretty good real-world performance.
Yes. I have a recent high end Netgear Modem & Router, 802.11ac. I get 300 Mbps wired, ~150 Mbps on 2.4 GHz. I can get ~250 Mpbs on 5 GHz when in the same room as the router, but 5 GHz deteriorates much more with range.
So I think around 100 Mbps on 5-year-old equipment is surprisingly good performance.
Are you in a sparsely populated area? I’m in a typical suburban neighborhood and I can see a dozen wireless networks. I don’t get the kind of speeds you get when I’m in the same room as my wireless router.
I’m in town, I can see about a dozen networks too.
I’m using a Netgear R7800.