Fastest WLAN Speed

[RumorConsumer]

Whats the fastest, in Mbps, that you could actually achieve between a client and an AP. I notice my link speed is often high like 800+ and the most I get from some APs is 150mbit in the link speed test on the AP tools page.

[GIdenJoe]

It depends on a few factors.

First how wide is your channel on the AP (20, 40, 80)?
Then how many spatial streams does your AP support?
Then how many spatial streams does your client support?

The lowest of the two previous questions counts and are you indoor with enough reflections so you actually can use those spatial streams?
How clear is your channel?

All that will amount on a certain MCS your client will have (on windows this is translated to a PHY rate eg: 867Mbps)
If you have that and completely clear channels (80 MHz clear) and your pc does not have any slow downs due to disk reads and writes and the actual sending to the WiFi NIC then you should be able to get a topspeed of around 500 Mbps.

That ideal situation however usually is out of bounds for most deployments.

[RumorConsumer]

So let’s say it’s an MR52 5 feet from a 2019 MacBook Pro 2.4ghz 8core w 32gb RAM. Is there a more reliable test than the link speed web page test in the AP page? It seems to top out at 150mbit.

[kYutobi]

@RumorConsumer  just try using speedtest.net from the Mac laptop. It is usually pretty accurate.

[NolanHerring]

Take a look here: http://mcsindex.com/

I believe the Macbook Pro is 3x3:3 which is the 'weakest link or lowest common denominator' in your setup with the MR52 (4x4:4).

Assuming you have 80MHz configured, and your SNR is at least 40dB, you should in theory be able to get the max VHT MCS 9 rate which is 1300Mbps, and if the channel is crystal clean than you could possibly achieve 70 to 80% of the 1300Mbps, but its not abnormal at all to only get 50% of your theoretical max PHY rate

I personally would avoid relying on an Internet speed tests and perform an iPerf test to a local computer that is hardwired. That will give you the most accurate results vs internet or local status page speed tests.

[RumorConsumer]

@NolanHerring  iPerf. Will check it out. @kYutobi thats going to confound results by adding in an external destination. I just want to measure LAN speed.