Mystery of slow net speed using wireless dongle

[-)b(-]

The network connection between the dongle and router is 72Mbs but the internet that travels over is only 4Mbs or less. When I test the internet speed directly with the router it reports a solid 40Mbs so nothing is leaching it. I'm puzzled what could be the issue with sharing the internet speed.

I can't find out the exact model of the router right now as I'm tired but it's a VirginMedia Hub thingy and the dongle is a Edimax nLite EW-7711UTn (quite old). I never install external drivers for the dongle as Windows 10 does it and the official drivers are very old.

Network speed between dongle and router is 72Mbs (fine), available internet speed from router is 40Mbs (fine), dongle received internet speed is less than 4Mbs (what?!).

[Omega]

Megabits or Megabytes? There is a difference.

[-)b(-]

The network just says "72.0 Mbps" (4 green bars) and the router broadband reports 40Mbs. That's all I know.

[C2Dan88]

Your internet speed is measured in megabits per secound Mb/s
Steam shows your download speed in megabytes per second MB/s.

So if your internet speed is 40megabits per secound (40Mb/s) then the maximun theoretically speed you can download from steam (or any site) would be is 5 megabytes per second (5MB/s).

So what you are seeing is correct.

[C2Dan88]

Originally posted by -)bean(-:

The network just says "72.0 Mbps" (4 green bars) and the router broadband reports 40Mbs. That's all I know.

That is your wireless connection speed, not your internet speed.

[-)b(-]

Sorry I'm just talking about the bandwidth itself, not the download speed. So when I run a bandwidth test from the web using the dongle it just gets 4Mbs out of the 40Mbs that's availble from the router. The network speed should allow plenty of room for the 40Mbs to travel over to the dongle.

[C2Dan88]

It is either your dongle or your router that is not very good.

[-)b(-]

And that's the mystery! Hmmm...

[-)b(-]

It's back to normal now at 40Mbs on my usb dongle! Hmmm, how strange. Maybe someone in the neighborhood was blasting out disruptive radio waves or something.

[Revelene]

You can always check the channels and move to a less congested channel, if needed.

Considering that it is 2018, and just about everything has something that runs on a wireless band, it is best to familiarize yourself with a network analyzer and always be on the ready to move channels.

To many people make the mistake of just plugging in a router, without any setup.

[-)b(-]

Thanks for that advice Revelene. If it happens again I'll just change the channel and test.