Broadband Speed

[licquorice]

I bet all the snake oil salesmen beat a path to your door.

[WSH]

The issue is not the link speed but the length of time it takes to do the job and that depends on a number of things.

Whereas traditionally faster was better, I don’t think people have yet twigged to the fact that we have now entered a period where a faster link speed does not necessarily mean that the job will take less time.

I think a lot of people will eventually find Wi-Fi 6, (whose improvements were more about better handling of multiple users than raw speed, anyway), and Wi-Fi 7 are overkill for what they are actually trying to do.

The same applies to Full Fibre speed like 500 and 900.  In the last fortnight, I’ve updated from FTTC 68Mb/s to FF150.  (More as part of getting better price than anything else.  Still with BT, I might add…long story).  I’ve yet to see any actual performance change in terms of work flow.

And Wi-Fi 5, at 433 up/433 down is still faster than this connection, so the only time I would see an advantage from Wi-Fi 6/7 is if it was internal traffic, like backing up to the NAS wirelessly, (and any serious work I do with wires anyway).  Wi-Fi 5 remains fine for me at present.

[Kodikid]

Liquorice on the extremely rare occasions I  rubbish the SH2 you always comment. Haven't you adder enough? (see what I did there)

[pddco]

Not sure what this fascination with WiFi speeds is. Presumably there’s a concern that the aggregate of multiple devices may exceed the data rates of the WiFi standard? Taking it to the extreme, surely if one needs a 900Mbos download to a device - A NAS perhaps  or a very high performance workstation, that would be better served with a bit of physical Cat5e cable connected directly or via a switch to the Hub. Probably the only time when a mobile device - like a phone - needs that capability is when running speed tests. Or am I missing something? 

[Crimliar]

The modern WiFi standards are about more than just single device speed, there's been a degree of concurrency since WiFi 4 (802.11n).  As for using cables, my server and my NAS are connected to a high-speed switch, but that's simply not convenient for some devices - WiFi is convenient.  Why should we bother with wires that get in the way when we've multiple devices that already have sync-rates of 2400Mbps.

Those speeds though are a bonus of wanting/needing a router that does more than the regular ISP supplied router can manage.  But that router is not perfect, while I've some separation for IoT, the next upgrade here will be looking at making the network more secure.

[Kimberlin]

I fully appreciate some will say WPA2 is perfectly adequate for the majority, but at least those with a WiFi6 router do have the option of WPA3.

I also have IoT separation and optimal bandwidth settings for 2.4ghz, something that SH2 isn’t capable of?

It is of course handy having a tri-band router.

[Kodikid]

Haven't a clue what all that means. 

I do know that when I swapped my SH2 to the EE wifi 6 router my wifi speed doubled from average 200mbps to a achievable 520mbps

[WSH]

520?  Is that taking the half-duplex nature of wi-fi into account?

[Kodikid]

Again haven't a clue what that means 

[iniltous]

I suppose the question is , apart from running a speed test  on a wireless device ( so something like a phone , tablet etc ) what is it that 520Mb allows  you to do , that 200Mb is  insufficient for  , watching a video for example uses no where near either bandwidth limit …..if you were downloading a massive file then  the lower limit will increase the time necessary to download the file  ,but on a portable device these time consuming downloads are infrequent and not time sensitive anyway ( that’s the odd occasion when they are needed in the first place  )  ,so in the real world in what way would you notice 200Mbas a limiting factor…….it’s like bemoaning a road is only a dual carriageway and not a motorway,  because motorways have higher average speeds ,when in reality you are the only vehicle on the road anyway and not hindered in the speed you can travel , so two lanes or three is irrelevant, if the road were busy you may have a point , but if there isn’t any other traffic, it’s unimportant.