Cisco Business 240AC Access point - fast internet but slow wifi speeds

[Jonnie5]

Hi there,

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I'm not an expert when it comes to networks and such, so I'm a bit lost when it comes to the slow speed of my connection to this Access Point (AP).

I recently purchased a 240AC Access Point from Amazon and set it up according to the instructions. I created a login, added my SSID (network name) and password, and the device rebooted, allowing me to connect easily.

However, I noticed an issue with the speed. The AP is connected via Powered Ethernet, and it should have an internet connection of around 925mb download and 300mb upload. Yet, when I connect my Mac, iPhone, or laptop to the AP and run a speed test, I only get about 115mb. This doesn't make sense to me, as I assume the AP should be capable of much more. I apologise for my lack of understanding with this AP; I had assumed it would be plug-and-play.

I'd be grateful for any advice on what might be causing this slowdown and how to rectify it. Thank you!

[balaji.bandi]

as per some of the testing conducted : (the speed varies depends on client device and what wifi card and chipset they using:

A maximum speed of 306Mbits/sec is obtained when being very close to the access point which drops to 31Mbits/sec at ten meters. In a room seven meters away from the AP, the range extension will boost the speed from 155 to 205 Mbits/sec.

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/cisco-240ac-wi-fi-5-access-point

[Rich R · Accepted solution]

Simply put - a whole lot of different factors will affect the throughput you get on a client.
As a rule of thumb you generally shouldn't expect much more than 50% of the "connection speed" to the AP.

- Make sure the clients are 100% up to date - most importantly the WiFi driver - if it's Windows and Intel then https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19351/windows-10-and-windows-11-wi-fi-drivers-for-intel-wireless-adapters.html
Some drivers allow you to tweak the settings eg prefer 5 GHz band.

- Make sure the AP software is updated to the latest.

- It matters whether you're connecting on 2.4GHz or 5GHz band.  It can help to create a separate SSID on 5GHz only so that when you connect to that you know you're only connecting on 5GHz.  There's generally a lot more interference on 2.4GHz because there are only 3 useable non-overlapping channels (1,6,11) which everybody/everything has to share.

- Channel bonding can increase the throughput so check the config on the AP - more bonded channels means higher throughput but more chance of interference too.  Max supported for this AP is 80MHz (4 x 20 MHz channels) and you'll need that to get the best throughput but in fact 40MHz is quite adequate for most purposes.  It's probably more technical than what you're interested in but the details are at https://mcsindex.net/

- If you don't need to support any very old wireless clients then make sure 802.11b is disabled (all data rates <= 11Mbps) so only data rates higher than 12Mbps supported.

- Make sure you don't have any noisy (non WiFi) devices causing interference like lighting/security motion sensors using "radar".  Faulty lights/microwaves, bluetooth, DECT, video senders (and various other things) can also interfere depending on product and channels used.

[Jonnie5]

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain everything; I really
appreciate it and understand a bit more now. I will take all of this
on board. Thanks again; I really appreciate it.

[Rich R]

You're welcome.  Don't forget to click thumbs up (Helpful) if you think the answer was useful and if it proves to be the answer then mark as the answer.