topic Re: Wireless speeds in My Router

Wireless speeds

Marksfish — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:59:29 GMT

I have refrained asking for ages, to stop me looking too much of a techno pleb, but curiosity has finally got the better of me.

My laptop installs a Realtek 8821CE Wireless LAN 802.11ac PCI-E NIC wireless adaptor. I am on the 300MB speed product, which to be fair is more than adequate. My laptop wireless speeds hardly ever increase above 150mb. My work laptop also struggles to get above this dizzyingly high download speed, not sure what adaptor that has as it isn't currently fired up. Neither laptop has an ethernet port for fixed testing. My Samsung S22 phone on the other hand always gets full download speed.

Obviously my Android phone adaptor has a different protocol to my both my laptops, just wondering if buying a plug in usb adaptor could improve things? There are many out there, so which one should I bel looking at please?

Thanks

Mark

Re: Wireless speeds

MisterW — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:09:56 GMT

Have you checked that the 8821CE is connecting to the 5ghz band and not the 2.4ghz band ?

Re: Wireless speeds

dvorak — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 19:52:33 GMT

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from General Chat to My Router.

Re: Wireless speeds

PhilipHeyes — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 20:05:14 GMT

The Realtek RTL8821CE supports connection speeds up to 433MHz. ( a speed test is always going to be less than this )

What kind of connection speeds are being achieved ?

Re: Wireless speeds

Marksfish — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:59:59 GMT

@MisterW wrote:

Have you checked that the 8821CE is connecting to the 5ghz band and not the 2.4ghz band ?

As I can't split the bands on this router, it is difficult to monitor which band is in use at any one time. Not sure how to "force" 5ghz use, but the adaptor is set to 802.11a/n/ac which I was assured was the setting to use. There is no setting to "prefer 5ghz".

Mark

Re: Wireless speeds

Marksfish — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:03:55 GMT

@PhilipHeyes wrote:

The Realtek RTL8821CE supports connection speeds up to 433MHz. ( a speed test is always going to be less than this )

What kind of connection speeds are being achieved ?

A speed test, as per my first post rarely gets above 150 on the laptop. Full speed on the phone.

Single thread and multi thread are both much lower. It isn't an issue as such, but as I said, curiosity as to why one item can achieve and one can't.

Mark

Re: Wireless speeds

MisterW — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:04:37 GMT

@Marksfish I don't use a Hub 2 myself but I thought the status display showed which band devices were connected to

Re: Wireless speeds

Marksfish — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:28:47 GMT

It will show it, but it is a ball ache to have to keep logging into the router to see where the laptop is currently connected. All connected, but none using data, except laptop.

Re: Wireless speeds

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:08:16 GMT

@Marksfish

this powershell command will give you the link speed

Get-NetAdapter | select interfacedescription, name, status, linkspeed

Re: Wireless speeds

Marksfish — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:48:32 GMT

I'm guessing this means the adapter is working as expected.

Re: Wireless speeds

MisterW — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:21:28 GMT

It does!. from AI

The Realtek RTL8821CE is an entry-level, single-antenna (1x1) Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) card. While its maximum theoretical link speed is 433 Mbps, actual real-world throughput typically caps out at 150 Mbps to 250 Mbps, due to wireless overhead and the card's single-antenna design.

Re: Wireless speeds

Dan_the_Van — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:53:30 GMT

To add, when using the powershell command I shared, if you see a Link speed at around 76Mbps then you have a 2.4Ghz connection.

Edit: another command to try

netsh wlan show interfaces | Select-String "Description","Band","Channel", "Radio type", "Receive rate"

Re: Wireless speeds

Marksfish — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 16:51:50 GMT

That's an interesting command. All looks good my end. May consider getting a usb dongle, need to do some rearch though.

Re: Wireless speeds

Dan_the_Van — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:40:35 GMT

@Marksfish

You would need a PC with USB 3 ports for any WiFi speed improvements using a dongle , as usb 2 max speed is 480 Mbps.

If you have USB 3 port and are close to the Hub I'd suggest going wired in preference to WiFi

Re: Wireless speeds

Marksfish — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:55:22 GMT

I have a usb3 ports, so will take a look at adaptors. Can't go wired as no ethernet ports. As I say, I am not over worried about the speed, as I currently don't do anything intensive, I am just curious about it.

Mark

Re: Wireless speeds

RobPN — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:00:05 GMT

@Marksfish

USB3 to Ethernet

Re: Wireless speeds

Marksfish — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 20:00:35 GMT

I hadn't considered that, thanks.