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New Router = Sudden Increase in Download Speeds

hakr100

hakr100

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 1, 2011
967
113
East Coast
Got a new Netgear router yesterday, the R6300v2 with 1750 ac Dual Band, and realized a significant gain in internet download and upload speeds on my iPhone 5S over WiFi.

With my previous "g" and "n" wireless router, the best download speed I ever attained was about 20 Mbps. The new router almost tripled that, and I was two floors away from the device in a three story frame house.

I didn't change any settings and I have duplicated the test a couple of times. I don't know whether this is a big deal, but it seemed so to me. :D
 

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hakr100 said:
Got a new Netgear router yesterday, the R6300v2 with 1750 ac Dual Band, and realized a significant gain in internet download and upload speeds on my iPhone 5S over WiFi.

With my previous "g" and "n" wireless router, the best download speed I ever attained was about 20 Mbps. The new router almost tripled that, and I was two floors away from the device in a three story frame house.

I didn't change any settings and I have duplicated the test a couple of times. I don't know whether this is a big deal, but it seemed so to me. :D
Click to expand...

20 is more than enough for mobile device functions, and even HD video.

That's not surprising, a G router will max around 20-22mbps at the application layer.
 
It's Comcast. I actually don't know what the "rated" speed is. I called once to find out, and the non-English-speaking support gal give me four or five different answers. :D

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If you get this particular router, the supplied name for the second WiFi channel will not work with your 5S unless you change its name. Dunno why.

I called Netgear about this and with a good tech guy we explored and discovered that we had to change the Name (SSID) of the 5GHz network and that let us connect successfully to my iPhone5S.
 
hakr100 said:
Got a new Netgear router yesterday, the R6300v2 with 1750 ac Dual Band, and realized a significant gain in internet download and upload speeds on my iPhone 5S over WiFi.

With my previous "g" and "n" wireless router, the best download speed I ever attained was about 20 Mbps. The new router almost tripled that, and I was two floors away from the device in a three story frame house.

I didn't change any settings and I have duplicated the test a couple of times. I don't know whether this is a big deal, but it seemed so to me. :D
Click to expand...


I recently purchased the Netgear Nighthawk "R7000" and it's a beast. I get wifi everywhere even at my neighbors house.
 
With that kind of speed, I have a dumb question... your webpages shows INSTANTLY correct?
 
Mrbobb said:
With that kind of speed, I have a dumb question... your webpages shows INSTANTLY correct?
Click to expand...

Nope.

It really makes a big difference in things like movie downloads, VOIP, FaceTime, etc. Most web pages have a pretty small amount of content and the time is take up by overhead. I can dowload an 8gb movie in 10-15 minutes, but MacRumors is no faster than ever.
 
Here's a screen shot of how my *wired* iMac does...pretty much the same as the WiFi connected iPhone but with only 9 ms of PING.
 

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I had a similar experience with an older router (Linksys WRT610N).

I had 25/5 before with Comcast, and my router gives me 22/5 over WiFi, which I thought was perfectly normal.

Then Comcast upgraded the speed for all plans, and I got switched to 50/10. I reset my cable modem, and ran the speed test again. Still shows 22/5 over WiFi. I called Comcast and they said my apartment building has old wiring, and probably that's why. I didn't push for a further explanation.

A couple months back there were deals on cable modems (I was (stupidly) renting one from Comcast). I bought my own, and went to set it up. During the setup I need to plug my laptop directly to the cable modem. After the modem is installed I ran a speed test.

I got 50/10.

I was like "?!". I immediately setup my WiFi router again, and connect my laptop to WiFi. Ran a speed test and it showed 25/5. I plug my laptop to the router directly and I got 50/10.

So I am pretty sure the WiFi is causing the speed drop. I was using custom firmware (DD-WRT) on the Linksys and I thought I need a newer firmware, but I decided to tweak the WiFI settings a bit first.

[Disclaimer: Tweaking WiFi setting on your router improperly can cause performance decrease and dropped connections. Loading a custom firmware on your modem can turn your modem into a brick if you are not careful. You have been warned.]

I tried turning up the TX power on the antenna, increase the channel width, manually set the transmit rate. None helped.

Then I noticed one setting in the help file:

Frame Burst
The default value is Disabled. Frame burst allows packet bursting which will increase overall network speed though this is only recommended for approx 1-3 wireless clients, Anymore clients and there can be a negative result and throughput will be affected.

I turned the setting on, and I got 50/10 over WiFi. I usually don't have a lot of WiFi clients on at the same time, so that worked out for me. My guess is your new Netgear R6300 has frame burst enabled, or they have come up with a better implementation of the TX/RX algorithms.
 
Wow, that's some impressing speed. What's your connection technology? My DSL doesn't offer more than 16MBps...
 
Is FaceTime like crystal clear, 60 fps quality? Assuming the other side also on high speed.
 
As I said above, I bought the same router. I attached a screen shot of my wired speeds and a screen shot of the speed tests done on my phone using the speedtest app.

The 101.60 and 97.51 shows how much apple has tweaked the 'N' download speed on the 5S. The 55.39 is LTE and the remainder is wireless 'G'.
 

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I7guy said:
As I said above, I bought the same router. I attached a screen shot of my wired speeds and a screen shot of the speed tests done on my phone using the speedtest app.

The 101.60 and 97.51 shows how much apple has tweaked the 'N' download speed on the 5S. The 55.39 is LTE and the remainder is wireless 'G'.
Click to expand...

Are you invoking any special settings on the router? Those are fantastic speeds.
 
hakr100 said:
Are you invoking any special settings on the router? Those are fantastic speeds.
Click to expand...

I have Ultra 101, which I get consistently high speedtest numbers. I didn't tweak the router...however...

I downloaded and used the Genie app on my laptop, which obviously has a wireless connection. I chose a channel for N and G that was free from my neighbors. Obviously my neighbors used the default settings as I was able to find an empty N channel.

On the 5ghz channel I used 157, which was empty and set the speed to 600 since I don't have an AC card. On the 2.4 ghz channel I set the speed to 217. I also enabled 20/40 coexistence on the router, which is important. And although I'm sure you know this using WPA2-PSK(AES) yields the best speed and the most security.

I also disabled router's pin, which has nothing to do with the speeds. All other settings are basic stock.

The speedtest was a little cooked in that I stacked the cards by being 10 feet from the router and not "across the street". But it does show that apple really tweaked the performance of the 5ghz band.
 
hakr100 said:
[/COLOR]If you get this particular router, the supplied name for the second WiFi channel will not work with your 5S unless you change its name. Dunno why.

I called Netgear about this and with a good tech guy we explored and discovered that we had to change the Name (SSID) of the 5GHz network and that let us connect successfully to my iPhone5S.
Click to expand...

Does it just have to be changed to anything other than the default name? Can the 5s connect to the 5 GHz frequency?
 
rlb4 said:
Does it just have to be changed to anything other than the default name? Can the 5s connect to the 5 GHz frequency?
Click to expand...

Yes, just change it to anything other than the default. I renamed the channel NetgearSuperFast.

The 5S connects just fine to the faster channel.
 
hakr100 said:
Yes, just change it to anything other than the default. I renamed the channel NetgearSuperFast.

The 5S connects just fine to the faster channel.
Click to expand...

So I could name it 5G and then manually connect to it like any other hidden SSID?
 
gotluck said:
That's a commercial connection right? Not some residential service?.. That's crazy.
Click to expand...
No, that's my home connection.

Tennessee. $50/mo = fiber 100/100mbps.

edit:; not 50. Thought 50 for internet only, maybe used to be. $128 TV+HBO+100/100 package.

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gotluck said:
That's a commercial connection right? Not some residential service?.. That's crazy.
Click to expand...

An extra $12-20/mo gets 1000/1000... but what's the point *shrug*.
 
Menel said:
No, that's my home connection.

Tennessee. $50/mo = fiber 100/100mbps.

edit:; not 50. Thought 50 for internet only, maybe used to be. $128 TV+HBO+100/100 package.

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An extra $12-20/mo gets 1000/1000... but what's the point *shrug*.
Click to expand...

lol that is depressing I don't want to talk about my home connection that I pay the same amount for.
 
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