Comment by rconti

Comment by rconti 2 days ago

14 replies

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I'm lazy so I just fire off the occasional speed tests using Ookla.

It doesn't _really_ seem to matter what channel width or frequency I use, I tend to get around 600Gbps from my iPhone (17, pro).

When you make it a point to ensure you're on the correct AP, line of sight from a few feet away, sometimes I break 1Gbps. I was surprised, watching TV the other day, to randomly get a 1.2Gbps speedtest which is one of the faster ones I've seen on WiFi.

(10gbps internet, UDM Pro, UDM enterprise 2.5Gbps switch for clients, PoE WiFi 7 APs on 6ghz).

Honestly, I'd say overall 6ghz has been more trouble than it's worth. Flipping the switch to WPA2/3 as required by 6ghz broke _all_ of my clients last year, so I had to revert and now I just have a separate SSID for clients I have the energy to manually retype the password into. 6Ghz pretty much only works line of sight and from a handful of feet away. There were bugs last year in Apple's "Disable 6e" setting so it kept re-enabling itself. MLO was bad, so it would stick to 6ghz even when there was basically no usable signal.

Over the course of the past year, it's gotten pretty tolerable, but sometimes I still wonder why I bother-- I'm pretty sure my real world performance would be better if I just turned 6ghz off again.

fossilwater 5 hours ago

Interesting, I consistently get around 1.3 - 1.7 Gbps in all of my devices that support 6E and 7 (base iPhone 17, MacBook Air M3, base Samsung Galaxy S24) wherever I am in my apartment. This is with the default router and settings provided by my ISP. My router is even hidden in a sort of a cupboard with the electric switch board.

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freetime2 2 days ago

I get 1,700 Mbps on Ookla with my iPhone 17 Pro. This is on 6ghz with line of sight to the AP, with MLO turned off.

I haven't experienced any issues with 6ghz enabled, although honestly there isn't much noticeable benefit on an iPhone either in real-world usage. MLO was causing some issues for my non-WiFi 7 Apple devices - since WiFi credentials are sync'd in iCloud, I found that my laptop was joining the MLO network even though I never explicitly told it to - so I have disabled MLO.

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ashirviskas 2 days ago

Huh, I have a random 2.5G Wi-Fi 6 router with 2.5G provider connection.

I just tested 1.3Gbps through some reinforced concrete on Wi-Fi 6, no line of sight.

Is all that tinkering really needed?

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manquer 2 days ago

>> get around 600Gbps from my iPhone 17

!

What kind of magic iPhone you have? I don't think there is any device to achieve anything close to that today[1]

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[1] The recently(2024) record is claimed to be at 938 Gbps but it is only to a 12cm distance[2]

[2] https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196331/1/938nbspGb_s...

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TexanFeller 2 days ago

I just tested 1700mbits/s from my iPhone 17 PM in the next room over from my Ubiquiti E7 and I don’t even have MLO enabled. Something’s very wrong if you’re only getting 600mbit.

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Avamander 2 days ago

My MSM560 that's approximately 15 years old can do >700Mbps with a 13 Pro. If you're getting less on newer hardware something is terribly wrong.

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Nextgrid 2 days ago

Optimizing for top speeds is the wrong way of looking at this.

Even the shittiest consumer WiFi will generally give a satisfactory speed test result with decent speeds, despite being completely unusable for anything real-time like video conferencing, Remote Desktop or gaming. Your random high-speed result may very well be down to luck and doesn’t represent how stable and usable the connection will be.

In fact what the author does here (crank up the channel width, etc) might do for a good speed test result but will start dropping out with terrible latency spikes and jitter the second he turns away from his WiFi AP.

Smaller channel widths are generally preferable as they provide a smaller top speed but said speed will be much more stable.

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  • rconti 2 days ago

    Sure. Those are also things I optimize for. I'm using 40mhz 5ghz channels and 20mhz 2.4ghz channels. I'm in the 'burbs, but silicon valley, and small lots, so there's definitely some contention for channels. Just sharing my experience.

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ukd1 2 days ago

I get consistently ~1.3-1.6gbps on fast.com with similar setup (10g fiber, UDM Pro, E7, etc). I think where I live there are very few / zero folks on 6ghz...so, win.

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throwaway314155 2 days ago

> Flipping the switch to WPA2/3 as required by 6ghz broke _all_ of my clients last year

All? Really?

> and now I just have a separate SSID for clients I have the energy to manually retype the password into

Type it once and it will be saved, as has been the case for years.

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  • rconti 2 days ago

    Yep! Every single client required the password be typed in again, which is problematic in a house full of wifi devices (~50), some of which don't have keyboards, or have janky setup processes. Surely you're aware of wifi devices that need you to connect to their own SSID to set them up, or require an app and a setup process.

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    • vlan0 a day ago

      That’s interesting. My testing for EAP-TLS and OWE networks has shown modern clients will simply create another profile when it detects the change in the AKM suite. Hard roam between wpa2/wpa3, but still seem less for the client.

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