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I have a Lenovo W520 with a 1x1 11b/g/n Wireless LAN PCI Express Half Mini Card Adapter and a D-Link DIR-825 using DD-WRT (build 18777). I understand that my adapter doesn't work on the 5GHz frequency band so it can't see the SSID that utilizes it. I am able to connect to the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network, but I am only connecting at a rate of 54mbps, even when the signal strength is over 80% (according to DD-WRT). It is my understanding that with N and 2.4GHz I could get a hypothetical Tx rate of ~120mbps, so why am I only getting 54? What can I do to increase that rate? I am using Windows 7 Ultimate plugged in with maximum performance.

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When using 2.4GHz you have to pay attention to the bandwidth per channel too—to really get high speeds, you need to be able to implement the 40MHz per channel option, and with the 2.4GHz band you are going to need to be able to utilise about 82% of the whole band to achieve that.

Given how noisy 2.4GHz is in most places, that is not going to be feasible in most places, and if you set the bandwidth channel to be "auto" my guess is that it will end up at 20MHz instead.

I have gotten the best results using a dual-radio access point and dedicating the 5GHz radio to 802.11n, leaving the mixed mode or 802.11g only to the 2.4GHz radio for compatibility.

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    In most cases it's best to leave 802.11a rates enabled in 5GHz (so your N clients can fall back to those rates when appropriate, like at the edge of range). Also, there's no advantage to disabling N on the 2.4GHz radio. May as well leave it enabled so 2.4GHz-capable N devices can use it when they want.
    – Spiff
    May 16, 2012 at 2:28
  • Actually, that's a good point about not disabling N on the 2.4Ghz band, but it made things easier for me from a usage perspective - I labeled on SSID-n and the other SSID-g - so it was more of a logical division than anything else.
    – Adam C
    May 16, 2012 at 8:14
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I followed the tips in this article and ended up setting the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi with the following settings:

  • Wireless Network Mode: N-Only. I don't have non-802.11n adapters.
  • Channel Width: Turbo (40MHz)
  • Wireless Channel: Auto
  • Extension Channel: Auto
  • Also set the Security Mode to WPA2 Personal and AES.

That gave me a link speed of 150 Mbps.

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  • You probably don't want to force N-Only mode, because depending on the AP's implementation, it may keep your N devices from being able to use G and B rates, even when those rates would be better suited than any N rate (such as at the edge of range).
    – Spiff
    May 16, 2012 at 2:25
  • @Spiff if I change to Mixed mode I can't use the 40MHz channel width. Changing it to use N/G allows me to choose the 40MHz channel width.
    – Jonas Stawski
    May 17, 2012 at 2:04
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A 1x1 802.11n card (non-MIMO, thus sorta "N in name only" since MIMO was kind of the raison d'être on 802.11n) can only do 72.2 mbps signaling on a 20MHz channel, or 150 mbps signaling on a 40MHz channel. On 1x1 cards that can't do short guard intervals (short GI), those numbers drop to 65 and 135mbps, respectively.

The fact that you have strong signal but not at least the 65mbps data rate suggests that your client is limiting itself to G mode operation for some reason. The most common reasons are:

  1. The AP is not set to do N on its 2.4GHz radio.
  2. Your AP or your client is configured to use WEP or TKIP (WPA1) encryption, not AES-CCMP (WPA2). WEP and TKIP, as implemented by most Wi-Fi gear, is not fast enough to keep up with N rates, so the 802.11n spec disallows using those modes with 802.11n connections. To get N rates, you have to use AES-CCMP or no encryption.
  3. Your AP (or I suppose your client) does not have QoS (802.11e, WMM) enabled. The 802.11n spec requires QoS.

Then, if you really want to give your client a chance at max performance, you could enable 40MHz-wide channel mode on the 2.4GHz radio of your AP. It uses the lion's share of the 2.4GHz band and thus is quite likely to interfere with other things (and be interfered with by other things), but if you want a chance to get 150mbps instead of just 72.2mbps, you'll need to enable 40MHz channel mode. Try to at least lock your AP to one end of the band though, by picking either channel 1 or channel 13 (11 in North America).

By the way, signal strength of "80%" is meaningless, because there's no standard for what that's 80% of, and so those percentages vary from vendor to vendor, product to product, release to release. See a Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) listed in negative dBm (deciBels referenced to 1 milliWatt) is a much more useful things, because that's pretty standard (although calibration differences make even make RSSI dBm's a bit variable). But for the sake of this Answer I've chosen to believe that that "80%" actually means you should be getting your top data rates.

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In DD-WRT set: Afterburner - Disable.

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It's probably because wifi only connects as fast as your slowest client. If you have another 802.11b/g device connected to the network then you can only connect at 54Mb/s.

If you don't have any other b/g device on the network, try logging into the router via SSH and doing a channel scan (not sure if it's avaialbe from the web interface as I use openWRT) and find a channel that's clear.

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  • At the moment of this writing there was only one client connected which was 802.11n.
    – Jonas Stawski
    May 14, 2012 at 14:31
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    Are you telling me that the router lowers it transmission rate to all clients because one of the clients has a lower transmission rate? That wouldn't very smart. Plus, all the Wireless clients are using 802.11n adapters.
    – Jonas Stawski
    May 14, 2012 at 14:32
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    @jstawski - That is exactly what edude05 is saying and he is 100% correct.
    – Ramhound
    May 14, 2012 at 15:55
  • Actually, the 802.11n spec removes the lowest common denominator issue and allows for multiple speeds - the limitation you are talking about does not apply, assuming of course that the spec is implemented correctly
    – Adam C
    May 14, 2012 at 18:08
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    There's a nugget of truth in this particular lie. It may be the case that each client connects at the maximum rate that it's capable of, but slower clients take longer to transmit the same data, and thus there's less time left over for the faster nodes to transmit. Adding just a few low-speed clients can drop your wireless network throughput considerably because the 802.11 standard guarantees "fairness" in the sense that everyone gets a turn to talk, but it doesn't limit how long a client will get to talk when it's its turn.
    – Reid Rankin
    Mar 25, 2013 at 22:18
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Refer this link, it may helpful if your using linux machine

http://blog.anthonywong.net/2015/07/19/boost-wifi-speed-raspberry-pi-hostapd/

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    A link to a potential solution is always welcome, but please add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes permanently offline. Take into account that being barely more than a link to an external site is a possible reason as to Why and how are some answers deleted?
    – Stephen Rauch
    Apr 7, 2017 at 5:36

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