A couple of rambling thoughts on why you might not be getting 1 Gbps even if {Provider redacted} is technically delivering 1 Gbps to you:
Age of WiFi cards in the equipment you are connecting to your {Provider redacted} wireless network.
Older WiFi cards/devices and even certain newer devices will connect over 2.4 GHz. 2.4 GHz technically supports up to 600 Mbps, but that is under perfect conditions and generally with the latest generations of WiFi hardware. Most people get around 100 Mbps over a 2.4 GHz connection.
On Windows 10 you can check what frequency you are connecting to your WiFi network by right-clicking the WiFi network symbol and going to properties for your WiFi network. This will show you what frequency you are connecting at as well as what Windows thinks the max theoretical connection speed for your WiFi card is:
Example WiFi Properties:
SSID: CIA Surveillance Van
Protocol: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)
Security type: WPA2-Personal
Network band: 5 GHz
Network channel: 149
Link speed (Receive/Transmit): 1201/961 (Mbps)
Even if you are connecting over 5 GHz the connection speed will vary depending on what WiFi generation your hardware is running:
| Generation | IEEE Standard | Year Adopted | Max Link Rate (Mbit/s) | Frequency (GHz) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wi-Fi 8 | 802.11bn | 2028 | 100,000 | 2.4, 5, 6, 42, 71 |
| Wi-Fi 7 | 802.11be | 2024 | 1376-46,120 | 2.4, 5, 6 |
| Wi-Fi 6E | 802.11ax | 2020 | 574-9608 | 6 |
| Wi-Fi 6 | 802.11ax | 2019 | 574-9608 | 2.4, 5 |
| Wi-Fi 5 | 802.11ac | 2014 | 433-6933 | 5 |
| Wi-Fi 4 | 802.11n | 2008 | 72-600 | 2.4, 5 |
| Wi-Fi 3 | 802.11g | 2003 | 6-54 | 2.4 |
| Wi-Fi 2 | 802.11a | 1999 | 6-54 | 5 |
| Wi-Fi 1 | 802.11b | 1999 | 1-11 | 2.4 |
| Wi-Fi 0 | 802.11 | 1997 | 1-2 | 2.4 |
All the hardware that I currently have still only runs WiFi 5. I suspect even though my fairly new laptop says it can receive/transmit 1201/961 Mbps that the real-world experience would probably be more in the 800 Mbps range if not a bit slower.
Router hardware also impacts max connection speed. From looking at {Redacted provider's} site it looks like the hardware they use for their routers supports up to WiFi 6. (Even though the range for WiFi 6 says up to 9608 I am not aware of any consumer grade hardware that supports the theoretical limit of the standard. Most WiFi 6 hardware likely supports a max of around 2 Gbps under perfect conditions.)
Distance from the WiFi router can also seriously impact speed if you are trying to get close to 1 Gbps even with the latest hardware.
The best way to test the speed you are getting is likely to plug into the router {Redacted} provided you directly with an ethernet cable and run some speed tests (speedtest.net, fast.com) to see what you get over a wired connection. Just make sure the computer you plug in has a gigabit ethernet card as a lot of laptops still ship with 10/100 ethernet cards and don't support 1 Gbps unless you explicitly upgrade the card.
Even with a 1 Gbps card you might need to try different ethernet cables as there is a speed variability among the cables as well. Most the ethernet cables that you will have lying around are Cat5 cables which support a max speed of 100 Mbps.
| Cable Type | Shielding | Max Frequency | Potential Throughput |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cat 1 | No | 10kHz | 1 Mbps |
| Cat 2 | No | 1 MHz | 4 Mbps |
| Cat 3 | No | 16 MHz | 10 Mbps |
| Cat 4 | No | 16 MHz | 10 Mbps |
| Cat 5 | No | 100 MHz | 100 Mbps |
| Cat 5e | No | 100 MHz | 1 Gbps |
| Cat 6 | Sometimes | 250 MHz | 1 Gbps |
| Cat 6a | Sometimes | 500 MHz | 10 Gbps |
| Cat 7 | Yes | 600 MHz | 10 Gbps |
| Cat 8 | Yes | 2 GHz | 40 Gbps |
There is also an obnoxious amount of variability in cable quality so even if a cable you buy on Amazon says it is Cat 5e or Cat 6 depending on the manufacturer it may functionally be a Cat 5 cable and not capable of better than 100 Mbps.
If you are testing while plugged in and getting close to 1 Gbps but not quite another thing that I have anecdotally heard you may need to try is varying the distance of the test location.
I was recently listening to a podcast from an ex-Microsoft engineer who had 10 Gbps internet installed and the connection was so fast that he had to vary his destination server to slightly further distances/different locations for him to actually see that he was getting near the speed he was paying for. It seems theoretically possible that the same situation could apply for 1 Gbps internet though I suspect this is less often an issue.
That is what I can think of off the top of my head.
Cheers,
Michael
April 24, 2024
We finally got our fiber hooked up here. I had upgraded to a new WiFi 6 router and have added WiFi 6 cards to a couple of my machines which are capable of getting 1200 down/1200 up under perfect conditions. Technically WiFi 7 hardware is out, but it is still pretty overpriced.
I am getting decent speeds here with the new hardware if I am in the same room as my WiFi router which is currently in my office:
Fast.com Speed Test Results:
Download: 770 Mbps
Upload: 700 Mbps
Latency: 8ms (unloaded) / 21ms (loaded)
Client: Redacted
Servers: Redacted
But definitely a fair amount of variability in the speed testing sites depending on the location of the test server:
Speedtest.net Results (Redacted Fiber):
Download: 483.57 Mbps
Upload: 463.81 Mbps
Ping: 12ms
Location: Redacted
Plugged in with a new Cat7 cable I was able to get up to 800 down 950 up. I have some additional cables coming later this week that I want to test see if there is any improvement in performance. There is always a chance of bad cables/interference.
Speed definitely drops significantly the further I get from my WiFi router. (I am using my own personal router rather than {Redacted}, though the WiFi 6 router they give you seemed to be pretty good too speedwise when I tested it initially).
Upstairs I am getting 100-300 up/down in the living room and then it goes down further towards the master bedroom. I will probably setup a mesh network with another router to boost the signal throughout the rest of the house.
Not sure if that helps at all, but to just to give some further datapoints. So definitely looks like getting close to 1 Gbps is probably limited to being plugged in, but overall I am happy so far. Century Link/Brightspeed quality really deteriorated over the past month—it was dropping our connection daily.