S10+ WiFi Speed Not That Great?

[billykac]

I just upgraded my home network hardware and internet plan. I now have a 600mbps download plan.

All of my devices that are two years or newer all download at 500+ or 600+mbps on the 5Ghz channel. For instance my Chromebook, my HP Win10 laptop. But, my S10+, which is the newest client, and the only "advanced" WiFi 6 client on my network, struggles to achieve 300mbps on 5Ghz, at the same distance from the router as the other devices I tested.

I realize that 300mbps is sufficiently fast. But, is there a good reason for this lower WiFi performance? I thought the S10+ would be my highest performing device!

 

[Rukbat]

First, the internet, unless the server you're downloading from is really close, seldom does better than 5mbps, and usually a lot slower than that. What you're really buying is bandwidth - if you need 6mbps downloads (say for 4k video streaming), 600mbps means that you can have 100 devices watching streams at the same time. Or a computer can be downloading 10 files at once and you'll never notice a problem streaming or gaming on the phone.

Second, try changing the encryption on the router (that means that you'll have to reconnect everything). A few of my Samsungs had problems with TKIP, and I've heard of a couple of models that had problems with AES. (TKIP + AES means that you'll have problems with the largest number of devices.)

 

[billykac]

Thanks Rukbat!
-bk

Update:
I fully understand the difference between speed and bandwidth - no problem there.
So given your thought that the max speed on the internet is seldom faster than 5mbps, I just did a quick test.
On my 600mbps (down) plan, a 70mb file takes less than 2 seconds to download from the cloud to my Chromebook. It's pretty snappy.

Regarding router settings, I just got the router working properly (some tech issues) so I'll probably leave the encryption settings as they are. I was just curious to hear if there were any client-side settings on the S10+ that would make it connect as fast (or faster!) than my other devices.

Thanks again!

 

[GeorgesBlazah]

Only issue I have since the 10 update was that sometimes when my phone is connected to home wifi, it says no internet when everything else it working fine. Toggle wifi off off/on and it works fine again.

 

[billykac]

Only issue I have since the 10 update was that sometimes when my phone is connected to home wifi, it says no internet when everything else it working fine. Toggle wifi off off/on and it works fine again.

Haven't seen this.

 

[anon(19759)]

Just a note on WiFi 6. Don't expect any impact unless both the client and router are WiFi 6 devices. 6 has no benefit on your phone with an ac router.

I have a WiFi 6 router and my S10 can easily average 850Mbps on my 1Gb plan.

 

[billykac]

kjjb0204:
Yup - understand that.

I am just surprised that my S10+ is among the slowest clients on my home network - by about 50%!

 

[billykac]

So, I guess there are no phone settings that will improve my WiFi speed.
Bummer.

 

[Rukbat]

300mbps isn't slow, considering that the internet rarely tops 6mbps these days, so you'll never get a connection or download faster than that, unless the server you're connecting to is very close. 300mbps gives you bandwidth, not speed. You can download 5 files at a time and watch a video stream at full speed all at once - but none of them will be going faster than about 6mbps.

So why would you want to "improve" it? 50 streams/downloads at once isn't enough? (500mbps is good if you have a lot of kids and all of you are using the internet at once. But a phone can't do that much at one time, so 300mbps is like a car with a top speed of 250mph - on a dirt road. It's great if you can get it on salt flats, but if you can't [and you can't do 20 downloads at once on a phone], even if that car could only do 100mph it wouldn't make any difference. By the time the internet itself is going 30mbps, you won't want a phone as old as an S10+.)

As far as downloading from the cloud, most cloud systems have servers all over the place, so you're downloading from a nearby server. But for normal internet use, you're not going to get 350mbps (that download you did). (And for 600mbps, the server better be in the same town you are, near your ISP's entry point to the internet - or maybe it's their server, and it's connected to you by Ethernet to the fiber.)

As the internet gets faster, so will the phones. (In the days of 2G, we used to get 7mbps on 3G, and it was so fast. But the internet never hit 1mbps.)

 

[billykac]

300mbps isn't slow, considering that the internet rarely tops 6mbps these days, so you'll never get a connection or download faster than that, unless the server you're connecting to is very close. 300mbps gives you bandwidth, not speed. You can download 5 files at a time and watch a video stream at full speed all at once - but none of them will be going faster than about 6mbps.

Maybe I am missing something here, but as I reported above, on my Chromebook I can download a 70mb file in less than 2 seconds. How does that happen if the internet rarely tops 6mbps?

Also, my son's S8 easily downloads at nearly 500mpbs, while my S10+ barely breaks 300mbps. Repeatedly, side-by-side. Although I am not suffering at 300mbps , I am just curious why the far more capable S10+ can't touch the S8's download speed.