Real-World Router Performance
Box specs lie. “AX11000” doesn’t mean you get 11 Gbps. To see reality, you need a local network speed test.
The Test Setup
Connect one PC via Ethernet (Server) and one via WiFi (Client). Transfer a large 5GB file. If you are getting 100 MB/s (Megabytes), that’s roughly 800 Mbps (Megabits). If you are getting 20 MB/s, your router’s wireless backhaul is struggling.
Reading Your Results
A healthy gigabit wireless backhaul should land between 40-110 MB/s depending on your router’s WiFi generation and the distance to your client. Anything consistently under 15 MB/s on a WiFi 6/6E/7 router sitting in the same room points to a configuration problem — usually an outdated driver, a crowded channel, or a client device still negotiating at WiFi 4/5 speeds. Our companion LAN bottleneck diagnosis guide walks through isolating exactly which hop is slowing you down.
Don’t Forget the Switch
If your “router” is actually a router-modem combo feeding a separate switch, that switch’s port speed caps everything downstream of it. A single 100 Mbps port buried in an old 5-port switch will silently bottleneck an entire gigabit network — check every link in the chain, not just the endpoints.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my wired speed faster than my WiFi speed on the same router?
Ethernet gives each device a dedicated, full-duplex connection with virtually no overhead. WiFi shares a single radio channel among every connected device and adds protocol overhead for error correction and retransmission — so even an “AX5400” router rarely delivers more than half its rated speed to a single wireless client.
What’s a good tool for testing local network speed?
iPerf3 is the standard for raw throughput between two of your own devices, since it bypasses the internet entirely. For a quick check, a large file transfer (5GB+) between a PC and a NAS gives you a realistic real-world number in megabytes per second — just remember to multiply by 8 to convert to megabits.