What is the normal WiFi speed of Xiaomi router? I checked the backend for three months and found that 90% of people read the wrong line of numbers.

Last week, a colleague came to me with his mobile phone and said that he had a Xiaomi AX3000T equipped with Gigabit broadband at home. He stood in front of the router and tested the speed. The Speedtest came out at 384 MB. He felt cheated on the spot. "Is this what Gigabit broadband is for?" 」. I took the phone and opened it 192.168.31.1 , entered the device details and looked at the line "speed" - 866Mbps. Let me tell you, don’t scold the operator first. The handshake rate between your mobile phone and the router is 866, and the measured rate is 384. There is nothing wrong with this ratio. The problem is that you compare 384 with 1,000. He was stunned for a long time before he realized that he didn't understand "who to compare with" at all. This article will explain everything I have accumulated over the past three months against the backend and speed testing software.: What is the line speed number, how much is considered normal, and when is there really a problem?

First separate the two accounts: The negotiated speed is not the speed at which you download

The "rate" line you see in the backend of the router and the Mijia App is called the negotiated rate in jargon. It is a "theoretical upper limit" negotiated by the mobile phone and the router during the handshake. They had an agreement the moment they connected.: Which frequency band, what bandwidth, and how many streams are used? The negotiated number is the negotiated rate. The speed that Speedtest runs is called the actual measured speed, which is the number that can be achieved by real downloads. There is a fixed discount between the two - the actual throughput of WiFi is about half to 60% of the negotiated rate. This is not Xiaomi's problem, it is the same for WiFi all over the world.

I used the actual measurement of AX3000T at home to post the results.: When the mobile phone is placed next to the router, the negotiated speed is written as 2882Mbps (this is the 5G limit of AX3000T, two streams plus 160MHz bandwidth), and the Speedtest results are around 1350Mbps. ； I retreated to the living room, negotiated and dropped to 1441, and the actual measurement was just over 650. ； Then retreated to the bedroom, negotiated 866, and measured 384. You see, the actual measurement has been steadily tracking around 0.5 times the negotiated value. So the number 384 itself doesn’t mean anything – first let’s see what the negotiation is and whether the ratio is correct.

Where did that 0.5 come from? WiFi is half-duplex, so sending and receiving cannot be done at the same time. ； Each packet is wrapped with a frame header and frame tail, and there are overheads such as retransmission and competition for air interface time. These add up to half and are the physical taxes at the protocol layer. There are a lot of promotional pages on the market for "WiFi 6 router 2800 Mbit/s", and that number all refers to the negotiated speed. If you use it as a download speed requirement, you will always feel like you are being cheated. I had this more detailed account before Why is the Gigabit Broadband WiFi speed test only 600 Mbit/s? As I reviewed in that article, bandwidth, negotiation, and actual measurement are three separate accounts.

Where can I check the speed in the background? Don’t panic about 2.4G’s 72M.

There are two entrances to see the negotiated rate. Web version: Open browser 192.168.31.1 , click on the device row on the home page device list, there is a "speed" column in the details panel, the unit is Mbps. Mobile version: Enter the router card in the Mijia App and click on the connected device list. The numbers in both places are the same, whichever one is easier to use - the full picture of the backend menu I am at 31.1 Backstage article Click here one by one, this article only focuses on the speed line.

First, let me give you a comparison table that I have saved over the past three months, covering the most typical types of equipment at home. Remember one thing before watching: The ceiling for negotiated speed is determined by the mobile network card, not the router. . AX3000T is claimed to be 2882 MB, but none of the equipment at home can be negotiated because the price negotiation is based on both parties showing their cards and choosing the lowest value.:

The most eye-catching parts of the table are the bottom two lines. Many people panic when they see the 72Mbps on 2.4G and think, "Why is it only 72?" Don’t panic, this is the standard negotiated value for 2.4G single stream 20MHz. This is the number for old network cards in the WiFi4 era, which is completely normal for it. Its job is to make the camera send back a bit stream, and the measured bandwidth of 30 MB is more than enough. What you should really look at is not the small number of 2.4G, but whether the negotiated speed of your flagship mobile phone that supports WiFi6 can be negotiated.

Flagship mobile phones cannot talk about 160MHz. Three reasons ranked by probability

The Redmi K60 at home can reach 2882. I adjusted it in three places before going up. It was also stuck at 1441 at the beginning. I will give you the order of troubleshooting. There is a high probability that it will be correct.:

First, check whether dual-band integration is on or not. Xiaomi combines 2.4G and 5G into one WiFi name by default, and the phone automatically selects the frequency band to connect to. This function is friendly to the elderly, but not friendly to the speed - sometimes the mobile phone will not let go of the 2.4G, and the negotiated speed will be directly shown to you as 144. Turn it off and let 5G have a separate name. Call the phone to connect to 5G, and the negotiation will start immediately. There are only three steps to do this. I wrote about my experience of being tricked by the sweeping machine distribution network at that time. 2.4G and 5G are separated In that article.

Secondly, check whether 160MHz is relevant. 31.1 Go to "WiFi Settings" in the background. There is a bandwidth item in the advanced options. Select "Auto" or explicitly select 160MHz. Don't choose 40MHz - the one at my cousin's house is this one and someone manually changed it to 40. The whole family's 5G negotiation is up to 866, so I thought the router had a false standard. Accounts of bandwidth and channels - 20 occupies one parking space, 40 occupies two, and there are only a few 160MHz channels in total - I used to How to choose bandwidth I have calculated it here, 2.4G is locked at 20, and 5G starts at 80. I won’t repeat it in this article.

Third, check your cell phone yourself. Some mobile phones turn off 160MHz by default in order to save power (hidden deep in the settings, search for words like "WLAN Advanced" or "Smart Multi-Network Acceleration"), and some mobile phones do not support 160MHz at all - only some of the WiFi6 mobile phones are "full version", and all WiFi5 mobile phones have a top level of 866. What kind of model does your phone have? Checking the parameters page is faster than guessing. In addition, there is a compatibility mode switch that old devices cannot connect to WiFi 6. This is a problem in another direction. I checked it and wrote it in WiFi5 compatibility mode In that article.

distance and power: The negotiation rate decreases with the signal.

The negotiated rate is not locked once negotiated. Every time the mobile phone takes a step further and the signal becomes weaker, the negotiated speed will automatically drop by one level - this is the design of WiFi. When the signal is poor, it will automatically slow down to ensure stability, which is better than insisting on crazy packet loss and retransmission at a high speed. So the numbers you see in the background will jump.: The phone is at 866 in the living room, and may drop to 650 when entering the bedroom, and then to 433 when entering the toilet. This drop is due to normal breathing, not a malfunction.

The negotiation in my bedroom was so bad that I thought it was bad, but I figured it out later.: The AX3000T is placed on the TV cabinet, separated from the bedroom by two walls. 5G's ability to penetrate walls is inherently poor. If it penetrates a wall, half of it will fall off. It's not an exaggeration, it's physics. Later, I moved the router outside the weak current box in the corridor, and the whole house negotiated it to a higher level. The toilet was never connected to 433. I have an account of placement and wall penetration modes Poor signal, weak through walls I did the calculations in detail in that article, so here I just talk about the conclusion.: The negotiation speed is generally low. Move the router first, and then talk about signal amplification. If it doesn't work, it's your turn to change the machine. .

There is also a reverse pit to mention: The negotiated rate is stable at 2882, but the measured rate cannot go up to 350. This combination is suspicious. Nine times out of ten, it is due to the speed measurement posture - the speed measurement node is assigned to another province, there is a device in the background stealing traffic, or the phone itself has turned on the power saving mode to reduce performance. Here are the ways to find out who is stealing traffic at home Three real culprits of slow Internet speed In that article, personal testing is effective.

When does it really mean there is a problem?

Having said so much about "normal", I will give you a few red lines. Only when you step on them are you worthy of checking.:

Article 1: The negotiated speed cannot match the level of my own network card. . The mobile phone is clearly confirmed to support 160MHz and is close to the site. After negotiation, 1441 cannot be uploaded. Go back and go through the previous three steps. This is not a metaphysics, my K60 is a dual-band in-one pot.

Article 2: The actual measurement is less than 30% of the negotiation . The normal discount is half. If your 866 negotiation is less than 200, it is either a signal issue or an interference issue. First look at the channel - the automatic channel jumped around in the middle of the night and fooled me all night. For households with many IoT devices, look for 1, 6, and 11 for 2.4G. How to choose channel In that article, I got one night of offline notification. The same is true on the 5G end, and speeds will drop when neighbors in the same frequency band are clustered together.

Article 3: Wired is also slow . Plug the computer into the network cable and test it. If the actual test of the plug-in cable is lying down, it has nothing to do with WiFi negotiation. Check the optical modem and the line. The number of the plug-in cable is only 94 Mbit/s, which is too "neat". Most likely, the network port was negotiated to 100 Mbit/s. I'm checking this method. The network cable is only 100Mbps In that article, I found Crystal Head from a line in the background, just follow that.

ending: My reading habits

Now I check whether the Internet speed at home is slow. The sequence is fixed to three steps, which takes thirty seconds.: First open the Mijia App and click on the details of that device to see the negotiation speed, then mentally multiply it by 0.5 to get the "theoretical actual measurement of this device" and compare it with the Speedtest numbers. At more than 70% of the theoretical value, call it a day. ； If it's not even close, check the three red lines above. Over the past three months, among the six devices at home, only the old WiFi5 network card on the TV is really old enough to be replaced - its 866 negotiation and 380 actual measurement are also normal for WiFi5, but I am too demanding. There is nothing wrong with the AX3000T itself. The complete experience after using it for two years is AX3000T two years of actual testing In that article.

After all, there is no single value answer to the question "What is the normal WiFi speed?" The answer is a ratio.: Divide the actual measurement by the negotiation, and half or so is normal. If you can't remember anything else, just remember this sentence—— Don’t compare Speedtest numbers with broadband packages, compare them with negotiated speeds first . Broadband is one book, and negotiation is another. If you turn to the wrong page, you will be wrong no matter how you are right.