What transfer speed would I get between the NAS and the laptop using a 867 Mbps 5 GHz router?

Meurglys0
Meurglys0 Posts: 13  Freshman Member
Would you please help me... I've been confused by much of what I've read about router specs. 

I purchased NAS540 in order to be able to access my hdds wirelessly and transfer files between the laptop and the NAS. Of course I'll do massive transfers via ethernet, but I want to have a decent wireless connection between the laptop and the NAS for the relatively small (a few GBs at a time) transfers I frequently do. That's why I intend to get a Gigabit router to replace my single band 300Mbps modem. 

With my current modem I get the transfer speeds as below:

Wireless: 
1.3 GB movie file : 6-7 MB/s
1.3 GB folder containing 15 files: 2-7 MB/s

Wired: 
1.3 GB movie file : 6-9 MB/s
1.3 GB folder containing 15 files: 5-9 MB/s

I intend to use 5 GHz band of a new router between the devices. My laptop does support 802.11ac. 

So I wonder how much the transfer speed would improve if I get either of the modems below....

Rehrase:

How fast the transfer speed between a laptop and a NAS be (in Megabytes) while using the 5 GHz band of the routers below both inhttps://www.zyxel.com/products_services/Dual-Band-Wireless-AC-N-Combo-WAN-Gigabit-Gateway-with-USB-VMG3625-T20A/ https://www.tp-link.com/tr/home-networking/wifi-router/archer-c7/ wired and wireless scenarios?

a router advertised as 766 Mbps at 5 GHz and 300 Mbps at 2.4 GHz 
or 
a router advertised as 1300 Mbps at 5 GHz and 450 Mbps at 2.4 GHz?
or 
a router advertised as 1300 Mbps at 5 GHz and 300 Mbps at 2.4 GHz?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

All Replies

  • Hill
    Hill Posts: 156  Master Member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    I'm guessing your current router LAN speed is only 100Mbps?
    Upgrade to gigabit (1000Mbps) should increase the wired transmission speed to 125MB/s (ideal value), around 80-90MB/s is normal in my experience.

    As for wireless , the advertised speed is a theoretical value in LAB, the real speed depends on your device tx/rx capability (antenna), environment, obstacles, etc. 
    It's almost impossible to reach the speed "1300Mbps" "766Mbps" they claimed, maybe 60%-70% is even good case.
    The key is to upgrade to gigabit for LAN port speed of router to accelerate your network.
  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,598  Guru Member
    First Anniversary 10 Comments Friend Collector First Answer
    So I wonder how much the transfer speed would improve if I get either of the modems below....

    That is hardly predictable. In your current speed measurements the network isn't the bottleneck. So my first answer is that odds are that nothing will improve. How did you measure this speed? Using a stopwatch, or using some Windows feedback?

    You have measured a single file of 1.3GB, and 1.3GB in 15 files. 1.3GB at 10MB/sec is around 130 seconds. 15 times 4 random access time is around 600 msec, so there should be no real difference between those 2, yet your measurement suggests there is. Have you looked at CPU last of the laptop and NAS during copy? For wireless the CPU last of the access point could also be an issue, but not for wired.

    My laptop does support 802.11ac.
    Unfortunately 802.11ac isn't a single spec, but a whole range. Here you can find a list of 'marketing speeds', and you can see that to get 1300Mbit you need 3 streams at 80MHz. Which means your laptop wifi card should support 3 streams. AFAIK most of them don't. That doesn't mean that 3 streams on an AP is useless, as it can feed 3 single stream laptops simultaneously, but it's usefulness is limited.
    So you should first find out what the spec of the wifi in your laptop is, before you can know what the theoretical max throughput over 5GHz can be.
    As @Hill already said, the advertised speed is hardly reachable, and wifi is a half duplex medium. Which means that your client can't talk and listen simultaneously, which it can on wire. Further wifi is shared medium, which means that the available bandwidth is shared by all clients. In case of 2.4GHz also your neighbors count. Only one client can talk on a certain channel, no matter how many networks there are. That is also true for 5GHz, but 5GHz hardly send through walls, so neighbors are not an issue.

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