OK, I’ve searched on Google on a variety of keywords and phrases and had no luck, so here’s my situation:
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I have an 802.11N dual-band router. I have a desktop, a notebook, and a wireless bridge on the 5GHz band.
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I can hit my internet bandwidth cap on my cable modem easily, 16mbps, with a wired connection to the router. So no problems upstream that I can see.
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I can transfer files wirelessly between my desktop and notebook at around 50 or 60 Mbps.
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Here’s the mystery: wireless access to the internet from my desktop on the 5GHz band seems to max out at about 5Mbps and is more often 3.5Mbps.
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Here is the really weird part: my upload speed to the internet is always higher than the download speed. When I test at that average 3.5Mbps download, I invariably get 5Mbps upload rate (which I believe is the rate cap).
What is going on? If I was transferring files between computers at the same speed I was accessing the internet, I could chock it up to interference, but that’s fast. A wired connection to the router is fast, so it’s not the cable modem.