speed question

[Jeff Hartmann]

I am on Comcast/Xfinity, allegedly 200mps. On my I phone I get 200-220. On my 12 year old HP Pavilion PC I get 48-59, after adding a qualcom Atheros AR938x wireless card. Is it my processor? AMD Quad Core A6-3620?
I got 42mps with my N wireless, I expected more with the AC card (if it really is an AC card).

[Jeff Hartmann]

I changed the channel on the wifi, and now get 108.3mbps down 10.8 up. (the Iphone 6 is 218.9/11.5) Maybe I'll play more with that.

[Russell Holton]

Signal strength and on-channel traffic both takes a toll on wireless.

[Jeff Hartmann]

That makes sense...sorta, but I get 180- 240mbps on the I phone, and anywhere from 45-108 on the PC. Is it possible that a wifi card can accept AC but run at N speed...? It says up to 300mbps. ( or just an old computer working as hard as it can )

[Russell Holton]

I'm not up on all the WiFi protocols, but I know for the old B and G systems, the presence of a single unit that could only run "B" caused the entire system to roll back to "B". Likewise, I'd think the presence of a non-AC device on the network could impact the speed of the system.

The of course there's the issue of signal strength. If it's not strong enough for the highest speed, it's going to drop back.

And then, let's not forget that wireless is like a big "hub", where wired can be a full-duplex switch. I've had the difference between switch and hub come back to bite me on a large file transfer because it was stuck with half duplex.