So, I've been sort of confusing myself with this question: Does your internet speed vary based on the distance from your router?
Immediately, I thought yes, of course it should! But then I thought, everything's being downloaded to your router, so if I do a speed test at speedtest.net, it shouldn't matter where I am. I confirmed this by doing a test on ethernet; right next to my router and then further away. They were all the same.
But, my friend did this with thicker walls in his apartment and he is getting different results from tests; they're getting slower the further away he goes from his router.
I can't seem to understand this. It sort of makes sense, but it doesn't make sense to me when I think more about it. I don't seem to get why this would be the case? I understand local traffic may take longer, but why not a speed test?
Best Answer
Your internet speed is independent of your Wifi strength. Your Wifi strength may affect the internet speed you see.
Sounds contradictory but let me explain. We're going to assume for this example your internet speed is 20 Mb/s, and your Wifi link is using the 802.11g standard, which can handle up to 54 Mb/s.
The first line - Your internet speed is independent of your Wifi strength can be explained by saying that no matter what your Wifi link is, your router is obtaining that 20 Mb/s. The question only becomes, can I get that speed to my computer.
Now for the second line - Your Wifi strength may affect the internet speed you see. is because Wifi is how you're getting the information to the computer. As you move further away from the router the signal between it and your computer degrades. When you're sitting right next to it, you may get the full 54 Mb/s bandwidth. If you move down the hallway you may get 40 Mb/s. If you go down the hallway into another room with thick walls you may get 25 Mb/s. The distance and amount of obstruction can effect the signal strength you receive.
So what does this mean? It means that if you have the capacity for an internet speed of 20 Mb/s, as long as your Wifi is able to produce at least this bandwidth or above, and no one else is using the bandwidth, you'll not notice a difference in your internet speed regardless of strength. You could be at 20 Mb/s, 30 Mb/s, 40 Mb/s - it doesn't matter because your internet can only put through a maximum of 20 Mb/s.
On the other hand if your signal begins to get really poor you might drop down to having a wireless link of 11 Mb/s. Suddenly as far as you'll see, you have a speed of 11 Mb/s. The internet connect itself hasn't slowed, but the maximum amount of it that's being passed to you has been reduced. Hence your Wifi can affect the (perceived) internet speed.
TL;DR - Vast majority of the time the internet is the bottleneck in speed, so varying signal strengths for Wifi don't matter. If your Wifi link degraded so much that it was a lower speed than your internet was capable of, yes you'd notice a slow down.