TP Link AC router slower than Belkin G router?

Question

I recently upgraded my router to TP Link Archer 750 as I needed a USB port in the router to setup a media sharing server. To my surprise this router is performing pathetically.

I am running on the 5GHz band and its failing to stream a 720p movie to the Apple TV; let alone try to stream one from the attached USB HDD. My ancient Belkin 802.11g router used to stream at least 720p easily.

Am I missing something? How can an ac protocol router perform so miserably? What should I be checking?

Answer 1

Wow, that's the crappiest AP that could be called 802.11ac. It only has one 5GHz radio chain, so it's not MIMO, and MIMO is where most of the magic of 802.11ac and 802.11n comes from. Most of the first-generation 802.11ac APs were flagship products that supported 3 spatial stream MIMO 1300Mbps 802.11ac, and had high-power transmit power amplifiers (PAs) and high-quality low noise amplifiers (LNAs) on receive. But now I see some manufacturers are in a race for the bottom of the price structure. They probably cut a lot of corners to make it cheap.

Anyway, to get the most of it, check the following:

• Make sure it's configured to use 80MHz-wide channels. 40- or 20MHz-wide channels are quite literally one-half or one-quarter of the RF bandwidth, which works out to less than a half or less than a quarter of the network throughput.
• Make sure it's on a clean channel. If this is your first time using the 5GHz band in your location, maybe you have 5GHz interference you don't realize. Besides other Wi-Fi networks, some common sources of 5GHz interference include:
  • 5.8GHz cordless phones (these interfere with the higher 5GHz Wi-Fi channels 149-165)
  • Rooftop wireless ISPs often use the 5GHz band.
  • Wii U's secretly make a special hidden Wi-Fi network between the gamepad and the Wii. This typically uses the low end of the band (channels 36-48).
  • Wireless video streaming boxes. Some cable TV providers will use hidden 5GHz Wi-Fi networks to connect a wireless cable TV set-top box in a room where they're too cheap to pull coax cable to.
• Make sure it's using WPA2 (AES-CCMP) encryption. Old WPA[1] (TKIP) and WEP used RC4 hardware engines that can't keep up with 802.11n or 802.11ac speeds. So both 802.11n and 802.11ac require WPA2 if you're going to use encryption at all. Using WPA[1] or WEP can force your clients to just connect at 802.11a rates (the 5GHz band's equivalent to 802.11g).
• Make sure WMM is enabled. 802.11ac and 802.11n require it. Like with the security note above, disabling WMM can force the network into 802.11a mode, effectively disabling all the 802.11n and 802.11ac data rates.

Also note that you can't get 802.11ac speeds to a given client device unless that client device supports 802.11ac as well. Your Apple TV doesn't do 802.11ac. In fact, it doesn't even do a MIMO flavor of 802.11n. And only the revision quietly introduced in 2013 supports 40MHz-wide channels in 5GHz. So going to 802.11ac for the sake of an Apple TV is mostly a waste of effort.