Upgraded my AP uplinks to 2.5GbE and WiFi speed didn’t change at all  

Wi-Fi Troubleshooting
1

I think I may have spent money fixing the wrong bottleneck.

I’ve got a 2 Gbps internet plan, several UniFi APs, and until today they were connected to 1 GbE PoE ports on my router.

That 1 gig link started bothering me because the APs themselves have 2.5 GbE ports, so I added a 2.5G PoE switch and rearranged everything.

UniFi now confirms the AP uplinks are 2.5 GbE.

Before:

~550 Mbps down / 200 Mbps up

After:

~540 Mbps down / 200 Mbps up

Testing from a Windows desktop with a Wi-Fi 6E adapter.

So… basically nothing changed.

What am I missing here?

2

You removed a bottleneck that wasn’t bottlenecking you. You were doing 550 Mbps through a 1 GbE uplink. Why would changing that uplink to 2.5G make 550 Mbps faster?

3

@GoodAfternoon_sun Yeah, seeing it written like that makes this sound pretty stupid lol. I guess I just saw “2.5G port on AP + 1G uplink” and assumed that had to be limiting it.

4

It can limit the AP. But you actually have to get somewhere near 1 Gbps first.

5

I’d check what the WiFi connection itself actually looks like. NetSpot has a free analyzer. Run it on the workstation and you’ll get the actual signal level, channel, BSSID and nearby WiFi instead of just “connected to 6 GHz.” Then run netsh wlan show interfaces and check your Tx/Rx link rates too.

6

@Ok-Image6120 Just installed NetSpot. Signal looks pretty strong and it confirms I’m on 6 GHz. There are a few other networks around, but 6 GHz itself doesn’t look particularly busy. What should I be paying attention to next?

7

Link rate and channel width. If the client is only negotiating, say, 800–900 Mbps, your 2.5G AP uplink was never the limiting factor. That’s basically what you’re trying to prove here.