What are the most frequent asked questions about the TP-Link routers' speed?

Q: What does speed of Signal Rate mean?

A: It means the maximum wireless associated/link speed the router can provide. It is the internal WLAN connection speed between the computer and the router, not the internet speed.

Click here to get more detail of associated/link speed.

Q: How do I know my actual internet speed?

A: There are various speed-test tools online .You can try with the most popular site: http://speedtest.net Although this test is Flash based and not very accurate.  For an accurate test you can look for an HTML5 speed test like:  speedof.me.

Q: Why I can only get 1.2 Mbps download speed for instance, when the router says it is a 300 Mbps device?

A: As stated above, 300 Mbps refers to the WLAN internal link speed between the router and the computer, it is different from the actual internet speed. The internet speed is mainly decided by your ISP.

Q:  Why I am getting 1MBytes/s download speed while my ISP provide a 8M network, for instance.

A: Usually here 8M means 8Mbps Mbps or Mb/s means megabits per second while MBps or MB/s means Megabytes per second, there are 8 bits per Byte. It is important to clarify whether it is Mb or MB since they differ by a factor of 8.

Q: My Fiber internet is 200Mbps but I can only get a maximum 90 Mbps with a TP-LINK router like 300Mbps TL-WR841ND, why?

A: The real internet speed depends on the following: The Speed you pay for, serivce connection type, the capability of the router, the current load on the provider's network and the types of cables used. Different routers have different capabilities to handle internet data (NAT Throughput of WAN to LAN ), the maximum bandwidth TL-WR841ND can handle is about 90 Mbps.  For NAT Throughput of WAN to LAN direction of TP-link routers please refer to here.

Q: Why my link speed on the computer shows 54 Mbps when the router says it is 300 Mbps capable, for instance?
A: Different wireless clients negotiate different link speeds with the wireless router, based on the wireless modes, distance, and noise level (the level of interference from other wireless transmissions).

To get IEEE 802.11n speed, both the wireless router and wireless client have to support 11n mode. If either the wireless router or the wireless client can support only 11a or 11g, the link rate would be a maximum of 54 Mbps.

Q： Why my wired local network link speed on the computer shows 100 Mbps when the router says it is 150 Mbps/300 Mbps capable?

A: As we explained above, 150 Mbps/300Mbps refers to the maximum wireless link speed. The wired local network link speed is decided on the capability of router’s LAN ports, the characteristics of Ethernet cables and the Ethernet Adapter of the computer. If the router has 100mbps LAN ports, the local network link speed will show 100Mbps.