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Wi-Fi · Wizard

Wi-Fi Speed Check: Symptom → Cause → Fix

Slow Wi-Fi is almost never one thing. The same “my internet is bad” complaint can be a channel conflict, a router hiding in a cabinet, a phone stuck on the wrong band, or a plan that’s simply too slow for the video calls you’re making. Guessing wastes money on hardware you didn’t need.

Pick your symptom, where the problem shows up, and which band you’re on. In three clicks this tool names the most likely cause, gives you a concrete fix, and — crucially — tells you exactly how to measure whether the fix worked.

Everything here is measurable with free tools: iperf3 for true throughput, WiFiman or NetSpot for signal, and a plain ping for latency. No guesswork, no upsell.

Step 1: What’s the symptom?

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as a normal Wi-Fi speed in 2026?
Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) realistically delivers 600–900 Mbps on 5 GHz right next to the router (the PHY rate reads ~1,200 Mbps, which is the raw figure). 2.4 GHz rarely tops 100–150 Mbps. Wi-Fi 6E on 6 GHz with a 160 MHz channel can exceed 1.5 Gbps. Each wall between router and client usually costs 30–50%, two walls 60–80%. If you see 200 Mbps at the router and 25 Mbps at 25 feet, that's normal — not a defect.
How do I measure Wi-Fi speed correctly?
Speedtest.net measures your ISP, not your Wi-Fi. For pure Wi-Fi, use two iperf3 endpoints on your LAN — one wired to the router as the server, one on Wi-Fi as the client. Run 'iperf3 -s' on the server and 'iperf3 -c <IP> -t 30' on the client. That gives you true Wi-Fi throughput with no ISP bottleneck. Alternatively, your router's admin page (or app) usually shows the live PHY rate per connected device.
Do I need a new router if my Wi-Fi is slow?
Diagnose first, buy second. If the full ISP speed reaches a wired device but only Wi-Fi is slow, it's usually a channel conflict, a bad router location, old clients stuck on 2.4 GHz, or weak antenna aim. Optimize the channel first, then add mesh, then consider a new router. A Wi-Fi 6 upgrade only pays off above ~300 Mbps ISP service or with many simultaneous clients.
Which dBm signal values are realistic?
Signal strength is measured in dBm, where more negative means weaker: -50 dBm is excellent (at the router), -60 dBm good (one wall), -67 dBm is the streaming threshold, -70 dBm is marginal (video calls get shaky), and -80 dBm is unusable. Measure with WiFiman (Android/iOS), AirPort Utility with the Wi-Fi scanner enabled (iOS), or inSSIDer/NetSpot (Windows/Mac).
Why doesn't gigabit internet reach every room?
Because Wi-Fi isn't fiber. The 1 Gbps arrives at the modem, but your phone 20 feet away behind two walls might only pull 80–150 Mbps of it. To close the gap, run a wired backbone to strategically placed access points (or mesh nodes with an Ethernet backhaul). Pure wireless mesh with no cabling roughly halves throughput at each hop.

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