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Comment by tazard | Hacker News Reader

I have an issue I haven't been able to diagnose. The further the distance from my router, the slower the internet speeds, but not proportionate to the strength. If I move 20 feet away, my signal is still quite strong, but my speeds drop from 150mbps to 60mbs, another 10 feet and it's down to about 15mbs. Luckily I live in a very small apartment. If anyone has any ideas, it would be appreciated!

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Thats due to dynamic rate shifting - as you move further away and the signal strength decreases, your client and AP will negotiate new data rates. Data rates will get slower with lower signal quality in effort to reduce error rates. Signal strength is also not linear, essentially a loss of 3 dB is the signal strength being cut in half. Without know much about your environment, you can try putting the AP closer to the middle of locations where you use WiFi at or get a second AP. You can also try a repeater/extender, which is usually frowned upon, but hey, if it helps it helps.

You could be either dropping off the 5Ghz band and onto the 2.4Ghz one (5Ghz has much less penetration and so it dies off way before 2.4Ghz does), or just getting closer to a source of interference.

Hmm, thanks that makes sense. Gives me something to look into anyways.

Give #4 a try and cut your channel widths down... you may not hit 150mbps, but you should have a more stable connection.

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