Theoretical router speed

What is it?

It’s the absolute maximum speed that a router could achieve in lab conditions, which is a lot higher than you can expect to get when using the router at home. It’s a figure that manufacturers often use when stating the speed of their routers on packaging and marketing material.

How is it calculated?

The manufacturers use a couple of tricks to boost these stated speeds. First, they don’t use a regular house with brick walls and multiple floors when testing their maximum speeds. Instead, they make sure there are no obstacles between their test devices and that they are positioned closer than most home users would ever have them. This gives them the best possible signal and the fastest speeds. It’s also normal for manufacturers to add the maximum bandwidth of all the router’s available networks together to reach a grand total. That speed isn’t achievable by a single specific device connected to the router, but it’s a guide to the maximum speed you could get in total if you had a few devices spread across all the router’s available networks.

What are the specs?

As an example, Netgear’s Nighthawk AX11000 Tri-band Wifi Router (pictured, £549 from www.snipca. com/42054), which is one of the fastest routers around, claims speeds of up to 10.8Gbps. However, it reaches this number by adding the theoretical maximum speed of its three available networks: one 6Hz Wi-fi 6e network at 4.8Gbps; one 5GHZ Wi-fi 6 network at 4.8Gbps; and a 2.4GHZ network that maxes out at 1.2Gbps.

Can I change it later?

Even if you could reach these theoretical maximum speeds, which would be almost impossible outside a lab, it’s not something you can upgrade later.