Testing environment – single story house (15 feet, 40 feet, 60 feet)

All bandwidth tests were performed in a single-story house with no other operational routers or cordless phones in the same indoor environment. The first test was conducted between a single wall, with the router placed 8 feet above ground and the three networked devices placed 15 feet away on the other side. The second test was conducted between two walls in a more traditional living room workplace area, where the router was approximately 40 feet away from all three devices.

Range performance – 802.11ac vs 802.11n

Before we began testing wireless performance, we immediately opened Network and Sharing Center to view the signal strength of each wireless network in various parts of the house.

Based on the results, 802.11ac gives 866.7Mbps at 15 feet from the router, 520Mbps in a living room environment and at the kitchen table (40 feet), and 9Mbps outside on the front porch.

On the other hand, 802.11n gives 144.4Mbps just a few feet from the router, 130Mbps in a living room environment and at the kitchen table (40 feet), and 43.3Mbps outside on the front porch. Here, the 2.4GHz band really starts to show its strength at longer distances from the router, yet is inherently limited by throughput speeds over the newer 802.11ac standard.