Why is having two wifi cards faster and should I just go with it?

[TheBlobbymatt]

I have my PC in the back of my bedroom where my WiFi signal is pretty bad. As such, I've been getting a maximum of 80mbps download using my Intel duel band WiFi card with a gigabit line to my router.

 

As a "let's see what happens" I added a wifi tp-link dongle I had laying around and connected it to the same router and now I get 180mbps. 

 

If I remove either my WiFi card or my dongle I get a maximum of 80mbps.

 

For context, Im running windows 11 with an i5 9400f and a gtx 1060. I would add a wired connection but I don't want to run cables all over my house.

 

Can someone explain why this would be the case?

 

[SupaKomputa]

That's not possible, you can only connect to the internet from interface at a time, unless you have a load balancer software.

[aravindv]

3 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

That's not possible, you can only connect to the internet from interface at a time, unless you have a load balancer software.

I agree.

 

This just does not make a lot of sense, since you do not mention doing anything in software to (in effect) merge those two connections and treat them as one.

 

I had a similar use case in my college dorm where the speed was capped per connection. Some of us worked around this by grabbing a USB wifi adapter and using Speedify (I think) to merge the two connections into one. So that should have theoretically doubled the network speed, but in practice boosted the speeds by a factor of about 1.6 ~ 1.8 instead.

 

So OP might actually see some benefit using a tool like that, especially since the effective speed from one connection is apparently much lower than what it can be.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Well if its faster then just go with it, id take free performance anyday ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯ 

[TheBlobbymatt]

12 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

That's not possible, you can only connect to the internet from interface at a time, unless you have a load balancer software.

I don't know what to tell you, i have done this.

 

When i look at my network settings, i have settings for wifi and wifi 2. One for the network card and one for the dongle. Removing either the wifi card or the dongle means i only have settings for one wifi card in the settings window and a 80mbps maximum download. I can also turn off each card independently using the settings which drops my connection to a maximum of 80mbps and turns off the LED's on the respected wifi adapter. Im connecting to a BT Smart Hub 2, if that helps explain why i can do this.

7 minutes ago, aravindv said:

I had a similar use case in my college dorm where the speed was capped per connection. Some of us worked around this by grabbing a USB wifi adapter and using Speedify (I think) to merge the two connections into one.

The connections are not capped as when i just have just my wifi card in my pc and it's in the same rooms as my router i get 280mbps download. 

7 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Well if its faster then just go with it, id take free performance anyday ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯ 

This is definitely my intention but i would love to know why my download speed is over double and if there is any potential for issues in the future.
 

[Mark Kaine]

21 minutes ago, aravindv said:

This just does not make a lot of sense, since you do not mention doing anything in software to (in effect) merge those two connections and treat them as one.

I agree , at face value this doesn't make sense, but what if the mobo automatically combines the two...?

 

It would probably help seeing the internet/ adapter properties,  i think it would have to show data transfer on both at the same time, if that is what OP is seeing...

 

Otherwise it "seems" to work,  we just don't know why, without further info. 

[TheBlobbymatt]

7 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I agree , at face value this doesn't make sense, but what if the mobo automatically combines the two...?

 

It would probably help seeing the internet/ adapter properties,  i think it would have to show data transfer on both at the same time, if that is what OP is seeing...

 

Otherwise it "seems" to work,  we just don't know why, without further info. 

Im at work at the moment, but when i get home i'll try find the info you mentioned and upload a pic. Hopefully there's an answer out there.

I originally thought there was a simple answer and i just wasn't googling the right stuff.

Thanks for your insight.

[IPD]

might want to look into a better receiver antenna and/or a better/stronger/beam-forming router.

[YoungBlade]

It is possible that the two devices are effectively sharing their antennae. (Not deliberately, just by accident) It could be sort of like wrapping tin foil or taping a straightened coat hanger to get better reception to the rabbit ears on an old TV. This could boost your signal strength even though only one of the devices is actually active.

[TheBlobbymatt]

44 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

It is possible that the two devices are effectively sharing their antennae. (Not deliberately, just by accident) It could be sort of like wrapping tin foil or taping a straightened coat hanger to get better reception to the rabbit ears on an old TV. This could boost your signal strength even though only one of the devices is actually active.

Unlikely as the dongle is in the front USB 3.0 and the card is on a PCI slot at the back.

[YoungBlade]

Just now, TheBlobbymatt said:

Unlikely as the dongle is in the front USB 3.0 and the card is on a PCI slot at the back.

I was assuming you were using a laptop, but even on a desktop it could happen depending on the layout. My first desktop that had WiFi had the antenna run to the front of the computer above the drive bay, ending near the front USB ports. In that case, it would certainly be possible.

 

Do you notice an improvement even if one of the two cards is disabled in Device Manager?

[TheBlobbymatt]

10 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

I was assuming you were using a laptop, but even on a desktop it could happen depending on the layout. My first desktop that had WiFi had the antenna run to the front of the computer above the drive bay, ending near the front USB ports. In that case, it would certainly be possible.

 

Do you notice an improvement even if one of the two cards is disabled in Device Manager?

When i turn wifi off in the settings for one of the adapters my speed drops to the maximum 80mbps again

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Networking

[Falcon1986]

5 hours ago, TheBlobbymatt said:

When i turn wifi off in the settings for one of the adapters my speed drops to the maximum 80mbps again

Next time you're running a speed test with both adapters active, open up the Task Manager > Performance. Look at the activity being reported by each adapter. Do they both show simultaneous throughput during speed tests? Make sure you're using speedtest.net or dslreports.com.

[TheBlobbymatt]

After moving my router around my house my speeds on a single card have improved and I have taken some screen shots of task manager. It looks like the dongle is doing nothing when I monitor performance but with the dongle installed I'm still getting 20% faster speeds even with the stronger signal now I've moved the router.

 

i will probably now stick with the single card at the lower but acceptable speed.

 

For context this is what my phone gets when its next to my pc.

[Falcon1986]

3 hours ago, TheBlobbymatt said:

It looks like the dongle is doing nothing when I monitor performance but with the dongle installed I'm still getting 20% faster speeds even with the stronger signal now I've moved the router.

So both adapters aren't being utilized simultaneously.

 

Check to make sure that your AX200 antennae are securely fastened and free of any nearby obstruction. If the PC is on the floor, elevate it to a desk, clear any tangle of cables, rotate the case a little to see if you get any improvement.

 

Lastly, update the drivers for the AX200 to Intel's latest.

[aravindv]

@Blobbymatt But you might still want to consider using something like Speedify, since there is still room to increase the speed past the current value and you've already bought another WiFi adapter. As long as you aren't doing something that is sensitive to latency like gaming, your experience probably won't degrade by any noticeable amount.

[Falcon1986]

2 hours ago, aravindv said:

@Blobbymatt But you might still want to consider using something like Speedify, since there is still room to increase the speed past the current value and you've already bought another WiFi adapter. As long as you aren't doing something that is sensitive to latency like gaming, your experience probably won't degrade by any noticeable amount.

You do realize that Speedify requires you have at least 2 different internet connections for this to work properly and see any benefits?

[kirashi]

11 hours ago, TheBlobbymatt said:

After moving my router around my house my speeds on a single card have improved and I have taken some screen shots of task manager. It looks like the dongle is doing nothing when I monitor performance but with the dongle installed I'm still getting 20% faster speeds even with the stronger signal now I've moved the router.

 

i will probably now stick with the single card at the lower but acceptable speed.

 

For context this is what my phone gets when its next to my pc.

Without knowing your exact WiFi setup, it'll be difficult for us to know what's going on regarding your speeds, however, I have a hunch you should investigate. Pay attention to the "Connection type" whenever you notice the speeds drop down to 80mbps. What I'm actually asking you to check is whether your WiFi access point (modem from ISP or router you're using) is broadcasting 2 separate SSID's for both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, or if the SSID's for both bands is being broadcast as the same name.

 

If your computer is choosing to use the 2.4GHz band, that most likely is why you sometimes only see 80mbps, as the 2.4GHz band usually delivers between 30-60mbps ish on average to most client devices. Client devices that have higher-end WiFi cards with better antennas can indeed receive a bit more than the average speed I just quoted, depending on the location of the device in relation to the WiFi access point in your home, WiFi chipset / card being used, and number of / placement of antennas.

 

A good way to test this is to separate the SSID names for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands on your WiFi access point, then manually connect to each one and run speedtests. That will very quickly show what the speeds are on each band, and will allow you to choose the band that works best for your client devices, depending on their locations in your home. Bandsteering (having each SSID named the same) is nice in theory, but rarely works properly 100% of the time in the real world, so I don't recommend it on consumer or ISP networking gear.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Doesn't matter, if you connect to two SSIDs on the same router at the same time, Windows will only use one of them.  Because you can't connect to the same subnet more than once or the OS and router wouldn't know where to send your traffic.

 

More than that, Windows wont let you use more than one Internet connection at the same time.  There's countless posts on this forum wanting to do that, it just doesn't support it.  Speedify gets round this limitation, but still if you tried to connect to the same subnet over more than one interface at the same time, only one of the connections would be active or potentially neither, as again the router can't determine which one to send the traffic to.  In a worst case scenario this can crash your entire network due to a network loop.

 

Only managed switches with link aggregation can do this, by hiding the trickery they are performing from the rest of the network.