I’m having a issue with the internet speed on my laptop at school.
My laptop has a very hard time achieving 20Mbps down and 10Mbps up though the network adapter supports 100Mbps.
Meanwhile my iPhone 8 achieves 120Mbps up and down on the exact same network.
I don’t know what causes this, but it’s very frustrating that the speed is so slow on my laptop.
This is the WiFi adapter in my laptop:
Realtek RTL8723BE 802.11 bgn Wi-Fi Adapter 1 Answer
It appears the iPhone 8 supports the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard () which has a theoretical maximum throughput about 3 times that of 802.11n which your laptop supports ().
Yes, your laptop is achieving far less than the theoretical maximum speed of 802.11n, but that could be to do with a number of things. 802.11ac on your iPhone could be using a different frequency band (5GHz), and maybe the 2.4GHz band is saturated by a lot of devices, leaving the 5GHz band relatively free. It could also just be related to the Wi-Fi hardware installed at your school.
It's difficult to pinpoint the actual cause without a lot more information, but suggest plugging in a USB 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter to your laptop, switch over to that rather than the onboard Realtek, and see if your speeds improve. You can find the adapters for under $20 ()
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