Result
Study limitation
Any type of speed test are limited due to inevitable variation and confounding factors affecting the test. This test is no exception to that. The ideal test environment would be in a concrete or metallic chamber without any potential for surrounding interference. Perhaps only a single device connected with a locally hosted server without any additional process running on the server. However such strict condition is never a reflection of a real home environment. So personal take is my home test is as close/accurate reflection as other’s home test or one can say basically no test would be as good reflection as doing your own test at your own home, but even with such time of the day can give you significant variation.
Having said this, some of the variation/confounding factors are:
- Internet connection speed variation: Due to congestion internet traffic itself i.e. beyond my home router, this can affect the test result. This can be wide. Sometimes I get 960 Mbps download speed, but other times of the day it can be in 700’s Mbps range.
- Home specific WiFI interference: This can be worse in crowed neighborhood such as in apartment setting with all the neighbors having own WiFi. Although I do not have much interference from my neighborhood, I just recently found out previous owner left a hidden Wireless router that I cannot find and get rid of. It only has 2.4 GHz band but it is located at center of my home, so it can be a significant interference source for the 2.4 GHz band. Other sources of interference include microwave etc. However, most of my speed test result are 5 GHz connected so this interference should be minimal to non-existent.
- Specific channel selection. I generally try not to set a channel myself, purely from laziness. For UniFi, I have “Wi-Fi AI” functionality turned on, which supposedly select optimal channel. In order to see how well this works, I have been peaking at channel change, but it seems to select indeed 1, 6, 11 channels for my APs but sometimes only two out of three channels for 2.4 GHz, but this may be due to the hidden router in my home from previous owner.
- Different home has different built materials which can affect WiFi signal, often more so than simple square footage of the coverage (ref 1, 2). My 1950’s built home certainly have an area with poor WiFi penetration than some of more modern built home.