2.4 yielding around 31 mbps down
5ghz 115mbps down
Wired 253mbps
If I go deco wireless to iPhone on 5ghz I get 600+ mbps
Obviously I don’t use the glinet router normally like this, just testing it.
Why are speeds so slow? I’d be happy with 100mbps on 2.4 and 300 on 5ghz, but can’t even achieve that
5ghz network is channel 153, 80 mhz bandwidth
Right now 2.4 network is set to channel 2, 20/40mhz bandwith
Tried changing the setting in these but no better
The wired connection from Tplink deco to gl-sft1200 will limit the transmission bandwidth if the network cable quality is poor (non-Gigabit network cable) and the network port negotiation rate is low (not reaching Gigabit).
You can connect gl-sft1200 directly to the Modem, bypassing Tplink deco, and test its wired and wireless speed.
For 2.4G, select channels 1, 6, and 11. For 5G, try low-interference channels such as 36, 40, and 44.
Wifi channel depends on where your are (Country set on router and on client device)
And ... As already mentioned above , use channel 1, 6 or 11 in 2.4GHz for 20MHz width. (20 MHz is already 4 channels, 40 MHz is 8 channels wide) So channel 2/20MHz is channel 1,2,3,4, if 40MHz (not recommended) then it needs channel 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 .
Channel 153 in 5 GHz is for some regions only SRD transmit level (very weak). SRD= "short range devices limited to 25 mW EIRP". The strong DFS channels (1000mW) cannot be used at all by most of the gl-sft1200 firmware versions.
There are also some wifi-driver problems on most firmware versions. Try to use the beta 4.7.2 dated 2025-04-21. Reset device for correct driver configuration. This version does not allow DFS channels.
@Alen, I plugged the GL.inet GL-SFT1200 router directly into my modem. I rebooted the modem. I've got 2.4 Ghz Wifi Network set to: Bandwidth 20Mhz, Channel 1.
5Ghz Wifi Network set to : Bandwidth 80Mhz, Channel 36
2.4Ghz on wifi on my iPhone 16 Pro, I can't get above 41Mpbs in the same room as the router.
on 5Ghz wifi on my iPhone 16 Pro, I can't get above 173mbps in the same room as the router. I just tested both wifi networks on my iPhone.
If I hard wire from a laptop to the GL.inet router, I don't get above 333Mbps. If I instead hard wire the same laptop with the same cable directly to the modem, I pull over 900Mbps.
I appreciated the recommendations, however, none of those changes seem to have made any difference.
I purchased the Opal GL-SFT1200 on amazon and appeared new out of a sealed box.
Just feels like I should be getting higher speeds on both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz than what I am seeing.
SFT1200 on cable connection to home modem and sending out wifi.
For maximum speed, can you try the "LAN (ethernet) - LAN (wifi home)" setup?
It avoids the limited CPU power for ethernet-ethernet (only switch involved), and avoids the WAN-LAN processing in the CPU for ehernet-wifi connection.
It's non-trivial I know. But superfast LAN-ethernet-wifi connection works on almost any wifi router independent from it's WAN setting (router-extender), but be carefull to avoid DHCP conflicts. (disable SFT's DHCP server)
Your setup (internet connected via cable, client connected via ethernet or wifi) is normally the "Access Point" mode.
In access point and extender mode it needs some tweaking to still access the admin panel (setting of or knowing of the IP address)
In "Access Point" mode, the ethernet connection to internet is mostly the ethernet WAN interface.
There is another way to connect ethernet and wifi, and have the fastest ethernet and wifi throughput. Quite independent from the configuration one can fully work on the LAN interfaces only. (LAN ethernet ports and the home wifi). The SFT can even be in the "router" mode as the WAN zone is not used. In "router mode" it is easier to access the admin panel. Just make sure the LAN does not have multiple DHCP servers.
I've now tried many things and haven't seen much improvement (router mode, AP mode, changing the channels and bandwidth...).Connecting the modem or my deco router to the SFT's LAN port didn't enable me to get any internet connection down to any wifi connect devices on the SFT at all.. I could only ever get Internet if connecting cable to its WAN port.... I only ever saw a slight increase in speed (2.5ghz - 80mbps, 5ghz 210mbps) once I reset the SFT to factory and then set the firmware to the beta 4.7.2. Still seems very lackluster in speed. I'm not expecting the Max speeds by any means, but would have thought I could at least pull over 100mbps on 2.4 and 300 mbsp on 5ghz, but have yet to reach those speeds. At this point I suppose I could return it to amazon and re order and see if a 2nd unit proves any better.
While I appreciate the suggestions, I'm quite disappointed in not being able to achieve higher speeds.
Our end purpose of the gl-sft1200 is really to use at our swim team meets with the TimeDrops system (as they recommended the GL.Inet router). But even in that setup at our pool I still saw just as low speeds as I'm getting in my testing at my house.
We appreciate you sharing the detailed feedback. It’s unfortunate the speed hasn’t improved as hoped. Since you’ve exhausted common troubleshooting steps, trying a replacement (as you mentioned) could rule out hardware issues. Thank you for your patience.
I fully understand this expectation, based on the commercial data available, but that throughput level is very difficult even impossible to achieve.
Interface rates (PHY rate) is what is documented, but this is not ethernet. There are massive number of factors that reduce that number.
-20MHz gets a PHY of 144Mbps only on it's best signal quality (MCS above 7) and needs 2-streams (dual path, 2 radio's needed), what some devices don't have. With one stream it is only 72Mbps.
Then there is the requirement to the mandatory wait for media access (CSMA/CA with contention window size)
There is also the wait for others. Wifi is shared medium, only one transmitter
There is the wait for the many slow AP broadcasts (every 100ms, at 6Mbps)
Then there is the lower MCS (PHY rate) when packets fail
Limited AMPDU packet size will reduce the throughput to 1/2 even 1/3 of the PHY rate (mostly is the case at higher rates, like 866Mbps PHY drops to 360Mbps and even lower.)
We are used to 99% usable bandwidth with ethernet, expect 50% or 33% with wifi.