What should my Wi-Fi speed be?

One device, two spatial streams, one band at a time. AX3000 sums a 574 Mbps 2.4 GHz radio and a 2,402 Mbps 5 GHz radio. That headline is not what one device gets.

Each band gets its own link budget. The Beacon's transmit power (EIRP, from its FCC filing), plus a hand-held device antenna gain (below 0 dBi), minus path loss over the straight-line distance (the IEEE 802.11ax TGax residential model: free-space slope 2 up to a 5 m breakpoint, slope 3.5 after it, the same at every band), minus 5 dB per interior wall and 10 dB per exterior wall at every band, and per floor 5 dB (2.4 GHz) or 7 dB (5 and 6 GHz) for wood, or 18.3 dB for one concrete floor and 33.5 dB for two, is the signal at the device. Subtracting the noise floor (thermal noise for the channel width plus a 10 dB noise figure) gives the SNR, and the SNR picks the highest MCS the IEEE 802.11 sensitivity table allows.

Speed is the PHY rate at that MCS × the measured TCP efficiency for the device class and channel width (phone 0.85 at 20 MHz, 0.82 at 40 MHz, 0.78 at 80 MHz, 0.68 at 160 MHz; laptop or tablet 0.68 at 20 MHz, 0.55 at 40 MHz, 0.35 at 80 MHz, 0.21 at 160 MHz; 320 MHz is assumed equal to 160 MHz) × a generation factor relative to the Wi-Fi 6 the efficiency was measured on (Wi-Fi 6 or 6E × 1, Wi-Fi 7 × 1.031, Wi-Fi 5 × 0.928) × a neighbor factor, capped by the plan and the internet port.

The top PHY rate is the highest MCS for the negotiated generation: Wi-Fi 5 MCS 9 (MCS 8 at 20 MHz) with a 0.4 µs short guard interval, Wi-Fi 6 MCS 11 and Wi-Fi 7 MCS 13 with a 0.8 µs one, their shortest.

Neighbors are other Wi-Fi, not walls: 2.4 GHz loses the most to them, then 5 GHz, then 6 GHz, and wider channels lose more than 20 MHz.

Each range runs from the far edge of your distance (d + u, the ± you entered; with ± 0 both edges are d) at its 10th-percentile throughput over log-normal shadowing (σ = 5 dB, TGax residential), so 90% of spots there do at least this well; throughput only rises with signal, so that percentile is the speed at the 10th-percentile signal, 1.28 × σ = 6.4 dB below the median, up to the near edge at its median throughput. Both ends use one channel width per band: the smallest of the router width, the device max and the band's widest channel, with no narrowing by distance. Out-of-range checks and the Auto rule use the faded signal. A single number means both ends land on the same speed, and its note says why. Auto marks the highest band (6 GHz, then 5 GHz) whose far-edge signal is better than -65 dBm, the band-steering threshold in HPE Aruba's ClientMatch docs; if none is, it marks 2.4 GHz. Expected error: about ±40% of the predicted speed at 1σ for 20–80 MHz, and more at 160 MHz, from ±5–8 dB of signal error at an unknown home and the spread between the efficiency studies. Multi-link operation, mesh hops, and other clients on this Beacon are not modeled. Sources for every number are in docs/beacon-settings-audit.md.