Netgear R7800 only getting about 140Mbps down - why so slow?

you should install iperf3 on your pc and router.

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Good point, thanks for the tip.

you should install iperf3 on your pc and router.

Was that for me or avx?

I went ahead an tried it on Windows. It took like an hour for Windows to update itself with just 50 items. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out where the wireless config is. It is a wonder how people live with that OS. But I digress.

I got different results: fast.com gave me just 90Mbps with Windows (every time I ran it--about 5 times total). But DSLreports and PCMag both gave me 180Mbps (an improvement over the 140Mbps with linux). but still I am not getting as much as I was expecting. I thought I'd be over 200 range at least

with iperf3 you can test your wifi speed.
on your debian/Linux PC start iperf3 as a server

 iperf3 -s 

and login to your router with ssh and start iperf3 as a client

 iperf3 -c <ip of the pc> 
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[ ID]    Interval         Transfer      Bandwidth       Retr   Cwnd
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec   19.7 MBytes   165 Mbits/sec    0   1.02 MBytes       
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec   19.6 MBytes   165 Mbits/sec    0   1.07 MBytes       
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec   18.1 MBytes   152 Mbits/sec    0   1.07 MBytes       
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec   20.3 MBytes   170 Mbits/sec    0   1.13 MBytes       
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec   19.1 MBytes   160 Mbits/sec    0   1.25 MBytes       
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec   19.3 MBytes   161 Mbits/sec    0   1.25 MBytes       
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec   18.7 MBytes   157 Mbits/sec    0   1.25 MBytes       
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec   17.9 MBytes   150 Mbits/sec    0   1.25 MBytes       
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec   19.1 MBytes   161 Mbits/sec    0   1.25 MBytes       
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec   17.4 MBytes   146 Mbits/sec    0   1.25 MBytes       

[ ID]   Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec    189 MBytes   159 Mbits/sec    0     sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec    186 MBytes   156 Mbits/sec          receiver

have you tried wavemon under debian?
so you can see the rx nad tx rate of your wifi adapter

link quality: 93%
signal strength: -45 dBm
tx-power: 15 dBm (31.62 mW)

Statistics
RX: 13,760,090 (16.10 GiB), invalid: 0 nwid, 0 crypt, 0 frag, 198 misc
TX: 5,902,497 (4.29 GiB), mac retries: 1, missed beacons: 0

do
iw dev $wlan station dump
for more information

Please check also your antenna orientation.
All vertical like in the ads is wrong

I wouldn't say they are necessarily wrong, if using on one floor it actually works better all vertical. I use it all vertical and still have excellent coverage and performance 2 floors below. It also depends where your router is located when changing antenna placement. Try and see what works best for you I suppose, depending on your home layout and device location.

I played with the antenna angle but doing anything but straight up only reduced the speed from what I'm getting now. If there is a specific pattern that works best, I'll try it.

inactive time:	456 ms
rx bytes:	1084115199
rx packets:	1027226
tx bytes:	15555063
tx packets:	99531
tx retries:	12965
tx failed:	42
signal:  	-43 dBm
signal avg:	-44 dBm
tx bitrate:	135.0 MBit/s MCS 7 40MHz
rx bitrate:	364.5 MBit/s MCS 22 40MHz
authorized:	yes
authenticated:	yes
preamble:	long
WMM/WME:	yes
MFP:		no
TDLS peer:	no

okji, can you tell me your settings in Windows for the WiFi drivers?
I would do the following just to troubleshoot:
In power options in task bar open it and change WiFi power saving to minimum.
In adapter options in network settings, do the following:
Set roaming aggressiveness to Lowest

Lastly the performance difference between my Dell and your Thinkpad could also come down to antenna placement and build differences in our respective laptops which unfortunately we have no control over.

I'm back on Debian. I don't ever use Windows so I want to see if I can get faster on Debian.

Even in Linux you can try to disable power saving and reduce roaming aggressiveness for the WiFi adapter, just to see if that is the cause. Also consider trying hnyman's latest 17.0.1.1 Snapshot build for the R7800.

Hmm. I'm not familiar with this. I've looked around but I don't see anything related to this. Anybody know if Debian/Gnome has any sort of settings like this that I can putz with?

I'm using Gnome and it only connects to the networks I have previously manually asked it to connect to. It doesn't roam or auto-connect to anything unless i have previously set it.

Instructions to disable power savings on Ubuntu/Mint (will work for you too)

Roaming agressiveness, instructions, these may or may not work.

Also are you compiling your own build, using the stock images or using hnyman's build? I would try with hnyman's build, or try compiling using his build environment.

hnyman's builds:

iwconfig is deprecated. (ah, it just wasn't installed). It appears my power management is already off.

sudo iwconfig

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abgn
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:5.5 GHz  Access Point: 
          Bit Rate=270 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=65/70  Signal level=-45 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:77   Missed beacon:0

Anybody got a link to an easy to understand wiki on how to compile my own LEDE build? would doing this give me noticeably better performance or just marginal? I have no idea how to begin with compiling my own.

I don't think you'll get any better performance making your own build vs pre built images unless you are adding any patches.

Use hnyman's build environment or download his firmware as I think he has some extra patches. He gives clear instructions and has build scripts. I posted the link previously. Make sure to use the "make menu config" option to add or remove any packages like Samba, OpenVPN, DLNA via build menu, before you use the "make" option to compile.

Here's the link to the general build instructions though, if you want:
https://lede-project.org/docs/guide-developer/quickstart-build-images

I think you'll do fine, I had no experience with any of this till 2-3 weeks back, the community is fairly helpful, if you run into issues.

hnyman is a developer? This is a version that has recent "fixes" that haven't made it into the current stable release?

He releases snapshot builds every few days for both 17.0.1.1 and master branch so yes, they are up to date. Use the 17.01.1 builds for stability or go for his master branch builds if you want bleeding edge. He tests his builds before releasing them too.

You might test my next master build (coming later today), as it will add the radio calibration fixes from dissent1 that are discussed in LEDE pull request https://github.com/lede-project/source/pull/1153 and originally in forum Netgear R7800 exploration (IPQ8065, QCA9984)