I did some measurements of the 802.11ac signal levels in my apartment. When I am up close to the Cisco endpoint, I am measuring around -41 dBm, which is a pretty high level signal (-30 dBm being the theoretical maximum). But when I measured the level in the back bedroom it came up as -78 dBm. A level of -70 dBm is about minimum for not dropping packets. So I am below that and that is why I have been having issues with the 802.11ac not having enough speed at 11 o'clock at night when everyone is streaming their stuff. The reason for the drop in signal level is due to the construction of the apartment. The apartment is basically a firebox, made to withstand fire from the outside, including the positive pressure in the hallways to keep fires at bay. The walls inside the apartment have steel studs and the plasterboard is almost the consistency of concrete. Both of these material types are bound to have an effect on RF transmission from the endpoint.
I decided to move the GL-iNet SLATE to the living room (around -44 dBm). I am now connecting the SLATE to the rack by the use of some TP-Link AV2000 power adapters. In that way I should be able to have an increase in speed of the network connection. I discovered that the Signal and Noise levels, from the SLATE itself, are Signal = -35 dBm and Noise = -70 dBm. That indicates that my -78 dBm measured in the back part of the apartment was way below the noise level, which means my packets were probably suffering from re-transmission. No wonder I was seeing a slowdown of the connections to the outside.
