I turn on hotspot on my smartphone (Fairphone 6 with Android 16)
I connect my PC to the internet through my phone using Wi-Fi
I measure the network speed using Speedtest by Ookla and get:
from the PC: download 42,83 Mbps
from the phone: download 100,31 Mbps
Relevant System Information:
According to Ubuntu:
Signal Strenght: 78% (the phone is on the same table as the PC)
Security type: WPA3-SAE
Connection speed: 72.2 MBit/s
Frequency: 2,437 GHz
Screenshots or Error Messages:
N.A.
What I’ve Tried:
Nothing
Do you know why I have such a performance loss (from the PC I have only 50% of the network speed I have from my phone) when connecting the PC to the internet using my phone as a hot spot?
You mention the wifi connection speed is 72.2 MBit/s with optimal conditions (optimal wifi connection, no interference from other wifi or bluetooth, …). And don’t forget about wifi overhead (connection data between hotspot and client) transmitted within wifi transfer rate.
With this in mind a connection speed of 42,83 Mbps over wifi looks quite reasonable to me. To get higher speeds you probably need to switch to wifi at 5 GHz.
[Edit]
You can probably get better transfer rate connecting your phone via usb and using usb tethering.
Connect the cable, select “charging only” instead of any of the files options, go to settings for the access point mode (tethering) and enable USB. It’s that simple.
I’ve tried both suggestions, here are the result.
Wi-Fi: tried to raise the speed to 5GHz but my PC can no longer see my phone SSID so I guess my PC is too old for that (it dates back to 2017) or maybe should I change something on the PC configuration too?
USB Tethering: the only thing I had to do is selecting “USB Tethering” form the menu available on the phone when I connect it to the PC (the stuff with “Share files” and so on) and the internet connection started on the PC (I’m actually using that connection).
I tried the speed test with Ookla from the PC and it says I’m flying at 209 Mbps which awfully better than the previous 43 Mbps. However, I’ve also made the same test from the phone and now it reads 379 Mbps (I guess that’s because on Sunday afternoon there is less people using the connection than at Saturday night).
So the big increase is related to a general connection increase from my phone.
However, with the Wi-Fi tethering I had from the PC less than half the speed I had from the phone and now with USB I have around 2/3 of that speed so something seems to be improved.
I’ll have a look every now and then at the network speed to keep the situation monitored and better understand if I earned more bandwidth or not.
Thanks for your support. If you have any suggestion I’m happy to learn something more.