How fast is …
Housekeeping:
- For consistency, I’ll track everything in Mb/s (being one million bits per second).
- I’ll distinguish between NOMINAL speeds (which you never achieve due to overheads) and ACTUAL “usable to shift my data” speeds.
And some notes on technology:
- Wifi: is half-duplex on a given frequency/channel; needs to do “listen then transmit” on each frame for collision avoidance; freq range for channels on 2.4GHz overlap whereas 5GHz do not overlap; unlicensed 2.4GHz is more congested than 5GHz but suffers less attenuation due to walls etc.
- I’ll look at Wifi (through walls!), wired ethernet, spinning HDD and SSDs, USB2+3 -
Speeds: fastest to slowest
- 64000 Mb/s: PCIe 4.0 x4
- 32000 Mb/s: PCIe 3.0 x4
- 12000 Mb/s: SSD-PCIe3/ACTUAL: (SSD=2022-era Crucial P3 1TB M.2 PCIe3 x4; Motherboard=Asus B450M) [winsat says 1500MB/s]
-
10000 Mb/s: ETHERNET/NOMINAL for 10GbE ethernet ports
- 7040 Mb/s: SSD-PCIe3/ACTUAL (Laptop = 2019-era Dell; SSD = 2017 KBG40ZNS256G TOSHIBA/Kioxia M.2 256GB PCIe3.0 x4) [dd+hdparm shows 880MB/s]
- 6000 Mb/s: SATA3/NOMINAL (but note: spinning hdd will bottleneck at about 1040MB/s)
- 5000 Mb/s: USB3/NOMINAL
- 4000 Mb/s: SSD-SATA3/ACTUAL (SSD=2017-era WDS500G2B0B M.2 SATA3 500GB; Motherboard=Asus B450M) [winsat says 500MB/s]
- 1700 Mb/s: USB3-EXTERNAL-DRIVE/ACTUAL (Enclosure=Inateck USB3 SATA; SSD=480GB Kingston A400 2.5” SATA3.0) [dd says 215MB/s]
- 1300 Mb/s: WIFI/NOMINAL 802.11 AC1300 (being 400Mb/s from 2.4GHz plus 867Mb/s from 5GHz)
-
1040 Mb/s: HDD/ACTUAL from spinning disk
- 1000 Mb/s: ETHERNET/NOMINAL for GbE ethernet ports.
- 1000 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL what eero claim as ‘up to’ speed for ‘eero Pro 6’
- 866 Mb/s: WIFI/NOMINAL 802.11ac wav1 (2013 era, relabelled “Wifi5”)
- 680 Mb/s: USB3/ACTUAL reading from a Samsung 64GB flash drive (85MB/s)
- 500 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL what eero claim as ‘up to’ speed for “eero 6”
- 480 Mb/s: USB2/NOMINAL
- 450 Mb/s: WIFI/NOMINAL 802.11n (2009 era)
- 350 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL what eero claim as “up to” speed for “eero” : https://eero.com/shop/eero
- 300 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL Fastest speed I’ve seen eero wifi go. (38MB/s)
- 272 Mb/s: USB2/ACTUAL Observed write speed of 34MB/s to SATA HDD via USB2 caddy
-
110 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL Fastest speed I’ve seen eero wifi go through 1 stone wall.(=14MB/s)
- 100 Mb/s: Low-end broadband connection
- 80 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL Fastest speed I’ve seen eero wifi go through 2 stone walls (=10MB/s)
- 54 Mb/s: WIFI/NOMINAL 802.11g (2003 era)
- 45 Mb/s: 3840x2160p aka 4K video, 30fps
- 16 Mb/s: 2560x1440p aka 2K video, 30fps
- 8 Mb/s: 1920x1080p video, 30fps
- 4 Mb/s: 1280x720p video, 30fps
Speeds: grouped by technology
Here is the same data, but this time grouped by technology:
Inside your computer:
- 32000 Mb/s: PCIe 3.0 x4
- 12000 Mb/s: PCIe3-SSD/ACTUAL: (SSD=2022-era Crucial P3 1TB M.2 PCIe3 x4; Motherboard=Asus B450M) [winsat says 1500MB/s]
- 7040 Mb/s: PCIe3-SSD/ACTUAL (Laptop = 2019-era Dell; SSD = 2017 KBG40ZNS256G TOSHIBA/Kioxia M.2 256GB PCIe3.0 x4) [dd+hdparm shows 880MB/s]
- 6000 Mb/s: SATA3/NOMINAL (but note: spinning hdd will bottleneck at about 1040MB/s)
- 4000 Mb/s: SATA3-SSD/ACTUAL (SSD=2017-era WDS500G2B0B M.2 SATA3 500GB; Motherboard=Asus B450M) [winsat says 500MB/s]
- 1040 Mb/s: HDD/ACTUAL from spinning disk
Wired LAN:
- 10000 Mb/s: ETHERNET/NOMINAL for 10GbE ethernet ports
- 1000 Mb/s: ETHERNET/NOMINAL for GbE ethernet ports.
Wifi LAN:
- 1300 Mb/s: WIFI/NOMINAL 802.11 AC1300 (being 400Mb/s from 2.4GHz plus 867Mb/s from 5GHz)
- 1000 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL what eero claim as ‘up to’ speed for ‘eero Pro 6’
- 866 Mb/s: WIFI/NOMINAL 802.11ac wav1 (2013 era, relabelled “Wifi5”)
- 500 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL what eero claim as ‘up to’ speed for “eero 6”
- 450 Mb/s: WIFI/NOMINAL 802.11n (2009 era)
- 350 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL what eero claim as “up to” speed for “eero” : https://eero.com/shop/eero
- 300 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL Fastest speed I’ve seen eero wifi go. (38MB/s)
- 110 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL Fastest speed I’ve seen eero wifi go through 1 stone wall.(=14MB/s)
- 80 Mb/s: WIFI/ACTUAL Fastest speed I’ve seen eero wifi go through 2 stone walls (=10MB/s)
- 54 Mb/s: WIFI/NOMINAL 802.11g (2003 era)
Broadband connections:
- 100 Mb/s: Low-end broadband connection
USBs:
- 5000 Mb/s: USB3/NOMINAL
- 1700 Mb/s: USB3-EXTERNAL-DRIVE/ACTUAL (Enclosure=Inateck USB3 SATA; SSD=480GB Kingston A400 2.5” SATA3.0) [dd says 215MB/s]
- 680 Mb/s: USB3/ACTUAL reading from a Samsung 64GB flash drive (85MB/s)
- 480 Mb/s: USB2/NOMINAL
- 272 Mb/s: USB2/ACTUAL Observed write speed of 34MB/s to SATA HDD via USB2 caddy
Data/content:
- 45 Mb/s: 3840x2160p aka 4K video, 30fps
- 16 Mb/s: 2560x1440p aka 2K video, 30fps
- 8 Mb/s: 1920x1080p video, 30fps
- 4 Mb/s: 1280x720p video, 30fps
References