The connection between WiFi reception bars and connection speed

[jj1984]

Hello,

So, I bought an external antenna for my laptop's WiFi, and it's been a huge disappointment.

I didn't spend that much, so I really don't care.

It lists many networks that I can supposedly connect to, networks that otherwise don't pop up in my notification tray (I'm running WIN7)

Further, these networks show 4 or even all 5 bars.

However, when I attempt to connect, I always get unable to connect errors.

Once, I managed to connect to one of these networks.

The connection was terribly slow, and VOIP was basically impossible.

I ran a speed test from a speed test website.

I was getting something like .9 Mbps down and even less up.

Despite my OS telling me that I had 4 or 5 bars of reception strength on that network, I had no speed at all.

I thought that a high number of bars equated to reception strength which in turn equated to connection speed.

Apparently, that's not entirely true.

Where is my thinking wrong?

Thanks.

 

[beers]

While a favorable RSSI signal strength does benefit your overall bandwidth, it's not the only factor at play.

That looks like a very low end NIC, if you have a super high gain antenna you'll pick up noise farther away than you normally would. NICs don't transmit when they can detect the channel as busy, so by having too much gain, especially on the 2.4 GHz band, you're likely just adhering to remote interference that you otherwise wouldn't see on a 'normal' antenna.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-sense_multiple_access_with_collision_avoidance

There's always the potential for upstream congestion and similar if you're using open hotspots or a network you don't own. Simply because you can wirelessly sync to a network at a certain data rate doesn't ensure that data rate is available out to the Internet or similar from that location.