We are trying iliad fiber, and finally it is time to start answering some questions that we had asked ourselves in the aftermath of the launch of the offer. Is there really the 500 Mbps limit on Wi-Fi? Is it possible to reach 5 Gbit in download ? And how's the upload going? How does iliadbox work? Get comfortable, there's a lot to talk about, and that's not all.
The first thing everyone does as soon as a new connection is inaugurated is a nice speedtest , so here are some “reasoned” ones.
Let's start with the tests via Wi – Fi, strictly performed on the 5 GHz network of the iliadbox (by default there is a single SSID for the two 2.4 and 5 GHz, but you can separate them via the advanced settings of the router). We also remind you that iliadbox does not support Wi-Fi 6, but only Wi-Fi 5 .
Wi-Fi
The values that you can read in the table above are not absolute, in the sense that there is a minimum of variability between one test and another, but in general they are both on average with the many speed tests we have done.
In particular, with Pixel 6 Pro, connected to the iliadbox's 5 GHz Wi-Fi with transmission and reception speeds of 866 Mbps , we have never managed to exceed 500 Mbps in download, and never more than 150 in upload. So initially we thought that there really was a “cap”, a limit on downloading via Wi-Fi.
However, the MacBook Pro 14 has denied this thesis, being able to download almost always over 500 Mbit, on average around 550 Mbps . We are therefore beyond the 500 Mbit wall, but not that much, yet the standard would still allow a few hundred Mbps more. So what if it was the fault of the network itself?
Ethernet
To verify that there were no bottlenecks, we then performed tests via Ethernet , on the 1 Gbit port of the iliadbox, not having available network fast enough to take advantage of the 2.5 Gbit port. Here is the result:
- 939.26 Mbps in download
- 678.56 Mbps in upload
Now we are close to the nominal values of the network, to the point that some doubts about the wi-fi performance of the iliadbox are legitimate, and the beauty is that the most penalized is not the download speed, but the one in upload . We have never even come close to the maximum 700 Mbps that the network is capable of. Anyway, even the download speed could be better with a Wi-Fi 5.
Router in cascade
We therefore decided to do another test: connect a second router , specifically the Nest Wifi (also Wi-Fi 5), to one of the ethernet ports of the iliadbox, and the result it was enlightening.
As you can see, the download speed has always remained around 550 Mbps, but the upload finally went to the maximum speed even in Wi-Fi, which with the iliadbox we are not never managed to get . We will investigate further on this upload limit, because in any case it is rather anomalous and we did not know from the official iliad documents that it should be so.
Notes margin and future developments
We then made further tests by combining speedtest via ethernet and in Wi-Fi, to try to get as close as possible to those promised 5 Gbit, but the results obtained are inconclusive . The download band of each ETH port should in practice be independent from that of the others, but instead the values obtained were lower than those we had running tests on a single port. However, not being able to take full advantage of the router's 2.5 Gbit port, we decided to postpone the test until we can use it “really”, even with a Wi-Fi 6 device, to see how where you can push the performance via wireless network.
As for the configuration of the iliadbox, we have never managed to make the official app “iliadbox connect” work, which always gives a router search error . We have therefore only used the web interface so far, but we plan to come back to it soon, perhaps with a dedicated article, hoping to be able to take advantage of the app as well.
Last final note: the tests we have done clearly refer to a single iliadbox, or to a single fiber optic connection, but have been repeated numerous times and with rigor, before bringing them back to you. Surely on the net there will be those who have obtained different results, maybe even very different ones , but we cannot comment on the values of others, not knowing how they were obtained. We can only guarantee you that the data we have reported are genuine and as much as possible free from formal defects.
