BGW320-505 using 160 mhz has issues

Hi guys. I've been searching high and low on how to get a full 1 Gbps wifi speed out of my ATT fiber BGW320-505 and found this thread useful.

I have one more issue I'm running into. With the default 5gz, default channel, and defualt 80mhz bandwidth, I'm getting around 600Mbps on my desktop wifi 6 pci card. However as I'm paying for a full Gb, I'm wanting to try and find out how to get that in wifi speeds.

One trick I read was to change the bandwidth (BW) up to 160 mhz in the advanced settings, so I tried that. At first it was great! I was able to hit over 800Mbps. However soon after I started having a lot of issues with the speed, with it dropping down to 10 or 15 mbps, which was confirmed by looking at the Link Speed (eg. like 15/200). It was really all over the place.

When I turned the BW back to 80 mhz, everything was calm and consistent again with getting up to 600 Mbps. 

Anyone else have issues when using 160 mhz BW with this router? I want to be able to get max speed but the routers connection seems to get wild. 

Hmmm I'm a little disappointed there have been any comments or support here at all over several weeks. No one knows anything about any if the topics I brought up? 🤔

There are quite a few different problems it could be.  With a problem like this I'd start with doing more precise testing.  Fast.com is good for quick tests to verify speed (and to verify an ISP isn't throttling netflix/video speeds independently of other speed tests).  speedtest.net is best for precise testing.  it's tests runs for a longer period of time transmitting and receiving a large amount of data.  
My understanding of higher bandwidth 80 or 160mhz 5ghz connections is that they combine multiple channels for instance on my netgear r7000p it might show it as 4 or more different channels together like channel: 116(p)+120+124+128 (I've always assumed the p stands for primary, but its just a guess).  The windows cmd might not be intelligent enough to show multiple channels being used. 
So the next question is are any of your neighbors using any of the channels you are using? They may be causing interference

160MHz width in the 5GHz band has a number of issues.

First there is only one 160MHz channel and you'll interfere with lots of other 5GHz bands.

Then half of 160MHz is in the DFS range which means that power level are different, there is potential issues with weather radars that force your AP to go to another channel (a particular issue near airports).

Finally, many older Wifi5 devices don't support 160MHz or don't do it well.

So has anyone gotten a full 1 GB Wifi signal from ATT consistently?

ATT does not guarantee speeds on wifi. Wifi speeds are very dependent on your environment, and will be effected by nearby routers/walls/your devices. Your speeds are guaranteed based on your hardline connection to your router. I would recommend connecting your PC to the blue Ethernet port on the back of the router and testing your speeds from there, I would bet you will see the speeds you are expecting.

160hz can run at amazing speeds, but it is limited by any surrounding interference such as other routers. Your router has to wait until all One Hundred and Sixty Million Hertz of bandwidth are available before it can broadcast, because it will drown out your neighbors wifi while it's broadcasting.

A good way to imagine it is to think of a highway and the lines are the channels. Each lane (channel) is 20Mhz wide. You know how you sometimes see those "Wide loads" that take up a lane and a half going down the highway? Your router can do the same trick and instead of broadcasting at a tiny 20Mhz with, they can send their signal at 40, 80, or the massive 160Mhz. So in the analogy, they take up 2/4/8 lanes respectfully. 

That's why you see the huge slowdown, because your router has to stop if any one of the eight lanes it's using have so much as a Kia Soul in the way.

@JulianC 

hi julian, i'll mark this as the solution because I did indeed end up running a 50' cat7 cable to my office to hardwire in because I was unable to maintain consistent >900mbps wifi speeds no matter what I did. I went through 4 of the different best wifi routers on the market and some definitely performed better than the BGW320-505 but none were consistent (which was what I was looking for). Even Wifi 6Ghz channels on Wifi 6e protocols were choppy. 

It took a while but I eventually ran the cable around the baseboards of multiple rooms, up and over many door frames, and finally into my office PC. Now I'm getting consistent >900mbps speeds. So things are good for now. Looks like we'll have to wait for Wifi 7 before we can expect similar consistency over the waves. 

Cheers.