The WA801ND only has a 10/100 ethernet port so it won't ever exceed more than 100Mbps anyway, regardless of how fast a client is connected wirelessly.
Thanks Chuck, I hadn't thought of that: That being the case, then 90mbps (ish) from an Internet SpeedTest site is about right.
Internet speedtest sites effectively test the slowest "hop" in the pathway between the test client and the speedtest web site. Until fairy recently, that was almost always your ISP connection so the speedtest web site does what it was designed to - test your Internet connection speed. Now that ISP's are rolling out links to homes that exceed some ethernet/Wi-Fi speeds, that is no longer always the case.
Thus, with the equipment mix you describe, from client Associated with your TPLink AP, you are now effectively testing the 100mbps ethernet link between the AP and SH as that's now the slowest hop in the pathway and 90mbps is about what one would expect from the SpeedTest.
Here's your test regime:
Client~~~~AP----SH====ISP?????Rest of the world.
If AP----SH is the slowest hop, your speed test has effectively tested that as everything else is faster.
Some might ask "
what's the point of a 300mbps Wi-Fi link if the uplink is "only" 100mbps?" There are good use cases for such, if interested I can describe them, but it's a little nuanced and will take more than a couple of sentences. Anyone interested, post back and I'll cite exemplar.
With regard to 54mbps Wi-Fi connection speeds (presumably as reported on the client.) 54mbps is the top speed for the G & A Wi-Fi protocols which suggests the phone is Associating (Wi-Fi speak for "connecting") using one or other of those protocols rather than the faster N or AC protocols. I'd suggest you check out your phone and AP/SH to ensure that all the N & AC protocols are enabled on those devices that support them.
Even then, you may just be experiencing a bit of "bad luck" in that on that particular day your phone couldn't get a N or AC link (it won't get the latter with the AP as the AP doesn't support AC) and "fell down" to an older slower G or A protocol.
Indeed, if none of your client device require the A/B/G protocols (ie they are all N and/or AC capable,) you might consider disabling A/B/G in the AP & SH which will force use of N and/or AC (or you'll get nothing at all.) To determine whether that's a option worth exploring or not will mean you need to check the capabilities of all your Wi-Fi clients (and whether the SH/AP will let you selectively disable particular protocols - not all SOHO kit does.)
I don't know why your SH would report devices Associated with the AP at 1000mbps - maybe it's a bug - I'd expect it to say 100mbps if anything for reasons we explore below. In any case, such reports are something of an illusion: With the exception of directly associated Wi-Fi clients, client devices and routers don't maintain any kind of "connection" in any meaningful way. It's like the postal service - there's no "connection" between my house and the local sorting office. But both of us know how to get packets of information between each other - that's all we need to "know" about each other.
SH (and things like BT's HomeHubs) try to be "helpful" by listing the devices they are aware of as if they are "connected," but that's based on a presumption that the SH/HomeHub/etc is the
only network device and everything is directly connected to it - they don't countenance the idea that you may have other AP's/switches downstream of them.
Thus can you get these somewhat bizarre situations where a Wi-Fi device associated with a downstream AP get reported as "ethernet" connected - even for devices like iPhones which don't have ethernet NIC's! This is because your SH is "seeing" traffic from said devices arriving through one of it's ethernet ports, so it reports it as "ethernet" "connected."