Sorry I know that dismal is a relative term.
When the rate limiting is set at 20Mbsp/2Mbps we are seeing speeds of 7Mbps / 2 Mbps up to 12Mbps/2Mbps and so on. I never see the speeds get close to the limited mark. When I turn off the rate limiting for the same SSID, I will get speeds closer to the full bandwidth of the circuit. In this case, the AP I was connected to was on the 5 Ghz band.