I already did a search through SO, the forums, etc. for issues that looked related to Ubuntu and my Wireless card, but I didn't find anything that was obviously relevant that worked.
First, the system information:
% lsb_release -a
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty
% sudo lshw -C network
... (skipping ethernet card info)
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Centrino Advanced-N 6230 [Rainbow Peak]
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 34
serial: 88:53:2e:52:ee:41
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.13.0-43-generic firmware=18.168.6.1 ip=192.168.1.184 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
resources: irq:56 memory:f6200000-f6201fff
This card is rated for 300Mbps, but the most I get out of it is 100Mbps speeds. I have Google Fiber Gigabit internet. My MacBook pro was downloading at 400+Mbps.
I tried the solutions at http://itsfoss.com/speed-up-slow-wifi-connection-ubuntu/, but none of them seemed to work, so I reverted the changes I had made.
Normally I use nmcli to connect to the internet (nmcli dev wifi connect password ). I tried wicd but didn't notice a difference with that, either.
There's one site that suggested that I would have to change the Grub bootloader to include the option GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="biosdevname=0". I don't feel comfortable doing that until I'm sure it applies, though, because I'm not sure the realtek stuff applies to my system (ref: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2192746).
How should I continue trouleshooting why my connection speeds are slower than what's rated for the card/chipset?