slow file transfer speeds over wireless

[h3xis]

Hello. I'm using an Asus N56U wireless router, with all of my clients (I've got 3) connected through N only, each connected at 300Mbps. 2 run Linux, and the other runs OSX. I have a server running Linux using an Asus N53 USB adapter, which also has a constant rate of 300Mbps. Basically, all the clients talk to it through the wireless router and vice versa.

Unfortunately, file transfer times and speeds are horrible, and by horrible, I mean anywhere from 200kbps to 1mbps. Files are transferred using NFS or scp. I'm assuming this is a problem with the server itself, but I'm wondering if anyone here could suggest a few things to check. For what's it worth, it's running Debian stable on kernel 3.3.4. I really don't have any ideas as to what would be the cause of this, except for the firmware binary I'm using for the adapter (uses the ralink rt3572 chipset). Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

[+BudMan MVC]

wireless to wireless = /2 right out of the gate for your transfers.

Your server really should be wired to the router.. Its never going to be able to serve up much of anything with a wireless connection to be honest.

Wireless is fine for browsing the web, checking your email, chatting, etc.. But moving files -- not so much ;)

Run iperf -- what speed do you see?

[CPressland]

Run iperf -- what speed do you see?

That really is your favourite utility at the moment eh? I know I'm certainly using it everywhere :D

[h3xis]

I don't have the option of running a wire. But my iperf results are as follows:

Server running as iperf server (client connecting to server):

Client connecting to yyyyy, TCP port 5001

TCP window size: 129 KByte (default)

------------------------------------------------------------

[ 5] local x.x.x.x port 53243 connected with y.y.y.y 5001

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth

[ 5] 0.0- 1.0 sec 3.62 MBytes 30.4 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 1.0- 2.0 sec 768 KBytes 6.29 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 2.0- 3.0 sec 1.12 MBytes 9.44 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 3.0- 4.0 sec 1.50 MBytes 12.6 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 4.0- 5.0 sec 128 KBytes 1.05 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 5.0- 6.0 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec

[ 5] 6.0- 7.0 sec 1.00 MBytes 8.39 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 7.0- 8.0 sec 1.88 MBytes 15.7 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 8.0- 9.0 sec 1.62 MBytes 13.6 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 9.0-10.0 sec 4.12 MBytes 34.6 Mbits/sec

[ 5] 0.0-10.0 sec 15.9 MBytes 13.3 Mbits/sec

Client running as iperf server (server connecting to client):

------------------------------------------------------------

Client connecting to xxxxx, TCP port 5001

TCP window size: 21.4 KByte (default)

------------------------------------------------------------

[ 3] local y.y.y.y port 39901 connected with x.x.x.x port 5001

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth

[ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 6.16 MBytes 51.6 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 3.16 MBytes 26.5 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 3.28 MBytes 27.5 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 7.51 MBytes 63.0 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 7.47 MBytes 62.7 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 7.83 MBytes 65.7 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 6.85 MBytes 57.5 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 7.0- 8.0 sec 7.69 MBytes 64.5 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 8.0- 9.0 sec 7.49 MBytes 62.8 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 9.0-10.0 sec 7.73 MBytes 64.9 Mbits/sec

[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 65.2 MBytes 54.6 Mbits/sec

I understand that there's going to be much lower throughput given the setup I have, but I figured that I would at least get better speeds than ~54Mbit/s with this.

[+BudMan MVC]

Like I said wireless to wireless = /2 right out of the gate!

Just because they print 300Mbps on the box does not mean that is what you actually get ;)

Your default window sizes seem a bit odd??

129 KByte (default)

21.4 KByte (default)

That one test looks terrible -- your speeds are all over the map.. And extra slow to boot. That is your client pulling from your server.. That is the server card doing the xmit. In the other direction your client is doing the xmit and you get better speeds.

<offtopic pet peeve>

So you feel you need to hide your Private IPs from the world?? You do understand that 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, 172.16-31.x.x are private addresses and don't route on the internet.. Can not find anything about you if you would of shown those ;)

so for example here

Does anyone knowing that my machines are on 192.168.1.100 and 192.168.1.8 tell you where I am? Or in anyway allow you to talk to my boxes over the internet? What about storage.local.lan -- since .lan is not a valid tld, and local is generic.. Does that give you any privacy concern info?

/offtopic

If you want decent speeds -- Use a WIRE! Why do you think that is not an option? At worse plug in one side, ie your server. Why can you not put your server where your router?

Those speeds are clearly above G speeds.. With G even wired to wireless you only see about 15 to 23Mbps depending on conditions, etc. But again pretty useless for moving file.. Shoot even if you were seeing 300Mbps for real - would be likely grass grow trying to move files ;)

[h3xis]

<offtopic pet peeve>

I hid my IP addressing information because I remember years ago you sh** your pants over other people doing this. This is my first post on Neowin in a very long time and it's hilarious to see you still get your panties in a bunch over this sort of stuff.

That one test looks terrible -- your speeds are all over the map.. And extra slow to boot

Thank you for pointing out the obvious and the entire reason for this thread.

Anyway, I'll chalk all of this up to either the Linux kernel having horrible support for my particular chipset, or the firmware binary blob Ralink distributes, and hope things are ironed out in due time.

[+BudMan MVC]

Well than, have fun with your crappy network. As to driver/firmware magically giving you 300Mbps, good luck with that - I wouldn't hold your breath ;)

300Mbps rated wireless = roughly at best 120Mbps mac layer speed. Now wireless to wireless /2 = 60Mbps (which is what your roughly seeing in the other direction), /8 gives you like 7.5MBps - subtract your overhead and yeah actual copy of file = really SLOW file transfer. This is all taking into account no kind of wireless interference, no other wireless clients on the network, etc. Which is just going to make it slower! Seems your server can not transmit at anything better than about 30Mbps which is yeah going to = crappy network performance.

Yup this is all obvious -- so what did you think you were going to get for a response?

Wire you server and you would be seeing pretty much the best you could hope for in a wireless network. That router states it's simultaneous 2.4GHz and 5GHz.. So run some clients at 2.4 and others at 5 and you could have 2 clients talking to your server at the same time.. Which if connected at gig could easy provide them with the bandwidth to saturate their wireless pipes and get the most your going to get out of wireless.