Why are my wifi network speeds so slow?

[boomhower]

A while back I had to replace my Airport Extreme Gen 5 with my trusty E4200 V1 flashed to DD-WRT. Works pretty well by my problem is transfer speeds to my WD Live Hub. Before it was slow but now it is ridiculous, an estimated five hours. Network monitor showing 300-400KB/s. Hook up the hardwire and it goes to 10-17MB/s. That's in the neighborhood of 120mb/s which should be well within my routers capabilities. What's the issue here? I've been heavily considering upgrading the router but I would much rather put that money towards a NAS.

 

[PliotronX]

DD-WRT is about the best you can get as far as firmware goes but you might try a newer build or even an older build. Beyond that, I like to play with transmit power which should be about 90mW if yours measures that way or ~30dB if the other way. Next I would play with different channels. Perhaps somebody bought an AP in the area that's pissing yours off. Play with everything in the advanced section and QoS. Try changing from mixed mode to N-only or even G-only (sounds crazy but it's better than 300-400kB). The unfortunate part of integrated Wi-Fi components in things like the Live Hub, phones, tablets (especially Chinese tablets!), etc. is that they tend to freak out with MiMO 11n configurations so you may have to drop back performance features to improve SNR. Save your moneys for the NAS because the E4200 is still a great router.

 

[boomhower]

DD-WRT is about the best you can get as far as firmware goes but you might try a newer build or even an older build. Beyond that, I like to play with transmit power which should be about 90mW if yours measures that way or ~30dB if the other way. Next I would play with different channels. Perhaps somebody bought an AP in the area that's pissing yours off. Play with everything in the advanced section and QoS. Try changing from mixed mode to N-only or even G-only (sounds crazy but it's better than 300-400kB). The unfortunate part of integrated Wi-Fi components in things like the Live Hub, phones, tablets (especially Chinese tablets!), etc. is that they tend to freak out with MiMO 11n configurations so you may have to drop back performance features to improve SNR. Save your moneys for the NAS because the E4200 is still a great router.

Just changing to N only made a massive difference, up to 7-10MB/s! Mainly hangs around 8, still a far cry from the 13-15 it was averaging before. I'm eyeing the Synology 214se which is testing around 58MB/s write which would make me ecstatic, I just want to make sure my network is up to the task to do it wirelessly. I can't change the channels, on the 5Ghz channel it's locked to auto. I'm hesitant to change it N only on 2.4Ghz as I'm 99% sure the PS3 doesn't support it and my son would probably go into a coma. I'm not in a congested area at all so doubt it would be a huge difference. Still going to play with the QoS stuff, anything in particular I should try? After all the work it took to get it set-up with my surveillance system (an E3200 or 3000 running DD-WRT in bridge mode) I'm so hesitant to muck around to much.

Wireless devices are various Apple, Dell, and Lenovo PC's, couple of iPhones, two iPod Touch's, four iPads, a Moto Droid Mini and two PS3's. Lots of stuff but obviously not all used at once.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Just changing to N only made a massive difference, up to 7-10MB/s! Mainly hangs around 8, still a far cry from the 13-15 it was averaging before. I'm eyeing the Synology 214se which is testing around 58MB/s write which would make me ecstatic, I just want to make sure my network is up to the task to do it wirelessly. I can't change the channels, on the 5Ghz channel it's locked to auto. I'm hesitant to change it N only on 2.4Ghz as I'm 99% sure the PS3 doesn't support it and my son would probably go into a coma. I'm not in a congested area at all so doubt it would be a huge difference. Still going to play with the QoS stuff, anything in particular I should try? After all the work it took to get it set-up with my surveillance system (an E3200 or 3000 running DD-WRT in bridge mode) I'm so hesitant to muck around to much.

Wireless devices are various Apple, Dell, and Lenovo PC's, couple of iPhones, two iPod Touch's, four iPads, a Moto Droid Mini and two PS3's. Lots of stuff but obviously not all used at once.

First of all, there is no freaking way you'll get anywhere close to 58MB/s over WiFi with your current router. Even a top of the line one would top out around 25MB/s over Wireless-N.

Your WD Live Hub would probably cap you at around 20MB/s anyway.

So to me, your new router just became a higher priority than your NAS box.

I would keep your current one in 2.4GHz only mode, let it use all of it's antennae in one band for best performance with the older hardware. Then get a fancy new one like an ASUS RT-AC68U for your 5GHz/802.11ac stuff.

At least then you'll have best-case Wireless-N performance in the 5GHz band and some room to grow as you acquire Wireless-AC clients.

But that's money.

Don't mean to be harsh, but you're basically stuck between a rock and a hard place. Very few WAPs have the oomph to support the speeds you'd like and all the older hardware you have. (And you do have a fairly large number of wifi devices.)

And if you're in a crowded WiFi area, it's just more annoying and horrible.

Anecdotally: I don't have as many devices as you do, but I have a mixed network of newer and older 2.4-only and 5GHz-capable 802.11g and -n devices. I recently doubled the wifi throughput to my NAS simply by upgrading from a first-gen 802.11n Airport Extreme to an ASUS RT-AC66U. MOAR ANTENNAS!

 

[boomhower]

First of all, there is no freaking way you'll get anywhere close to 58MB/s over WiFi with your current router. Even a top of the line one would top out around 25MB/s over Wireless-N.

Your WD Live Hub would probably cap you at around 20MB/s anyway.

So to me, your new router just became a higher priority than your NAS box.

I would keep your current one in 2.4GHz only mode, let it use all of it's antennae in one band for best performance with the older hardware. Then get a fancy new one like an ASUS RT-AC68U for your 5GHz/802.11ac stuff.

At least then you'll have best-case Wireless-N performance in the 5GHz band and some room to grow as you acquire Wireless-AC clients.

But that's money.

Don't mean to be harsh, but you're basically stuck between a rock and a hard place. Very few WAPs have the oomph to support the speeds you'd like and all the older hardware you have. (And you do have a fairly large number of wifi devices.)

Anecdotally: I recently doubled the wifi throughput to my NAS simply by upgrading from a first-gen 802.11n Airport Extreme to an ASUS RT-AC66U. MOAR ANTENNAS!

Looks like I need to run a hard line then, which isn't a huge deal, it's in the same room. I do certainly have a ton of devices. At any one time the kids will have their iPods, iPads, a PS3, my MBP, the wife's notebook, her iPad all running at the same time. So yeah, lots of overhead. That's one of the reasons I though it may be time to upgrade to something with more CPU power. My son in particular has been complaining a lot lately about lag in his games which wasn't an issue with the Airport. Try setting 2.4Ghz to G only and see if that helps I guess as much as it pain me to do so.

 

[azazel1024]

Well, 3:3 11n could theoretically support up to about 270Mbps or about 33.8MB/sec once overhead and error correction was accounted for. I doubt you are likely to see more than high 20's though with a good router/client combo though, but maybe possible. My 2:2 11n setup hits 180Mbps, which is 60% of the pre-overhead rate of 300Mbps that 2:2 40MHz 11n is. 11ac can get a lot faster than that though. The most ideal setups I've seen with wireless bridges between 3:3 capable 11ac routers have hit around 70-80MB/sec or so. Fastest 2:2 connection I've seen was around 50MB/sec.

One of the things you could do to reduce congestion is get another WAP. If you have no competing networks, you could set that one up with its own SSID, set it to 20MHz on channel 1, as an example, and your other one to 40MHz and channel 6+11. Then set some of the devices that are 2.4GHz only to one SSID and the others to the other SSID.

Break things up so not all devices are crowded on the same wifi network.

 

[boomhower]

Well, 3:3 11n could theoretically support up to about 270Mbps or about 33.8MB/sec once overhead and error correction was accounted for. I doubt you are likely to see more than high 20's though with a good router/client combo though, but maybe possible. My 2:2 11n setup hits 180Mbps, which is 60% of the pre-overhead rate of 300Mbps that 2:2 40MHz 11n is. 11ac can get a lot faster than that though. The most ideal setups I've seen with wireless bridges between 3:3 capable 11ac routers have hit around 70-80MB/sec or so. Fastest 2:2 connection I've seen was around 50MB/sec.

One of the things you could do to reduce congestion is get another WAP. If you have no competing networks, you could set that one up with its own SSID, set it to 20MHz on channel 1, as an example, and your other one to 40MHz and channel 6+11. Then set some of the devices that are 2.4GHz only to one SSID and the others to the other SSID.

Break things up so not all devices are crowded on the same wifi network.

I have tried to break it up some by putting some on 2.4 and some on 5 depending on location in the house since the 5 doesn't go as far. It's still a lot of stuff though. Will definately run a cord for the NAS/WD Live Transfers, that was just wishful thinking apparently.