Joined: 14 Oct 2016 Posts: 109 Location: United States
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 17:51 Post subject: Issues with Transmit Data Rate, slow compared to Receive
Hello,
I was doing some wireless network configurations for my TPLINK TL-WR1043ND v1 (2.4 GHz only, Wireless N 300 Mbps) router with latest DD-WRT build (30731).
I have Comcast Cable for my ISP FYI. I have applied a fix for my router with some script that people used to take care of the Comcast DSCP issue so my wireless internet speed tests are good. My internet speeds are 25 Mbps Down and about 5-6 Mbps Up
I have made some changes so that it would use 40 MHz bandwidth for full 300 mbps data rate and tried doing N-Only for Wireless 802.11 support but that didn't seem to help much. I have an image below showing the TX and RX rate for my devices connected to the router.
The issue is that for some devices that support fast transmit and receive data rates, there appears to be a very slow transmit rate compared to receive rate. My desktop computer (MAC Address ending in 48:98 ) which has a Wireless AC USB adapter reports 300 Mbps for both transmit and receive only shows it as around 50-55 Mbps for the TX and 300 for RX. I thought maybe the configuration was not set up so I tinkered around a bit but didn't really see much improvement. I then decided to take my laptop and put it right next to the router but did not see any improvement really at all either (MAC Address ending in 66:D4)
I'm trying to figure out why is the transmit rate so slow. My goal is to at least have it in the 100 Mbps the very least so I can do some quick network file transfers. Currently, the fastest network transfer speed I can do is about 45 Mbps or so...
Joined: 14 Oct 2016 Posts: 109 Location: United States
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 19:28 Post subject:
Ah I see... well that's a bummer. I guesss it will probably take some time until the issue is fully resolved huh? I'm guessing there is no known work around to this issue except downgrading the firmware to a previous version before this issue happened then?
I'd say the way TX and RX rates look is more or less the way it should be. AFAIK WiFi devices switch to lower rates in order to conserve energy when there's no actual transfer going on. What you're seeing are current transfer rates, not max rates.
Also, WiFi devices share "airspace" AFAIK. Having that many devices connected probably slows down WiFi because there's ACKs to be sent and received, etc. . It could also be that WiFi channels are crowded in your area, and/or that your devices aren't working correctly/have bad drivers/etc. . In my experience, WiFi is unpredictable because you have no way of "seeing" what is actually going on in the "airspace" (microwaves or baby phones on the same freqs, etc.).
Your router config isn't optimal, too. Have a look at the "QCA wireless setting" DD-WRT wiki page, which explains all settings in detail. Start with default settings, change only one setting at a time, make notes of what you've changed, and revert the setting again if you're not seeing an improvement.
I'd first setup WiFi properly on the router, then disconnect all devices but a few, and do some transfer tests inside the LAN (not via the Internet). After that, add the other devices one at a time, or a few at a time.
Joined: 03 Jan 2010 Posts: 7568 Location: YWG, Canada
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 21:09 Post subject:
power save is shown in rx, rx in wifi status page is client device --> router, devices in power save mode reduce or halt their tx, therefor device --> router is lower. as the device cant control the transmitter of the router (router --> device), only its own. it doesnt take power to rx from router, only to tx back to it. so router always holds the highest rate TO devices as it can.
do command "iw dev ath0 station dump" or ath1 & proper tx is shown, the "expected throughput" is whats being displayed on the status page mistakenly, that value in itself is also wrong (do some speed tests, not even accurate at all to what u get). _________________ LATEST FIRMWARE(S)
BrainSlayer wrote:
we just do it since we do not like any restrictions enforced by stupid cocaine snorting managers
Joined: 14 Oct 2016 Posts: 109 Location: United States
Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2016 1:41 Post subject:
Thanks guys! Thanks for your advice SaschaITM, I'll try that out and check out that wiki page and also try out that command to check the data rate mentioned by tatsuya46
Joined: 14 Oct 2016 Posts: 109 Location: United States
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2016 3:54 Post subject:
Hey, sorry for getting back to you guys late. Been a bit busy lately but here is what it looks like so far. It has somewhat improved (at least for 1 device that is) but not really.
I suppose it's because I didn't really do anything except some minor configurations. I have not yet did a test where I do a file transfer with one computer using wireless and another computer connected to the router via Ethernet and see how fast the transmit speed is.
I also tried the iw dev ath0 station dump command and saw the proper Tx for each device which looks good but when I do file transfer speeds from one computer to another all via wireless, the file speed matches the expected throughput. Will need to do the Ethernet test sometime soon.
While I do that test in the near future, I was wondering if my wireless configuration looks correct (I know it will be different for every person but just wanted a quick sanity check, also after I did these changes, I didn't really notice any difference unless that is normal?)
Joined: 16 Nov 2015 Posts: 6410 Location: UK, London, just across the river..
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2016 11:14 Post subject:
Cheers m8, in regard of your WI-FI settings i will share
mine, i don't use CTS protection as it's not working right
also even B devices are able to connect when its off, and leave TX chains as they are 1+2+3 that works better..
and i dont touch ACK timing but if so you can try 900...
and use Canada as country domain and i use NG mixed channel 11 + lower, AES wpa2 encryption is a must for good wi-fi speeds, also yes iw dev ath0 station dump is showing the
correct TX rates, the only thing witch is funny is short preamble i guess it's not working as i have some devices forced to use long witch is not normal but it doesn't cause
problems so far... _________________ Atheros
TP-Link WR740Nv1 ---DD-WRT 55179 WAP
TP-Link WR1043NDv2 -DD-WRT 55303 Gateway/DoT,Forced DNS,Ad-Block,Firewall,x4VLAN,VPN
TP-Link WR1043NDv2 -Gargoyle OS 1.15.x AP,DNS,QoS,Quotas
Qualcomm-Atheros
Netgear XR500 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/DoH,Forced DNS,AP Isolation,4VLAN,Ad-Block,Firewall,Vanilla
Netgear R7800 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/DoT,AD-Block,Forced DNS,AP&Net Isolation,x3VLAN,Firewall,Vanilla
Netgear R9000 --DD-WRT 55363 Gateway/DoT,AD-Block,AP Isolation,Firewall,Forced DNS,x2VLAN,Vanilla
Broadcom
Netgear R7000 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/SmartDNS/DoH,AD-Block,Firewall,Forced DNS,x3VLAN,VPN
NOT USING 5Ghz ANYWHERE
------------------------------------------------------
Stubby DNS over TLS I DNSCrypt v2 by mac913
Joined: 14 Oct 2016 Posts: 109 Location: United States
Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 3:08 Post subject:
Alozaros wrote:
Cheers m8, in regard of your WI-FI settings i will share
mine, i don't use CTS protection as it's not working right
also even B devices are able to connect when its off, and leave TX chains as they are 1+2+3 that works better..
and i dont touch ACK timing but if so you can try 900...
and use Canada as country domain and i use NG mixed channel 11 + lower, AES wpa2 encryption is a must for good wi-fi speeds, also yes iw dev ath0 station dump is showing the
correct TX rates, the only thing witch is funny is short preamble i guess it's not working as i have some devices forced to use long witch is not normal but it doesn't cause
problems so far...
Hey Alozaros, thanks for sharing your config. I heard that for the TL-WR1043ND routers, the optimal TX Antenna chains is 1+3? At least that was what BrainSlayer said himself... don't remember which thread he said it in but was awhile ago. I might change the wireless network mode to NG-mixed but realized that there are hardly any wireless B network devices out there in my house so I just left it as mixed in case though I doubt a device that has wireless B will be able to support WPA2 wireless security anyway. I may have to experiment more and see the long term effects with different protection mode and some other settings possibly.
Joined: 14 Oct 2016 Posts: 109 Location: United States
Posted: Wed May 10, 2017 20:48 Post subject:
Hey,
Just following up. So I decided to update my router (TL-WR1043ND v1 to the latest beta version out there (from r30731 to r31924) and am happy to say that the fixes made for the issue I saw earlier are now resolved! I don't have any old screenshots but my previous transfer speed was around 45 Mbps. Now it's around 150 Mbps (even better than what I originally hoped to see!).
Using iperf3 for network throughput testing:
Network Setup:
*Desktop with ALFA 802.11AC USB 3.0 wifi adapter
*Router: TL-WR1043ND v1 300 Mbps
*Home server connected to router with gigabit ethernet cable
Just following up. So I decided to update my router (TL-WR1043ND v1 to the latest beta version out there (from r30731 to r31924) and am happy to say that the fixes made for the issue I saw earlier are now resolved! I don't have any old screenshots but my previous transfer speed was around 45 Mbps. Now it's around 150 Mbps (even better than what I originally hoped to see!).
Using iperf3 for network throughput testing:
Network Setup:
*Desktop with ALFA 802.11AC USB 3.0 wifi adapter
*Router: TL-WR1043ND v1 300 Mbps
*Home server connected to router with gigabit ethernet cable
When acting as the client:
When acting as the server:
Yeah it's already confirmed on the ticket _________________ R6400v2 (boardID:30) - Kong 36480 running since 03/09/18 - (AP - DNSMasq - AdBlocking - QoS) R7800 - BS 31924 running since 05/26/17 - (AP - OpenVPN Client - DNSMasq - AdBlocking - QoS) R7000 - BS 30771 running since 12/16/16 - (AP - NAS - FTP - SMB - OpenVPN Server - Transmission - DDNS - DNSMasq - AdBlocking - QoS) R6250 - BS 29193 running since 03/20/16 - (AP - NAS - FTP - SMB - DNSMasq - AdBlocking)