Crappy network share speed

[RafaelSoaresP]

Hey guys! 

I`ve never had much luck with local network shares, but my speeds are absurdly slow! 

I`m trying to transfer some files from my notebook (connected via wifi to my 300mbps router) to my PC (connected via gigabit cable), and yet I`m getting 300KBps average and 700KBps peak, with some periods where the transfer stalls completely.

I know wifi sucks when it comes to transfer speeds, but I can download stuff from the internet at constant 2MBps (max my ISP can give me) at ease both when I`m on the notebook (proving my wifi can do better) and the PC.

Both are running Windows 10, both have ssds installed, and both are within 2 meters from the router.

Does anyone have any idea of wth can I do?

Thanks a lot!

[nicholician]

I'm experiencing a similar problem, but I think I've just got my network set up wrong. From my Synology NAS to my PC, I'm getting ~4 MBps, however the link goes through my internet router. When I run them between their gigabit ethernet ports, I see speeds around 80 MBps, which I would have expected to be higher.

[NetworkPeet]

check your router at the wifi channel settings. In my old neighbourhood i only got 200kbits because there were about 80 wifi routers and 10 routers sharing one channel -.-

Your neighbours could use the same physical bandwith channel  -> tons of colissions and retransmits could occour. Try to switch the channel and check if the speed improves. Sometimes there are some graphical statistics about the channel usage

[RickL]

Everything points to the router here 

[brwainer]

OP: you're getting bits and bytes mixed up. The file transfer is showing you MBytes, task manager is showing you Mbits, and your internet is definitely 2Mbit/s not 2MByte/s - no ISP ever uses MB/s - it's always Mb/s. So your internet is 2Mb/s, the file transfer is showing you 701KB/s which is 5608Kb/s - roughly equal to the 5.2Mb/s that task manager is showing.

 

Things to check:

• what type of wireless adaptor is in the notebook? You said you have an N300 router but didn't say what's in the notebook.
• are there conflicting wireless networks? You want to use a wireless analyzer like InSSIDer 3. Any network that is on the same or overlapping channel (for example channel 6 overlaps channels 2-10) and has an RSSI within 20 of your router's is conflicting. So for example, if your router is on channel 1 with an RSSI of -55, a router on channel 3 with an RSSI of -65 would be conflicting, but a router on channel 1 with an RSSI of -80 would not.
• does the transfer work at full speeds if both are connected wired?
• have you power cycled the router recently? lower end and older routers tend to need this more often.

@nicholician: 80MB/s is 640Mb/s - which is pretty good for gigabit. Things you can do to try to increase that are enabling jumbo frames (if all your hardware support it) and making sure you don't have any disk or OS bottlenecks. Also some gigabit adaptors, mostly the cheaper ones from Realtek and similar companies, have a hard time reaching full gigabit speeds, so check and see what type of network adaptors you have. As for going through the router, if both devices are connected to the LAN ports of the router, then really the router is just working as a switch (internally most routers are made of a 5 port switch, one port of which is wired to the CPU, and then another port not a part of the switch wired to the CPU for WAN. The wireless is usually wired to the CPU  as well - sometimes they're PCIe and sometimes they're USB - but rarely they might be wired to the switch). If going through the LAN ports of the router really does cause a bottleneck, then your router must not have a switch chip (which would be unusual) or maybe you just have a really old router. Also checking the wires you're using would be a good step as well - maybe you have a bad wire that's limiting you to 100Mb.

[RafaelSoaresP]

1 hour ago, NetworkPeet said:

check your router at the wifi channel settings.

I`ve attached a screenshot of wifianalyzer from my phone. The currently connected network on the notebook is Biguas16 #2. Biguas 16 #1 and #3 are mine as well, and I`ve manually set the channels. I`ve opted to overlap the other networks on #2 because is where the devices will be closer to the router (my bedroom).

50 minutes ago, RickL said:

Everything points to the router here 

Could you clarify your point?

28 minutes ago, brwainer said:

OP: you're getting bits and bytes mixed up.

 

Things to check:

• what type of wireless adaptor is in the notebook? You said you have an N300 router but didn't say what's in the notebook.
• are there conflicting wireless networks? You want to use a wireless analyzer like InSSIDer 3. Any network that is on the same or overlapping channel (for example channel 6 overlaps channels 2-10) and has an RSSI within 20 of your router's is conflicting. So for example, if your router is on channel 1 with an RSSI of -55, a router on channel 3 with an RSSI of -65 would be conflicting, but a router on channel 1 with an RSSI of -80 would not.
• does the transfer work at full speeds if both are connected wired?
• have you power cycled the router recently? lower end and older routers tend to need this more often.

 

I think i got my explanation a bit confusing on my first post. The file transfer was between two pcs over my local network. 

 

What`s bothering me isn`t the internet download speeds (I get full 2.5MB/s on my 20Mbit/s internet plan, which, as you said, is about right), but the fact that a local file transfer is much slower than what both of the computers are capable of achieving.

 

About your questions, i don`t actually have another cable to test it out (don`t judge me for that. hahaha), and the adapter is the stock Broadcomm  a/b/g/n that came on the notebook.

[brwainer]

 

6 hours ago, RafaelSoaresP said:

I`ve attached a screenshot of wifianalyzer from my phone. The currently connected network on the notebook is Biguas16 #2. Biguas 16 #1 and #3 are mine as well, and I`ve manually set the channels. I`ve opted to overlap the other networks on #2 because is where the devices will be closer to the router (my bedroom).

Could you clarify your point?

I think i got my explanation a bit confusing on my first post. The file transfer was between two pcs over my local network. 

 

What`s bothering me isn`t the internet download speeds (I get full 2.5MB/s on my 20Mbit/s internet plan, which, as you said, is about right), but the fact that a local file transfer is much slower than what both of the computers are capable of achieving.

 

About your questions, i don`t actually have another cable to test it out (don`t judge me for that. hahaha), and the adapter is the stock Broadcomm  a/b/g/n that came on the notebook.

Please change your channels to 1 / 6 / 11 (looks like you have 3 / 7 / 11? ) - you will get less interference from other networks being on the same channel (1) then by overlapping them. Even the little overlaps at channels 5 and 9 are enough to cause slowdowns in your current configuration.

Can you get the model # of the broadcom adaptor? It might only be N150 - which would mean a usable data rate of 75Mb/s or less. Which is definitely more than what you are getting right now, but let's understand what the ideal speed we are trying to achieve is.

What type of file share are you using? The normal windows folder sharing? And how are you accessing one computer from the other (name, local IP, etc)?

[RickL]

In my opinion its your router and or its speed. I have an N600 and currently connected on either band (dual) at a max of 300 Mbps, this only gives me around 6MB/Sec transfer from my NAS. I recently trial an Asus 68U and the TP-Link Archer C9 and both of them increased my throughput to a data transfer of anywhere from 15-24MB/Sec, it was also hugely noticeable that my wifi connection was alot more stable and the internet speed that it was providing. It didnt dip up and down like it used to.

Sadly, I had to return each due to some Port Forwarding and Firmware issues.

 

On my investigation I found that its not simply based on your WiFi Connection speed but any internal network traffic and transfers also depends on items such as the CPU of the router and its ability to simply keep up. Example, on the Archer C9 it has a USB 3.0 Port, which are are all used to around 70MB/Sec transfer speeds when plugged in to a PC. When plugged in to the C9 and copying from the USB to another PC, so its acting as a small NAS, the router only had a maximum read speed of around 23 MB/Sec, regardless of the wifi speed.

 

Im no expert and my findings are based on experience and knowledge on this forum so take what I say with a pinch of salt but, thats my opinion.

 

If you want to be a bit coy about this, go to your electrical retailer, get a new top notch-ish router, trial it at home and if you dont want to keep it, return it? Or if possible, borrow a friends.

[brwainer]

18 minutes ago, RickL said:

In my opinion its your router and or its speed. I have an N600 and currently connected on either band (dual) at a max of 300 Mbps, this only gives me around 6MB/Sec transfer from my NAS. I recently trial an Asus 68U and the TP-Link Archer C9 and both of them increased my throughput to a data transfer of anywhere from 15-24MB/Sec, it was also hugely noticeable that my wifi connection was alot more stable and the internet speed that it was providing. It didnt dip up and down like it used to.

Sadly, I had to return each due to some Port Forwarding and Firmware issues.

 

On my investigation I found that its not simply based on your WiFi Connection speed but any internal network traffic and transfers also depends on items such as the CPU of the router and its ability to simply keep up. Example, on the Archer C9 it has a USB 3.0 Port, which are are all used to around 70MB/Sec transfer speeds when plugged in to a PC. When plugged in to the C9 and copying from the USB to another PC, so its acting as a small NAS, the router only had a maximum read speed of around 23 MB/Sec, regardless of the wifi speed.

 

Im no expert and my findings are based on experience and knowledge on this forum so take what I say with a pinch of salt but, thats my opinion.

 

If you want to be a bit coy about this, go to your electrical retailer, get a new top notch-ish router, trial it at home and if you dont want to keep it, return it? Or if possible, borrow a friends.

What you've said is perfectly reasonable if the OP was using a weak NAS or had his storage attached to the router directly, but neither is the case here. The router is purely doing networking, and there shouldn't be much else affecting the CPU. Of course upgrading the router is always a nice thing to be able to do, but we can also optimize what he already has.

[RickL]

I agree, and also just to clear, in my first paragraph I said my NAS to keep it simple however, it is acutally my PC on another room with a network share drive, so exactly the same set-up as yours.

[RafaelSoaresP]

19 hours ago, brwainer said:

Can you get the model # of the broadcom adaptor? 

 

What type of file share are you using? The normal windows folder sharing?

 

And how are you accessing one computer from the other (name, local IP, etc)?

Windows device manager gave me PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&SUBSYS_1483103C&REV_01 as the hardware ID, google tells me it's Broadcom  4313GN 802.11b/g/n, but I can't seem to find what's the max speed it can connect to.

 

I've setup the standard sharing from Windows on the laptop disk, and mapped it as a network drive using the network search feature on my pc.

11 hours ago, RickL said:

get a new top notch-ish router

 

Thing is that here on Brazil that kind of hardware is really expensive. I've paid around $100 on each of my TP link TL-WR1043ND

 

[RafaelSoaresP]

11 hours ago, brwainer said:

Of course upgrading the router is always a nice thing to be able to do, but we can also optimize what he already has.

<3 

[brwainer]

So

37 minutes ago, RafaelSoaresP said:

Windows device manager gave me PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&SUBSYS_1483103C&REV_01 as the hardware ID, google tells me it's Broadcom  4313GN 802.11b/g/n, but I can't seem to find what's the max speed it can connect to.

 

I've setup the standard sharing from Windows on the laptop disk, and mapped it as a network drive using the network search feature on my pc.

 

Thing is that here on Brazil that kind of hardware is really expensive. I've paid around $100 on each of my TP link TL-WR1043ND

 

I did some digging on that adaptor and I didn't find anything concrete information, but it looks like that adaptor is single antenna, single stream (1x1:1). That means it actually has a max speed of 72Mbps, and you'll never get that high. Since the laptop probably only has one antenna built in, you can't upgrade the internal adaptor, you'd have to get an external adaptor.

[RafaelSoaresP]

19 minutes ago, brwainer said:

That means it actually has a max speed of 72Mbps

Even then I'd be able to get around 5 MB/s transfers instead of 700 KB/s wouldn't I?

[brwainer]

3 minutes ago, RafaelSoaresP said:

Even then I'd be able to get around 5 MB/s transfers instead of 700 KB/s wouldn't I?

Yeah that would be a reasonable expectation. Please retest after correcting your wireless channels. Also something that I'm not clear on - is the server connected to the same router that you are currently connected to for wireless? And how are the three router/APs connected together?

 

Edit: Server just means your file share host

[RafaelSoaresP]

They are connected all via lan ports. The #2 router is the main one, it receives the modem connection trough wan port, and sends the dhcp packets to all the devices on the network. The other two are connected trough the lan ports and are there just to create the wireless networks spread trough the house.

Router #2 and fiber modem are on my bedroom upstairs, #1 covers the bottom floor (living room and others) and #3 covers the external area of the house.

 

Considering I'm the master of MSpaint, I've designed it to ilustrate better

[RafaelSoaresP]

I've changed my channels to 1, 7 and 13 (yes, its legal here) now as can be seen on the attached image. I saw a little improvement on speeds, got an average of 1,2 MB/s, but it still is much lower than expected. 

 

Edit: This screenshot was taken from the living room on the lower floor. That's why you can't see the other garbage networks.The test transfer now was done with the laptop connected to #1 wireless and  the pc was still cabled to #2 router upstairs

 

[brwainer]

44 minutes ago, RafaelSoaresP said:

I've changed my channels to 1, 7 and 13 (yes, its legal here) now as can be seen on the attached image. I saw a little improvement on speeds, got an average of 1,2 MB/s, but it still is much lower than expected. 

 

Edit: This screenshot was taken from the living room on the lower floor. That's why you can't see the other garbage networks.The test transfer now was done with the laptop connected to #1 wireless and  the pc was still cabled to #2 router upstairs

 

double check a transfer from router#2 wireless, but really with your setup it shouldn't matter which you're connected to. If it did make a difference that would actually indicate there is an issue.

 

another thing to try, just a silly idea, is unplug the #1 and #3 routers from the #2 router. This is to make sure you aren't getting excessive traffic due to broadcast packets in any way. Usually not a problem unless you have a network loop, but this is the "check everything" part of troubleshooting.

 

beyond that, kinda out of ideas. I really think you need to test using another wired gigabit client, even if you have to borrow a friend's computer.