[solved] Intel 5300 slow network transfer speed

demian · 2011-04-09 00:41:50

Heya,

I'm having trouble with my WiFi card Intel 5300 AGN and i hope you can help me.

It's the transfer speed in linux that bugs me. While I get 9 MB/s in Windows I can't for the life of me get more than 2.5 MB/s transfer rate in linux. And this is only if I use NFS4 and turn off the wifi power saving feature. Samba/CIFS gives me transfer speeds of no more than 0.4 MB/s.
The problem has to be somewhere in my linux software/configuration. But where?

I don't have much experience with WiFi configuration in Linux so mine should be pretty vanilla. No manual change of frequencies, channels and the likes. I simply use netcfg to connect and sometimes iwconfig to toggle the power saving feature.

Here's what iwconfig shows me right now while copying a big file:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:"bett"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:14:D1:C7:43:C4   
          Bit Rate=243 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=61/70  Signal level=-49 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:11922  Invalid misc:2   Missed beacon:0

As you can see, power management is disabled. The link quality is very good and the bit rate is at 243 Mbps (which should give me about 15 MBps right?). Yet the transfer rate is only 2 MBps, sometimes dropping as low as 0.7 MBps, sometimes spiking to 4.5 MBps for a second or two.

What can I do to improve my network speed?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,
demian

Last edited by demian (2011-04-09 04:00:49)

zvxy · 2011-04-09 02:13:16

Which kernel version are you running? The iwlagn driver has had a history of these problems for the 5300 AGN card, and getting a newer kernel may fix that. Also, disabling wireless N may do something for you.

sudo modprobe -r iwlagn
sudo modprobe iwlagn 11n_disable=1 11n_disable50=1

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/maver … bug/630748

demian · 2011-04-09 02:48:40

Thanks for the reply zvxy.
I'm running the most current from [core], version 2.6.37.5-1.

Disabling the N mode improved transfer rates for CIFS/SMB shares. They are the same as with NFS now which is around 2.5 MB/s. Transfer speed for NFS stayed the same.

I'll try the kernel from [testing] and report back later.

// I've tested 2.6.38.2-1 a little bit now and as long as i don't disable wireless N i get transfer rates of up to 12 MB/s with NFS4. That's more than enough for me and i hope it stays that way. The downside is that transfer rate for CIFS is only 1 MB/s.
If i disable wireless n mode NFS transfer rates drop to ~2.8 MB/s while CIFS transfer rates go up to ~2.4 MB/s.
Guess I'll just have to stick with NFS (not that i don't mind but it's already thrown me some "stale" error messages with the new kernel ... i can't seem to catch a break ).

I'll consider this issue solved. Thanks!

Last edited by demian (2011-04-09 04:00:30)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-04-09 00:41:50

[solved] Intel 5300 slow network transfer speed

#2 2011-04-09 02:13:16

Re: [solved] Intel 5300 slow network transfer speed

#3 2011-04-09 02:48:40

Re: [solved] Intel 5300 slow network transfer speed

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