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#1 2011-09-13 14:51:54

nagi
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Registered: 2011-06-07
Posts: 15
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WiFi is slower than it supposed to be

First of all, my laptop is pretty new, and just few days ago I got optic net. First of all I tought that my router hardware is the cause, but when I had a chance to test it with another laptop (Windows by the way), I got up to 5 times better result.

So what's the problem?
My ISP gives me up to 100Mbps internet.
On my personal laptop it gets only up to 2.1MB/s (WiFi, with Arch) which is the problem.
On another laptop it gets to as high as 10MB/s (WiFi, with Windows)

So I'm wondering, why it's so slow. I tried wicd, networkmanager and netcfg. All of them resulted in pretty much slow speeds.

03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
	Subsystem: AzureWave Device 1089
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at f5400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
	Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
	Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
	Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel
	Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-15-17-ff-ff-24-14-12
	Capabilities: [170] Power Budgeting <?>
	Kernel driver in use: ath9k
	Kernel modules: ath9k
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"Namai"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:1A:2B:8F:3A:D0   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=14 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=64/70  Signal level=-46 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:4   Missed beacon:0

EDIT: it's same with Ubuntu.

After some investigation, could it be this?
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k it says, that my chip supports only single band.
And in my router it's set to use 20Mhz range in 2.4Ghz and 40Mhz range in 5Ghz.
Logically only 20Mhz is used...

Last edited by nagi (2011-09-13 17:19:32)

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#2 2011-09-14 10:21:52

Removed00
Member
Registered: 2009-06-05
Posts: 10

Re: WiFi is slower than it supposed to be

Uhm.. have you problem of packet loss on ping too?
I had a similar problem on my dell XPS 15z, I resolved to put off the power save option on iw:

iw dev wlan0 set power_save off

Let us know

Last edited by Removed00 (2011-09-14 10:22:07)

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#3 2011-09-16 14:30:20

nagi
Member
Registered: 2011-06-07
Posts: 15
Website

Re: WiFi is slower than it supposed to be

Nope, it didn't help. And I'm not having packet loss.

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
256 packets transmitted, 256 received, 0% packet loss, time 51176ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 36.307/38.819/43.444/2.210 ms

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#4 2011-09-16 15:44:41

.:B:.
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Registered: 2006-11-26
Posts: 5,819
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Re: WiFi is slower than it supposed to be

Your connection seems fine, but your adapter seems stuck in 802.11g mode somehow. Even without channel bonding on the 2,4 GHz band, you should be able to get higher link speeds - with 802.11n, that is.

Last edited by .:B:. (2011-09-16 21:46:42)


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#5 2011-09-16 16:41:55

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: WiFi is slower than it supposed to be

From personal experience and some info about the useful throughput that can be found with google I'd say 2.1MB/s is a common maximum value for single channel no bells and whistles 802.11g connection, can't say anything about turbo mode, channel bonding or any other schemes.

Try disabling g mode altogether in the router if you don't have any other devices that can only connect using b/g mode. Try configuring your router with the most compatible settings possible (sometimes more is not better) and see if you can connect in N mode.

Also tell us which brand and model of router you have, maybe someone already had the same problem (or similar) and solved it.


R00KIE
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#6 2011-09-18 08:58:35

nagi
Member
Registered: 2011-06-07
Posts: 15
Website

Re: WiFi is slower than it supposed to be

I have Comtrend WAP-5813n http://www.comtrend.com/cee/links/85$product.htm

When I set „Support only 802.11n client“ to On ( https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-mvYM … shot-3.png ), then my laptop throws connection error. that sounds something like „ > WPA Authentication/Association Failed“ even if I make it Unsecured... (Turning that option Off lets me connect successfully.)

Tweaking „802.11n Rate“ option seems to work - when I set value to „6.5Mbps or 13.5Mbps“, it works as expected - doesn't exceed limits, however setting it to „39Mbps or 81Mbps“ it is again stuck at 21Mbps. „65Mbps or 135Mbps“ option gave me 28Mbps, but setting that option to higher values caused WiFi fail with „ > WPA Authentication/Association Failed“ again.

Then setting „Wi-Fi Multimedia“ to On I got around 50Mbps!

Playing around a bit more I finally got 65Mbps. Which is still smaller than 9x Mbps reached on Windows, but is reasonable.

That's my current configuration image - for someone, who may have this problem too: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6Ruf … shot-4.png

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