how can i increase router performance ?

[vhelp]

dell laptop:
* intel core i3-2370m 2.40GHz, windows 7 premium, 64-bit, 6gig ram
* wireless 1703 802.11/b/g/n 2.4GHz, 54Mbps, (or 6.7MB/s transfer rate) 2 usb2, 1 use3 ports

router:
* Netgear N900 Dual-Band (450Mbps + 450Mbps, to total 900Mbps) model # WNDR4500-100NAS.

wifi adaptor:
* NETGEAR AC600 (model # A6100) WiFi Adapter, Dual-Band (150 Mbps/433 Mbps)
* Beamforming+ keeps you connected while improving range and reliability.
* Compatible — Works with 802.11 a/b/g/n and ac devices
* 802.11ac – The World's Fastest WiFi It's the latest WiFi standard. 3x faster than older,
* standards and NETGEAR delivers it to your home network.

going into the new router purchase, my initial thought was that i would receive these specs:

112.5MB/s transfer rate, or 56.2 MB/s transfer rate if at 450 Mbps, over wifi. however, i was wrong.

my device connections:
* wdmycloud -//cat5e//-> netgear_n900

{A} laptop pc -wifi-> netgear_n900 -//cat5e//-> wdmycloud, (laptop 30 feet from router)
{B} desktoppc -wifi-> netgear_n900 -//cat5e//-> wdmycloud, (desktop pc 30 feet from router)
{C} desktoppc AC600: initial through-put 150 Mbps (win xp network connection reading)
{D} desktoppc AC600: current through-put 72 Mbps (win xp network connection reading)
{E} tablet pc -wifi-> netgear_n900 -//cat5e//-> wdmycloud
{F} initial transfer rates of netgear_n900 router: 900 KB/s to 1.4 MB/s
{G} current transfer rates of netgear_n900 router: 300 KB/s to 400 KB/s

let me share my experience in detail, and please forgive its lengthly'nes.

the router--when i first set it up and got everything working, my first test was to copy a large file from the laptop to the wdmycloud via router over wifi and see how fast it could do it in terms of KB/s or MB/s. the few test showed between 900 KB/s to 1.4 MB/s. at the time, i thought that was wrong (looking at the 112.5 MB/s or 56.2 MBps above) or that it could be better, if i could fine-tune it or make corrections to settings that i was not aware of just yet. my plan was to look into that later on. also, my desktop pc new wifi adapter (replaced an old belkin 54 Mbps) the throughput reading was now showing 150 Mbps, initially as well. i figured, that at best i would be get at least 18.7 MB/s transfer when copying files from my desktop pc {B} to the wdmycloud via the router setup. but i wasn't sure about that at the time and now that it is slower, running at 72 Mbps (9 MB/s) that it does not seem possible even under the slower 72 Mbps speed. so, something is wrong, somewhere in the settings of these devices. but i'm clueless to know where and what to change at this time.

so i went on to do other things, and a week later, came back to have another look at the router and things and started to do actual work, mainly dvd rips over wifi. i was doing this for several days. but while i was doing this, i noticed that my desktop pc wifi performance had dropped from {C} down to {D} 72 Mbps. i disconnected the adaptor several times in hopes that would bring it back up to 150 Mbps, but it stayed at 72 Mbps. i do not know what caused the performance to degrade, permanently, since i did not install anything new on the desktop.

so in looking things over, i found that performance had taken a dive in terms of data transfer rate when letting dvd shrink do its work over wifi directly to the wdmycloud's hdd {A}, or copying files to the wdmycloud's hdd over wifi, again, {A}.

As i was saying, the performance of {A} equalling {F} has since dropped to {G}. i do not know what has happend since the initial speed performance tests of a few weeks ago.

here is another example. today, after ripping a dvd movie (2.12 gig) with dvd shrink i decided to transfer that rip from c:\dvd_rips to my wdmycloud over wifi via {A} but the whole copy process took 58 minutes, with {G} specs. although, about midway into the copying process, where it slowly climbed to +/- 352 Mbps, i took the laptop {A} over to the netgear router to see if the network_connections_reading would show the Mbps speed improve, but it did not do that. it stayed at the same fluctuating speed, and finished copying in 58 minutes. i was surprised since the laptop was 2 inches away from the router. i was expecting it to change since everyone talks about how distance and obsticles, like walls and phisical materials can alter (slow down) the speed. but moving my laptop up to the router proved that to be a false statement, as i read them, basically. so, even if your wifi adaptor is 2 inches from the router, it will not increase the speed or performance one bit.

Q: how can i increase the performance in the above setup, {A} and {B} to at least {F} or better ?

thank you.

[fritzi93]

The Netgear WNDR4500 should be a decent router. It's gotten good reviews for home use.

Have you tried powering off/on? What kind of throughput do you see then?

[newpball]

Q: how can i increase the performance in the above setup, {A} and {B} to at least {F} or better ?

Easy, hook up your external drive directly to your laptop and forget about this wireless "mycloud" stuff.

[vhelp]

Easy, hook up your external drive directly to your laptop and forget about this wireless "mycloud" stuff.

because i will be watching videos from different devices and in different rooms, that's been the plan for my video endeavors.

[vhelp]

Have you tried powering off/on? What kind of throughput do you see then?

ok, here's what heppend when i did that...

i powered down the router for a minute and then powered it back up. my desktop pc is now back to 150 Mbps (for now, i guess) and my laptop copying is 1.2 MB/s, for a 2.07 gig dvd rip from c:\dvd_rips to the wdmycould via the router over wifi and told me it would take 45 minutes to complete the copy (simple drag and drop) which is still too slow but better. however, as i've been watching it for the last several minutes, it is slowly trickeling down to the 300 - 400 KB/s rate, it is now at 580 KB/s and telling me it will take over an hour to complete. and the desktop netgear AC600 wifi adaptor still says 150 Mbps, for now though.

and the internet was shut down-- i tried to post this but couldn't because it interupted it somehow. in fact, all the computers would not access the internet. so, i disconnected the desktop pc AC600 wifi adapter and closed down the browser. only the copying process opened and running. it stayed at or around 500 MB/s. and the copy process completed 58:50 minutes.

after it was completed, the internet was release and given back to me. however, i could not access the internet (browsers were all blank in Opera) so i shut the DSL modem on/off and then i quickly reconnected the desktop pc AC600 wifi adapter to check things out on the desktop, and shore enough, it was back at the 72 Mbps rate. oh boy.

i don't know what is going on or what to do next.

[newpball]

Easy, hook up your external drive directly to your laptop and forget about this wireless "mycloud" stuff.

because i will be watching videos from different devices and in different rooms, that's been the plan for my video endeavors.

You are talking about bitrates from over 100 Mb/s why on Earth would you need that for video streaming?

Ripping DVDs and copying large files over WiFi and just watching movies over WiFi are two entirely different things.

[vhelp]

Ripping DVDs and copying large files over WiFi and just watching movies over WiFi are two entirely different things.

different reasons. trial and error different ideas. when i started just ripping the dvd's, i was doing so over wifi. however, some dvd's would not rip completely and i ended up redoing some of them. its been a learning process for me. then, i decided to just rip the dvd's to my hdd and then later (when i'm busy elsewhere in the house) i would copy them over wifi to my wdmycloud, thinking that i would solve the through-put issue by then. but that is not the case so far. to top all that, the newly bluray writer i purchased did not satisfy me, speed-wise. the drive (an usb2/3 LG ultra slim portable, model # BP5ONB440) max transfer was between 1 to 2MB/s and the rips would take 30 minutes or more. so i picked up another one by chance, a usb3 LG super multi blue BE14 and it did much better, ripping 4 to 8MB/s, the fastest so far was 8min, longest was 18min. so, i decided to continue ripping more of my collection to my laptops hdd and then copy them later to the wdmycloud, hoping that by then i may have solved some of the performance issues. worse case scenario, i could copy a bunch of them using wired connection. this whole process is still a work in progress. eventually i will settle on something.

[TimA-C]

Check your adapter settings and see if you can increase the Receive and Transmit buffers. Make sure the adapter settings in the laptop aren't being affected by power saving settings. Check to see if anyone is reporting better performance from different versions of drivers for your various network adapters - they are definitely not all equal! Try to determine if your antivirus is checking outgoing/incoming data and slowing things down. (Does the WD NAS drive have antivirus? Is it set to scan incoming data?). Is the WD NAS you've got known for having slow read/write times? (The early WD MyBooks were truly dreadful!) Check that any Cat5e cable in the system is in good nick and the plug contacts are not oxidised. Make sure you haven't got any downloads/syncing/automatic backups going on in the background taking up bandwidth (Torrents or Dropbox etc.)

[pandy]

Use zap from ruckus and verify QoS for link - search for best place where router can provide highest and most stable speed.

[MaverickTse]

-Check for interference and try changing the wifi channel.
-Disable b/g modes, ensure mixed-mode is not used(if possible, just leaving ac mode on)
-Disable Win7 Home Group (Important, this can slow a lot)

[Cauptain]

Limite connection to "N" only.

[vhelp]

i have not resolved the router through-put with the dell laptop to wdmycloud scenario yet. not finding the answer(s) and i've been busy in other things in-between projects and life. anyway.

i'm here reporting something that caught my interest a moment ago. in my initial quick copy of a small video file, i discovered that the copy through-put speed was very fast on my desktop pc--to-the-router. so, i ran some short tests on small 50mb, 250mb and 1gig size files. the only thing i can't figure out is the math, in order to know the actual through-put or transfer speed of this this scenario.

setup specs for copying files over usb2 wifi:

1. netgear A6100 usb2 wifi** adaptor (the connection speed is currently reading 150Mbps)
2. netgear n900 router
3. wdmycloud
4. desktop pc, amd dual core, 2gig ram, windows xp home, sp3 (though the help/about dialog says sp2, i know i installed sp3, oh well)

** several days ago, i decided to explore that diamond shapped button on the A6100 wifi adaptor. when i pressed the button, it displayed a netgear gene screen. it said to go over to my netgear router and press the [.~.] (the one that is the "lock" button) within 2 minutes. after thinking about it, i went and did so. then the router re-initialized and continued as usual. i did not notice anything different about the router except that on my desktop, the speed no longer said 72Mbps, but now says 150Mbps, and has been saying this since this change. so, something happend that seems to keep my desktop wifi adaptor at that 150Mbps speed.

what i am looking for is the correct math to use to calculate the transfer rate in MB/s (megabytes per second) for the following:

filesize

  280,637 KB -- 00:00:40s to copy from desktop to wdmycloud
1,017,264 KB -- 00:02:40s to copy from desktop to wdmycloud
2,055,696 KB -- 00:08:42s to copy from desktop to wdmycloud

i wish that xp had the same feature win7 has, when copying files, you can see the transfer rate in MB/s.

the last file seems to have taken the longest time to copy. anyway. on that last file, i did notice that around 2/3 into the copying, the rough estimated time remaining kept fluctuating betwen 50 seconds to 45 minutes.. you know, 2 minutes.., 19 minutes.., 15 seconds, 1 minutes.. etc. etc. but the first two files copied very quickly. i believe this router has an internal 1gig cache ram, last i read the small print on the packaging somewhere.

edit: on the last 72Mbps copy tests, the transfer speed was very slow, somwhere around 1 to 2 hours for a 1 gig file.

[johns0]

If you can get a modem/router from your isp,they are much better than separate routers connected to a modem.

[fritzi93]

If you can get a modem/router from your isp,they are much better than separate routers connected to a modem.

That was true in my case. I kept losing connection on my Rokus, or had excessive buffering when using my Netgear router. Finally gave up on it and tried the wireless on the Comcast gateway (router/modem). To my surprise, it works quite well. Mind you, the router has better throughput for using a laptop, and no connection issues. For streaming it just won't do.

Sometimes I think that troubleshooting wi-fi must be one of the black arts. I was sure there must be some obscure compatibility issue between the gateway and router, but wasn't smart enough to solve it.

[jagabo]

what i am looking for is the correct math to use to calculate the transfer rate in MB/s (megabytes per second) for the following:

filesize

  280,637 KB -- 00:00:40s to copy from desktop to wdmycloud
1,017,264 KB -- 00:02:40s to copy from desktop to wdmycloud
2,055,696 KB -- 00:08:42s to copy from desktop to wdmycloud

That's trivial. Convert KB to MB, min:sec to sec, then divide:
2,055,696 KB = 2,056 MB
8 minutes and 42 seconds = 522 seconds
2056 / 522 = 3.9 MB/s

[vhelp]

thank you, jagabo!

here is the updated results with the calculated values for the transfer rates in this segment.

  280,637 KB -- 00:00:40s, 6682KB/s, (6.7MB/s) to copy from desktop to wdmycloud
1,017,264 KB -- 00:02:40s, 6358KB/s, (6.4MB/s) to copy from desktop to wdmycloud
2,055,696 KB -- 00:08:42s, 3938KB/s, (3.9MB/s) to copy from desktop to wdmycloud

those MB/s values sure make a better performance versus what i am getting on the laptop (specs in post 1). i may test the A6100 usb2 wifi adaptor on the laptop to see what results i get from that. i do have another usb2/3 wifi adaptor by netgear. i think it is a 300Mbps stick. will have to check it when i return home.

[nic2k4]

That was true in my case. I kept losing connection on my Rokus, or had excessive buffering when using my Netgear router. Finally gave up on it and tried the wireless on the Comcast gateway (router/modem). To my surprise, it works quite well. Mind you, the router has better throughput for using a laptop, and no connection issues. For streaming it just won't do.

Sometimes I think that troubleshooting wi-fi must be one of the black arts. I was sure there must be some obscure compatibility issue between the gateway and router, but wasn't smart enough to solve it.

You might find this interesting.

  280,637 KB -- 00:00:40s, 6682KB/s, (6.7MB/s) to copy from desktop to wdmycloud
1,017,264 KB -- 00:02:40s, 6358KB/s, (6.4MB/s) to copy from desktop to wdmycloud
2,055,696 KB -- 00:08:42s, 3938KB/s, (3.9MB/s) to copy from desktop to wdmycloud

If you have a 100Mbps ethernet connection the best you will see is a little over 12MB/s. If your wired PC's and the WDmycloud have gigabit ethernet you could get a gigabit switch to connect all the PC's and the mycloud together, then connect the switch to the router (doesn't matter if it doesn't have gigabit ports). Of course, anything over Wifi is a lost cause (the best you can expect from N300 is 15MB/s).

Have a look at WD's support page on the subject.

[fritzi93]

You might find this interesting.

Thanks for that!

[pandy]

If you have a 100Mbps ethernet connection the best you will see is a little over 12MB/s. If your wired PC's and the WDmycloud have gigabit ethernet you could get a gigabit switch to connect all the PC's and the mycloud together, then connect the switch to the router (doesn't matter if it doesn't have gigabit ports). Of course, anything over Wifi is a lost cause (the best you can expect from N300 is 15MB/s).

Nope - answer is more complex - everything depends from type of transmission - multicast may provide higher throughput, excessive number retries (done automatically by WLAN and TCP/IP) may reduce significantly throughput, other factors (e.g. external RF interferences) are important too.

(Highly asymmetric data transmission like multicast in quasi perfect RF may be very close to theoretical max - probably somewhere around 200 mbps). Cable is something else - usually it is full duplex i.e. transmission in both directions is fully independent - in RF spectrum is always shared and not only between AP and STAtion but also other even non data RF emission. RF is even worse - even RF signal out of interesting band (such as DECT cordless phone) may affect 2.4/5GHz data transmission (filters are not perfect, amplifiers at some are begin to be nonlinear etc).
WLAN performance is always many factors, antenna type, antenna polarization, antenna placement, lot of other thing will directly affect WLAN performance. Sometimes moving antenna position by few cm (1-2 inch) may improve/reduce WLAN performance significantly.
During my work i experienced multiple times that changing position by 1-2mm! is immediately visible as WLAN performance loss/increase.

[nic2k4]

That's certainly an interesting subject, however OP is complaining about transfer speed for large files to his NAS and doesn't seem to have problems with streaming. Personally I would be interested to see any insights you may have on tweaking RWIN size or do you think it's better to leave that to QoS?

[nic2k4]

Thanks for that!

If that's got you fuming you should know about the Xfinity home hotspot lawsuit. Luckily you can turn it off.

[fritzi93]

Thanks for that!

If that's got you fuming you should know about the Xfinity home hotspot lawsuit. Luckily you can turn it off.

Thanks again, I turned the damn thing off.

I can see it as an option, but to have it enabled by default? Now that I think of it, I believe it can be accessed in the gateway's settings as well, in addition to Users and Preferences in one's account. I didn't pay enough attention to it at the time, as I was looking at other settings.

[fritzi93]

For anyone interested, I got a new TPLink router, N300. It was on special at NewEgg for only 25 bucks, so what the hell...It's not dual-band, but it does have 3 antennas and some reviews indicated its signal strength is strong in "difficult" situations.

Difficult certainly describes the wifi connection between my router and HTPC. One wall separates the office and my home theater, but my wife's filing cabinets are along that wall. Steel filing cabinets. As I stated earlier, the Comcast gateway works adequately for the Rokus, not so good for the HTPC. Which means Plex has occasional buffering problems when trying to run Plex on any of the other TVs in the house.

So here's what I did to set up the new TPLink router, and I used some of the suggestions from members posting earlier:

1) Turned off power management on the adapter (TPLink PCIe with two antennas).

2) Set up the router.

3) Set the Comcast gateway to full bridge mode. BTW, our Comcast service is nominally 100 mbps.

4) Used inSSIDer Home (free from Metageek) to see info on other networks within range. Set the router to the least congested channel (channel 6 in my case).

5) Tested the connection with speedtest from my HTPC after rebooting the gateway and router. Got good speed at first (50 plus mbps down), then it dropped off severely (to about 2 mbps), just as the gateway and previous Netgear N150 router did. Up went from 12 mbps to less than 1 mbps. Shit.

6) Cloned the MAC address of the office computer (which is connected as follows: gateway -> router -> ethernet port) to the router. This makes the router appear as the computer it was set up on. BTW, there was never any problem with drop-offs over ethernet. The TPLink help files recommend cloning the MAC address for cable broadband if there are issues with throughput.


Results after step 6 above were different alright. Now I'm getting 20 plus mbps down and 2 up, but no drop off. Solid for two days now. Well, that's a big improvement anyway. The Rokus (3 of them) work fine and Plex no longer buffers. If that hadn't solved it I was going to set up the Netgear router as a repeater, but I think I'm done.