Question E900 router with ip cameras no bandwidth ?

Pachi_Mc

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Hi, i have a router e900 300mbps and 2 IP cameras using rtsp with 2mbps (and limited with QoS too), my wifi speed is 100mbps of download and 25mbps of upload, the problem is that i don't have bandwidth and i am not sure why, i run a speed test and i am getting 10mbps and 2mbps (i am next to the rotuer and only the cameras connected), could this be a faulty router ?
 
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kanewolf

Titan
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Hi, i have a router e900 300mbps and 2 IP cameras using rtsp with 2mbps (and limited with QoS too), my wifi speed is 100mbps of download and 25mbps of upload, the problem is that i don't have bandwitch and i am not sure why, i run a speed test and i am getting 10mbps and 2mbps (i am next to the rotuer and only the cameras connected), could this be a faulty router ?
Are your cameras wired or WIFI?
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Both WIFI, right now i disconnected 1 and see if i can make it work.
So you have a WIFI router with a maximum of 150Mbit (72Mbit throughput) that you are splitting between three devices. QOS will do nothing on LAN only traffic, and you should probably disable it.
I don't know what kind of signal the cameras are getting, their connection rates could be much lower than 150Mbit. If one of the cameras has low signal and therefore slow transfers ALL your WIFI devices will be impacted. If you have lots of neighbors with WIFI (an apartment building for example), then you also have LOTS of competing WIFI signals interfering with your WIFI.
That is a low-end, old model (first released in 2012) router. You will be much happier with a newer router. Look for an AC1900 labeled device.
Will this fix your problem? I don't know. WIFI is unpredictable. It will most-likely allow you to use the 5Ghz WIFI band for your phone.
 

Pachi_Mc

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Feb 25, 2020
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So you have a WIFI router with a maximum of 150Mbit (72Mbit throughput) that you are splitting between three devices. QOS will do nothing on LAN only traffic, and you should probably disable it.
I don't know what kind of signal the cameras are getting, their connection rates could be much lower than 150Mbit. If one of the cameras has low signal and therefore slow transfers ALL your WIFI devices will be impacted. If you have lots of neighbors with WIFI (an apartment building for example), then you also have LOTS of competing WIFI signals interfering with your WIFI.
That is a low-end, old model (first released in 2012) router. You will be much happier with a newer router. Look for an AC1900 labeled device.
Will this fix your problem? I don't know. WIFI is unpredictable. It will most-likely allow you to use the 5Ghz WIFI band for your phone.
Camera is next to router, yes lots of WIFI near, router don't support 5ghz and camera neither.
also why router maximum of 150Mbit, router say 300 Mbit and how you calculate the throughput? even with 72 Mbit this should be enough right ?
the router is old i thought it was enough for 1 camera rtsp you think a new router would improve this?
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Camera is next to router, yes lots of WIFI near, router don't support 5ghz and camera neither.
also why router maximum of 150Mbit, router say 300 Mbit and how you calculate the throughput? even with 72 Mbit this should be enough right ?
the router is old i thought it was enough for 1 camera rtsp you think a new router would improve this?
The "300 rating" assumes you have a client that can run two streams simultaneously. The cameras don't. Your phone might. But since everything has to share the same radio on the router, the phone gets slowed down by the slowest device. Practically, that router is a 150Mbit device for most clients. Because WIFI is 1/2 duplex (transmit OR receive but not both simultaneously), the 150Mbit gets split in half again. That gives practical MAXIMUM throughput of 72Mbit. But you say there is "lots of WIFI near". That means that your radio is getting interfered with by all those other radios. Traffic gets garbled and has to slow down and retransmit over and over.
I don't know if a newer router will help. A congested WIFI environment is just not good for streaming video. I really think you need to look for some kind of wired solution.
 

Pachi_Mc

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Feb 25, 2020
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The "300 rating" assumes you have a client that can run two streams simultaneously. The cameras don't. Your phone might. But since everything has to share the same radio on the router, the phone gets slowed down by the slowest device. Practically, that router is a 150Mbit device for most clients. Because WIFI is 1/2 duplex (transmit OR receive but not both simultaneously), the 150Mbit gets split in half again. That gives practical MAXIMUM throughput of 72Mbit. But you say there is "lots of WIFI near". That means that your radio is getting interfered with by all those other radios. Traffic gets garbled and has to slow down and retransmit over and over.
I don't know if a newer router will help. A congested WIFI environment is just not good for streaming video. I really think you need to look for some kind of wired solution.
Yes i know i would need wired solution, also 150/2 shouldn't be 75mbps ? why 72? and QoS should help to limit the bandwitch used by the camera ? thanks for the reply
 

Pachi_Mc

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QOS is not applied on LAN traffic typically and uses CPU resources in the already minimally capable router.
In that 150Mbit is some overhead. Thzt is why I say 72Mbit.
okey thanks you, also all router have splitter speed
so if i have 100mbps of download and 25mbps of upload, this won't affect the router bandwidth right ? and all router bandwidth is split because of transmit or receive, also all router are down to the slowest speed because my camera cant transmits and receive at same time?? there is some book/reference for information of all this? i want to learn more about it
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
okey thanks you, also all router have splitter speed
so if i have 100mbps of download and 25mbps of upload, this won't affect the router bandwidth right ? and all router bandwidth is split because of transmit or receive, also all router are down to the slowest speed because my camera cant transmits and receive at same time?? there is some book/reference for information of all this? i want to learn more about it
This is basic WIFI technology. Maybe start with something like this -- https://commotionwireless.net/docs/cck/networking/learn-wireless-basics/ of this https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/guides/wifi-fundamentals/
 
150 and 300Mbps are theoretical maximums for 1 and 2 antennas on N, respectively, assuming a 40MHz wide channel on 2.4GHz, which really isn't possible unless you live on a farm with no nearby neighbors.

At 20MHz and one antenna (unless your cameras have two) the theoretical maximum is 72.2Mbps before overhead and after it you would be doing well to get an actual 54Mbps transfer rate for data. Note that some wifi chips like Atheros do not allow you to set a short guard interval on 20MHz 2.4GHz so the theoretical maximum is even lower at 65Mbps.

So why are you getting 10 or 2 instead? Because older drivers and firmware aren't as good with coping with interference. There are lots of things like security cameras and baby monitors nowadays using wifi frequencies but which are not wifi so won't appear in any wifi traffic analyzer tool. They broadcast spread-spectrum so corrupt wifi packets to require retransmits which slows things way down.

I would suggest loading FreshTomato firmware onto that router because Broadcom MIPsel routers continued to be made long after that one, so much newer drivers are available in that and the latest was just released this month. While DD-WRT is also listed as supporting the E900 I would avoid it simply because the latest one anyone has reported as working in their forums is from 2020.

BTW most cable internet is faster than the rated speed whenever the excess bandwidth is available (with Comcast it's typically 118% so for 100Mbit service you usually don't want to set QoS much lower than 118Mbps) however your old router has only 10/100 ethernet ports so you'll obviously never see this, even wired.
 

Pachi_Mc

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Feb 25, 2020
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150 and 300Mbps are theoretical maximums for 1 and 2 antennas on N, respectively, assuming a 40MHz wide channel on 2.4GHz, which really isn't possible unless you live on a farm with no nearby neighbors.

At 20MHz and one antenna (unless your cameras have two) the theoretical maximum is 72.2Mbps before overhead and after it you would be doing well to get an actual 54Mbps transfer rate for data. Note that some wifi chips like Atheros do not allow you to set a short guard interval on 20MHz 2.4GHz so the theoretical maximum is even lower at 65Mbps.

So why are you getting 10 or 2 instead? Because older drivers and firmware aren't as good with coping with interference. There are lots of things like security cameras and baby monitors nowadays using wifi frequencies but which are not wifi so won't appear in any wifi traffic analyzer tool. They broadcast spread-spectrum so corrupt wifi packets to require retransmits which slows things way down.

I would suggest loading FreshTomato firmware onto that router because Broadcom MIPsel routers continued to be made long after that one, so much newer drivers are available in that and the latest was just released this month. While DD-WRT is also listed as supporting the E900 I would avoid it simply because the latest one anyone has reported as working in their forums is from 2020.

BTW most cable internet is faster than the rated speed whenever the excess bandwidth is available (with Comcast it's typically 118% so for 100Mbit service you usually don't want to set QoS much lower than 118Mbps) however your old router has only 10/100 ethernet ports so you'll obviously never see this, even wired.
i will try the freshtomato firmware, also this router have 2 antennas, 1 working at 150 and the other at 300 ? what is the difference?
 
The router has two antennas to connect to two-antenna clients at the faster speed. If you only have 1-antenna clients like a phone, then they will be limited to slower speeds... because they can only connect to one antenna at a time.

Generally with 20MHz N, 85Mbit actual data transfer rate is doing pretty good with a 2x2 client and 100Mbit with a 3x3 (most 3x3 N routers were advertised as N900 because the theoretical speeds of 450 on 2.4GHz and 450 on 5GHz were simply added together)
 
I will agree with the above posts, wifi is not as simple as most people think those number you see on the router box are not actual data rates.

I will assume you run speedtest on some other device, or do the cameras do that. Can you try a ethernet connected device so you can test if you actually get the speed that the ISP promises.

Maybe if you post the model numbers of the cameras other forum users could help you figure out what data encoding can be used and what router replacement if any would help.

Although 10mbps is a bit low it is not uncommon to get only say 30mbps on these lower end routers. Again the numbers like 150 or 300 are not actually speeds these are some magic marketing numbers that only represent speed in unrealistic lab test environments.
 
It is so much more complex than that. The number antenna do not work that way. Each device does not use a antenna they take turns using 1 or more of them. This is the half duplex problem only 1 device can talk at a time.

What camera exactly do you have. The connection speed will only be as high what both the router and camera can do.

So to get 300 number you must first use 40mhz radio bands and you must be able to use 2 antenna at the same time..ie 2x2 mimo. This is before any overhead and the 1/2 duplex issue. If you are really lucky you might get 50-60mbps.

Now if you camera only support 1 antenna and only support 20mhz radio bands you are again back at 72.2 and then you have the overhead and the half duplex issue and will likely run at most 30mbps.

This is also ignoring that all your cameras are competing for the same radio bandwidth. This will further reduce the maximum you can expect.
 

Pachi_Mc

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Feb 25, 2020
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It is so much more complex than that. The number antenna do not work that way. Each device does not use a antenna they take turns using 1 or more of them. This is the half duplex problem only 1 device can talk at a time.

What camera exactly do you have. The connection speed will only be as high what both the router and camera can do.

So to get 300 number you must first use 40mhz radio bands and you must be able to use 2 antenna at the same time..ie 2x2 mimo. This is before any overhead and the 1/2 duplex issue. If you are really lucky you might get 50-60mbps.

Now if you camera only support 1 antenna and only support 20mhz radio bands you are again back at 72.2 and then you have the overhead and the half duplex issue and will likely run at most 30mbps.

This is also ignoring that all your cameras are competing for the same radio bandwidth. This will further reduce the maximum you can expect.
and if i have 5ghz band, will be affected by the slow device connected on 2.4ghz?
 
They run on 2 completely different radio chips so there is no affect.

The problem is not that slow devices slow down other device. It is they compete for a limiting pool of bandwidth. Wifi can run devices that connect at different speeds and it will just switch the data encoding it uses as it switches from device to device. So a very fast device can run with no interference from a slow device but it depends on how much total data transfer the slower device needs to use.
 

Pachi_Mc

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yea i just bought tplink archer c80 ac1900, also when i connect one camera to 2.4 i should not be able to connect the other because only 1 device can talk at time right ? or i should be able to connect both and use 5ghz on personal devices
 
yea i just bought tplink archer c80 ac1900, also when i connect one camera to 2.4 i should not be able to connect the other because only 1 device can talk at time right ? or i should be able to connect both and use 5ghz on personal devices

You're fine to connect both. Newer Wifi 6 offers OFDMA which helps alot to retain bandwidth with multiple clients using a channel, but 2 cameras should be fine. Don't expect to reach max speeds when you have 2 clients using constant bandwidth like that. Your new router has a 3x3 radio, so it should be much better than your old router in terms of congestion.
 
yea i just bought tplink archer c80 ac1900, also when i connect one camera to 2.4 i should not be able to connect the other because only 1 device can talk at time right ? or i should be able to connect both and use 5ghz on personal devices
You are taking this too literally. Only 1 device can talk at the exact same time but they can take turns sending data. Even though you might think the camera is sending data constantly it is not. It sends the data in chunks with delays between them. The devices more or less fight over the radio bandwidth each taking a turn when they can. This is why wifi degrades the more devices you add the more difficult it is for them to not stomp each other. You should not have much issues with only 2 cameras. Unless you have some fancy 4k cameras and are not running much data compression you should easily be able to get 2 feeds into even 10mbps. Be better if you can get that higher but again it might be a limitation of the camera and not your router.
 

Pachi_Mc

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Feb 25, 2020
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You're fine to connect both. Newer Wifi 6 offers OFDMA which helps alot to retain bandwidth with multiple clients using a channel, but 2 cameras should be fine. Don't expect to reach max speeds when you have 2 clients using constant bandwidth like that.
Thanks that clarify a lot, also if the speed of 2.4 is 600mbps, it should be split because this would be simultaneous speed and camera don't receive right ? so should be 300mbps?
 
Please post the model number of your cameras.

It is highly doubtful that you will ever get 600 connection speed on 2.4. That would take a camera that can run 4x4 mimo. That means it would have to have 4 antenna. Even nic cards for desktops are extremely rare that have 4 antenna.

Almost all wifi cameras I have seen only have 1 antenna. You could buy a $1000 router and it will not improve the wifi speed if the camera can not use the features.
 

Pachi_Mc

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Feb 25, 2020
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Please post the model number of your cameras.

It is highly doubtful that you will ever get 600 connection speed on 2.4. That would take a camera that can run 4x4 mimo. That means it would have to have 4 antenna. Even nic cards for desktops are extremely rare that have 4 antenna.

Almost all wifi cameras I have seen only have 1 antenna. You could buy a $1000 router and it will not improve the wifi speed if the camera can not use the features.
yes i know, so it would be working half speed + 1 antenna of 4 right ?
cameras are old dcs 936l