Have tried three brands of wireless routers. Wired LAN output less than half of WAN input

Aug 3, 2018
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Hi all. Nice forum.

Needed a new main router to connect to two access points. All three routers were gigabit and well-known and reviewed.

Output from the Motorola cable modem = 975 via ethernet to laptop. When connected to these routers, and a single ethernet cord goes from a LAN port to that laptop, the speed is about 440. That's less than half of the input.

The laptop is the only device connected to the LAN ports.

Is this reduction expected and normal ?

 
Solution


It's actually better to have a weaker signal that covers the specific area needed.
If you had your house layout on paper and tried to draw circles on it. you can fit less big circles.
the wifi bands share airspace so you don't want heavy overlap esp on the areas with cameras, because they will use up the channels you give them. if one of the cams is away from the house, you can buy two directional AP, a yagi would be able to go far. most of them are...

Saturnity

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Well the speed depends on the service package you bought.. Some routers aren't as efficient though, ethernet is basically a direct connect to the router, so yes wireless is usually slower than ethernet
 
Aug 3, 2018
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Thank you, but I'm referring only to a wired connection from the LAN to the laptop. The inquiry has nothing to do about the wireless feature.
 
Reset the router to a factory setting and then use it with the very minimal configuration. To get high speed most modern routers have a feature that lets them do the NAT in hardware. This bypasses the cpu in the router. Many features in the router can not be offloaded to the hardware and must pass the CPU. If you attempt to use any of these features the NAT hardware function is switched off and all the traffic flows via the CPU and you get a bottleneck. Most times it is things like QoS or firewall features but my asus router even the simple display of traffic utilization does not function unless you disable the hardware assist.
 
Aug 3, 2018
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Great idea. But if that reset results in good-normal throughput, then the router won't be fully functional an will be half-useless. So is this just a test to see if the router LANs are GB capable? Then one completes the settings and just lives with the reduction in throughput?
 
Troubleshooted based on process of elimination. Can't you just plug one router in at a time and see if results change? Does it only happen when all 3 are plugged in? Is it happening to only one router? Check the cables between routers etc...

What are you using 3 routers for? How are they connected to the network and each other?
 
Are your routers on here? SNB tests WAN->LAN TCP throughput.
if you aren't getting near the tested speeds on the site you may have changed a setting and bottlenecked it.
nesting routers isn't recommend. you may be able to turn them all into APs.
I would suggest going modem->router->switch-> hosts,APs,etc

There are some affordable x86 SoC that you can run pfsense on.
intel just released a full line of nice chips for home networking.
going x86 will cost you a lot more. if you only need basic nat then one like edge router lite or mikrotek hex are nice.
pretty much anything except basic nat will bottleneck a 1Gbs connection on these routers. x86 can handle as much as you throw at it.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/bar/179-wan-to-lan-tcp/35
 
Aug 3, 2018
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I've tried Netgear Nighthawk, Asus RT AC68U, Asus 86U, and Synology RT2600AC.

Don't know what you mean by nesting. I have two access points connected by ethernet cables. Sorry for my stupidity. I love to find the strongest RF router with the fastest speed.

Is Google's wifi units better than the four ones listed above? Seems like I'd have to interpose a GB switch in order to feed the two access points.
 


Well you are not really answering any of our questions here...

A router and Access Point are two totally different things. Router can do routing and also have built in wifi where normally an Access Point is just a point for wifi.

Secondly. How are they connected? Which is the router connected to the modem? Do the other two routers connect to the LAN or WAN ports of the primary router? Or is it a piggy back where router 1 plugs into router 2 and router 2 plugs into router 3 etc....

What is the point of these routers? Do you just need wifi? If thats the case I would recommend you use only one router and then two Access Points. This stops issues like Double Nat on your LAN etc.... which is most likely what your problem is now. If they are just for LAN then why not use a router and two small switches? We need to know the exact purpose of your setup.
 
The devices you run as a AP should only be limited by the wifi speed. If you were to cable modem--router--switch--AP everything on the LAN side of the router will be able to run at full gigabit speeds...obviously not the wifi.

The only problem comes when you go wan-lan. Lan to lan traffic does not pass the CPU. This is actually how they make the NAT fast is they somehow offloaded the NAT function to the internal switch asic device.

Not sure which device you should use as the router. All will greatly degrade the speed if you plan to do much more than NAT with the device. The only way to fix this is as indicated above you need to use something that has more CPU power than a consumer grade router.
 


nesting is plugging a NAT into another NAT. you need one fast router and one fast bridge, eg switch.

I wouldn't recommend googles wifi if you have ethernet running in the house. wifi will be limited no matter which you buy. some of the better ones handle more clients at the same time.
 
Aug 3, 2018
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Sorry, I don't know as much as you. There's one main router, and an ethernet cable runs to one access point in the front of the house, and a second ethernet cable goes to an access point upstairs. This is done to help outside wifi security cams.

Even when nothing is plugged into the LAN ports except a CAT6 to my laptop, the speed test is only 450 down. Connecting the cable modem directly to this laptop yields 950-990 down.

So on these models listed, the WAN signal is restricted in the router.

Make sense?
 
Aug 3, 2018
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Sorry, I don't know as much as you. There's one main router, and an ethernet cable runs to one access point in the front of the house, and a second ethernet cable goes to an access point upstairs. This is done to help outside wifi security cams.

Even when nothing is plugged into the LAN ports except a CAT6 to my laptop, the speed test is only 450 down. Connecting the cable modem directly to this laptop yields 950-990 down.

So on these models listed, the WAN signal is restricted in the router.

Make sense?
 
Aug 3, 2018
8
0
10



Sorry, I don't know as much as you. There's one main router, and an ethernet cable runs to one access point in the front of the house, and a second ethernet cable goes to an access point upstairs. This is done to help outside wifi security cams.

Even when nothing is plugged into the LAN ports except a CAT6 to my laptop, the speed test is only 450 down. Connecting the cable modem directly to this laptop yields 950-990 down.

So on these models listed, the WAN signal is restricted in the router.

Make sense?
 
Aug 3, 2018
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The purpose of this setup is to give a stronger signal to the outside IP security cams. One router, now the ASUS AC-3200, and ethernet goes to two access points. The 3200 gives only 40 down on 2.4, and the wired LAN is 400 to a laptop while the WAN is 1000 in from the cable modem.
 
I wish I had gigabit Internet so I can tell you ya, my consumer router can do it! Have you checked the reviews whether these routers you have used are REALLY gigabit capable? (actually measured, not superficial so called reviews no more than advertisement). These stupid things, yeah, they give you a gigabit NIC but the heart, the processing, is not capable of driving the NICs to their full capacity, i.e. routers so called USB3 ports.
 
This has been a couple of days so I get confused by similar threads.

If you go to the small network builder link provided above you will see almost all router you have can easily run well over 900mbps wan to lan.

Since it runs 900mbps direct to the modem it means your pc is ok. The only thing left is some configuration in the router that is slowing it down.
You need to factory reset the router and configure it as simple as possible. If possible only set the admin password and maybe the wifi settings.

There are many options in the routers that will cause the hardware accelerator to be disabled and you will be bottlenecked by the CPU.
 


Yes that makes more sense thanks!

So I'm guessing you have tested going directly to the LAN of the router that is connected to modem? Do you get speeds you expect? Or was your above tests done only on a LAN cable connected to an access point?

Without anything plugged into the router except the WAN and your laptop on the LAN. You should be getting full speeds. If you are not then we need to troubleshoot there first.

Can you also please answer the question about which router is your primary router? (one plugged into the modem).
 


It's actually better to have a weaker signal that covers the specific area needed.
If you had your house layout on paper and tried to draw circles on it. you can fit less big circles.
the wifi bands share airspace so you don't want heavy overlap esp on the areas with cameras, because they will use up the channels you give them. if one of the cams is away from the house, you can buy two directional AP, a yagi would be able to go far. most of them are omni-directional.

those cameras will wreck the wifi if you have a lot. you also want ones that compress @ source to h264 or h265.
if you bought ones designed for wires to save money, the raw video has a much larger bitrate. some of the newer smart cameras have compression. if you want more than 4 cams running POE ethernet is going to work the best. considering wifi can't hit 1G, it would be ideal to get everything stationary off it so that mobile devices can hit the best speeds. unifi APs have quality algos to help keep the fastest speeds available to each device.
 
Solution