Question Slow FTP data transfer speed on local network

[z3r0_co0L]

I have TP-Link Archer C1200 Dual-band Wifi Router through which I've shared my External HDD over FTP. My HDD is connected to the router via USB. It has a USB sharing option that creates an FTP server directly. Now, The issue I'm facing is that whenever I try to access media file over the FTP on my Tab/mobiles/Laptop connected to 5Ghz wifi, its transfer is maxed at 7-8 MB/s (MBytes/s) or approx 60-64 Mb/s (Mbits/s). I have set my wifi standard to 802.11ac only, channel width = 80Mhz ( there is no other wifi in my neighbourhood). Even on my pc which is connected to the router via LAN cable data transfer speed over the FTP is approx the same as that over WiFi.

How I can improve this data transfer speed?

Pic 1: Wifi Settings
Pic 2: Copy file from FTP drive to PC via Lan Cable

 

[rgd1101]

test with a ssd?

 

[bill001g]

The file sharing feature on a router is a extra add on that they throw in for free just to get the list of features longer on the box. Many router do a extremely poor job of this. Also external hard driver connected via USB also tend to be low end stuff. The real way to do this is with a actual NAS but even those can perform poorly if you for example put low end disk drives in them.

You are going to have to do some testing to find the bottleneck. Since it does the same as on wifi and ethernet I do not think the network is the problem.

I start with connecting the drive directly to your pc USB port and see what the maximum rate you can expect from the external box. Then try to share the file using microsoft sharing or load a ftp server on your pc if you really want to use FTP. See how fast you can transfer the data to another machine.

 

[kanewolf]

Besides what @bill001g said, the other thing that kills performance is using NTFS format on the disk. Your router is a linux OS. NTFS is not a native file system. For optimum performance you want the disk formatted in EXT3 or EXT4.

 

[z3r0_co0L]

Besides what @bill001g said, the other thing that kills performance is using NTFS format on the disk. Your router is a linux OS. NTFS is not a native file system. For optimum performance you want the disk formatted in EXT3 or EXT4.

I can't format my current Ext. HDD but I will try it on Pen-Drive.

 

[z3r0_co0L]

I've connected two PC each with windows 10 via LAN wire through Router and on transferring data from one to another on the local network, the speed is very low. Maximum copying speed is around 5 to 6 MB/s, not stable keep dropping to 2 to 3 MB/s. It shows adapters link speed (receive / transmit ) : 100/100 Mbps. Could it be a problem with the router?

 

[bill001g]

Not likely the router when you use it the way you say it runs as a simple switch.

load a program called iperf on the 2 machines and see what you get. This does not use disk and is not really limited by cpu/memory etc so it tests the network

 

[z3r0_co0L]

Not likely the router when you use it the way you say it runs as a simple switch.

load a program called iperf on the 2 machines and see what you get. This does not use disk and is not really limited by CPU/memory etc so it tests the network

I tried iperf3, P = my primary pc, S= secondary PC, these are the terms I'm going to use to explain what I found-

First, I pinged each PC one by one and there was no issue.
after that, I tested each with iperf3

when S=host, P=Client
I got a reply and the speed was above 90Mb/s, below is the link to the screenshot
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FLRume-mVSi9L-p7LUNupocM-MTGvuV1/view?usp=sharing

and when P=host, S=client
there was an error "unable to connect to the server." so I didn't get any reply.
I tried several times to make P host but the issue continued.

 

[bill001g]

It maybe a firewall issue that is preventing Iperf from working.

It is very rare for it to not transfer data the same speed in both directions.

Which machine is acting as the FTP server if it is the same as the iperf one you should expect the same transfer rates.

 

[z3r0_co0L]

It may be a firewall issue that is preventing Iperf from working.

It is very rare for it to not transfer data at the same speed in both directions.

Which machine is acting as the FTP server if it is the same as the iperf one you should expect the same transfer rates.

Yes, I wanted my Primary PC as the FTP server. As you said it could be a firewall that might be creating problem. So, I added IPERF3 in the firewall and tested again with my mobile [Secondary device now, connected via 5Ghz WiFi] and my Primary PC [Connected to the router via LAN wire], Here is the test result: Ipert3 Test on Mobile & PC What you think? It's working?

another test result-Test 2, 3 [Primary PC = HOST, and Client = Mobile]

 

[gggplaya]

That router is too slow to act as a proper NAS. Small netbuilder tested the router and got 10MB/s write speed and 14MB/s read speed.
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wir...router-archer-c5-v2-reviewed?showall=&start=2

You may want to tweak your MTU to achieve these speeds, or format your drive as NTFS.

Depending on which board revision of the Archer C5 you have, you may have a slower processor. You should get yourself a NAS, or a Raspberry PI to serve as a NAS or an older PC to serve as a NAS.

 

[bill001g]

That is strange that it works both ways with mobile but not ethernet.

More or less you are getting "100"mbps which is the port speed of the router limiting you. Because there is overhead you will only get say 95mbps on a 100mbps ports. The variations in the testing are because of the wifi.

This means your performance issues with FTP are either going to be the software or the disk subsystem. I have not used FTP in quite some time other than when I have unix machines. Windows file shares should be able to max your 100mbps especially when you transfer large files.

Still using a router as a NAS tend to not perform very well.

 

[Bazzy 505]

One thing to consider in relation to TP-Link in particular that hardware they sell may share same name and yet have significatly varied hardware under the same chasis. Sometimes even shops that sell them are not familiar with what the differences are between hardware revisions. What makes things even more confusing is that several hardware revisions may be on sale at the same time. As an example TL-ER6120 which is a fairly decent multi-wan vpn router was for a time sold in 3 hardware revisions for a same price, and while one would have twice the onboard memory , and completely different cpu. As a result you could have purchased, unknowigly a router with 360 , 640 or 980 mbps peak NAT translation capability. So for 250-300 bucks you may have ended up extremely happy or quite dissapointed depending which version you got. Now to TP-Link's defense they do list hardware revision in small letters just by the barcode on the side of the box and if you dig into their specification sheets you'll find out all, but aparently they don't bother going into details with their retailers.

I was purchasing one of those for a friend a few years back becuase he needed to setup a small network for his business on fairly modest budget, and i had to go through 4 shops before i could find one who would bother to even check what hardware revision those units they had in stock were for me.

 

[bill001g]

One thing to consider in relation to TP-Link in particular that hardware they sell may share same name and yet have significatly varied hardware under the same chasis. Sometimes even shops that sell them are not familiar with what the differences are between hardware revisions. What makes things even more confusing is that several hardware revisions may be on sale at the same time. As an example TL-ER6120 which is a fairly decent multi-wan vpn router was for a time sold in 3 hardware revisions for a same price, and while one would have twice the onboard memory , and completely different cpu. As a result you could have purchased, unknowigly a router with 360 , 640 or 980 mbps peak NAT translation capability. So for 250-300 bucks you may have ended up extremely happy or quite dissapointed depending which version you got. Now to TP-Link's defense they do list hardware revision in small letters just by the barcode on the side of the box and if you dig into their specification sheets you'll find out all, but aparently they don't bother going into details with their retailers.

I was purchasing one of those for a friend a few years back becuase he needed to setup a small network for his business on fairly modest budget, and i had to go through 4 shops before i could find one who would bother to even check what hardware revision those units they had in stock were for me.

In some ways I wish tplink sold crap so I could tell people to never buy it. Their engineers need to get a big stick and go visit the guys in marketing. They have done even worse they used to sell AV500 based units under part name pa4010. When a new AV2-600 standard came out they change the name to av600 I think to confuse people but still call it pa4010. You can still find both av500 and av600 units with the same part number. It seems these are actually the same units.

 

[z3r0_co0L]

One thing to consider in relation to TP-Link in particular that hardware they sell may share same name and yet have significatly varied hardware under the same chasis. Sometimes even shops that sell them are not familiar with what the differences are between hardware revisions. What makes things even more confusing is that several hardware revisions may be on sale at the same time. As an example TL-ER6120 which is a fairly decent multi-wan vpn router was for a time sold in 3 hardware revisions for a same price, and while one would have twice the onboard memory , and completely different cpu. As a result you could have purchased, unknowigly a router with 360 , 640 or 980 mbps peak NAT translation capability. So for 250-300 bucks you may have ended up extremely happy or quite dissapointed depending which version you got. Now to TP-Link's defense they do list hardware revision in small letters just by the barcode on the side of the box and if you dig into their specification sheets you'll find out all, but aparently they don't bother going into details with their retailers.

I was purchasing one of those for a friend a few years back becuase he needed to setup a small network for his business on fairly modest budget, and i had to go through 4 shops before i could find one who would bother to even check what hardware revision those units they had in stock were for me.

I've TP-link Archer C1200 V2 and as you said, I checked on their website, there is not much in-depth detail about the hardware. They do have three models named V1, V2 & V3 which only can be found in the Support section on the page. They did not mention it on the main page of the router. So, that means all of the three have the same hardware configuration - shown below.

HARDWARE
Processor	Single-Core CPU
Ethernet Ports	1× Gigabit WAN Port 4× Gigabit LAN Ports
USB Support	1× USB 2.0 Port Supported Partition Formats: NTFS, HFS+, FAT32 Supported Functions: FTP Server Media Server Samba Server
Buttons	WPS/Wi-Fi Button Power On/Off Button Reset Button
Power	12 V ⎓ 1 A

 

[bill001g]

So somehow I got the impression this router only has 100m ports. Maybe it is because you said the port speed was 100/100. In that case you likely have a defective ethernet cables or you have the port set in something other than auto.

In any case that will greatly impact your iperf testing. You should get over 900mbps on gigabit ports with iperf.

Not sure if it will have any impact on your FTP rates since you are still well below 100mbps. If you are getting lots of errors due to a defective cable maybe.

The vendors do not provide much details of what actaully makes the versions different. There are other database you can find where people disassemble the devices and read the reports on the FCC site where they must disclose a lot more information.

The key difference between those 3 revisions is that they use different manufacture brands CPU chips. This is mostly a large issue for the guys writing third party firmware like dd-wrt. Some cpu brands do not support any third party firmware. In your case the big difference is things like cpu clock speed and memory. The CPU more than anything else will affect how fast things like FTP servers run. Unfortantly you can not directly compare the clock rates between brands cpu. From what I can tell the v2 is actaully the most powerful. The later model they went with a cpu with a much slower clock and cut the memory by 75%.