[SOLVED] Slow speeds between wireless clients (2.4/5G)

[lollipop_laptop]

Hi,

I'm out of ideas so i'm posting a question here. I'm having issues with sustainable transfer speeds between two computers; a desktop and a laptop. Both use the 5 GHz frequency on a non-crowded channel. Both run Linux Mint, and the network manager claims the connection speed between 650 Mb/s and 866 Mb/s. All should be good, right?

When sharing a folder via Samba on the desktop, the laptop can only pull about 2-4 MB/s meaning streaming a movie is impossible. I ran a couple tests changing the frequency:
-Desktop 2.4G, laptop 2.4G = 3 MB/s.
-Desktop 2,4G, laptop 5G = 6,5 MB/s.
-Desktop 5G, laptop 2,4G = 7,5 MB/s.
-Desktop 5G, laptop 5G = 3,5 MB/s.

My router is an AVM FritzBox Cable modem, over a 50/10 Mbit cable connection. The modem also reports both clients to have connection speeds of over 600 Mbit. Neither computer has ANY issue whatsoever maxing out the 50 Mbit cable connection by downloading something from the internet, but traffic between each other is totally pathetic. What's going on here?

 

[kanewolf]

Why are you using SAMBA if both devices are Linux? You should be using NFSv3 or NFSv4.

WIFI is not full duplex, so two devices with a 600Mbit link speed each transferring data -- 600/2 (because of 1/2 duplex) then /2 again because of two devices -- so 150Mbit -- best case 18MB/s That is assuming your router has 0 overhead. If you have QOS or other things enabled that limit your routers speed then that could be what drops you from 18MB to 7MB/s

 

[lollipop_laptop]

Why are you using SAMBA if both devices are Linux? You should be using NFSv3 or NFSv4.

WIFI is not full duplex, so two devices with a 600Mbit link speed each transferring data -- 600/2 (because of 1/2 duplex) then /2 again because of two devices -- so 150Mbit -- best case 18MB/s That is assuming your router has 0 overhead. If you have QOS or other things enabled that limit your routers speed then that could be what drops you from 18MB to 7MB/s

Mint ships with easy file sharing via Samba, right-click and share a folder and that's it. NFS is more complicated to set up, i'm not sure that's the reason for slow speeds here in any case. The router actually has 0 overhead, at least by other clients. These two are the only ones connected or using traffic. No QOS enabled, the modem does have traffic prioritization options but none are enabled for any client. I have also rebooted the modem and the firmware is up-to-date, only a couple weeks old.

I get the speed halving but still don't understand the numbers here. The ~3 MB/s speed i get is 2.4G speeds, that's old G or N class stuff. I have 5 GHz AC wireless on all devices, and both desktop and laptop are reported to have "ac/ 80 MHz, WPA2, 2 x 2" by the modem. To my understanding there should be no reason i'm getting this ridiculous throughput between two clients. I was thinking of setting up a NAS to serve the media but that isn't going to work with speeds like this. How do people stream 4K content at home wirelessly if 866 Mbit isn't enough?

 

[kanewolf]

How do people stream 4K content at home wirelessly if 866 Mbit isn't enough?

If they are successful, they have one device wired. The data source is typically wired to the router. But I would never recommend streaming 4K wireless.

 

[jsmithepa]

With WIFI I always say you have some control, but not much from neighbors. So I'd make sure good signal strength and low signal/noise ratio.

WIFI routers from ISP also tend to be crappy.

Going LAN-to-LAN, Internet is not involved so u can ignore that part. The elephant in the room is the WIFI performance of the router, assuming clean airway.

 

[lollipop_laptop]

Alright, i think i understand this a little bit better now. Found a few good articles on wifi workings, it being half duplex and what speeds to expect from AC wireless etc. Turns out the marketing speeds are just that, and despite knowing wifi will never reach ethernet speeds, i guess i sort of fell victim to that anyway. I thought AC could deliver a couple dozen MB/s of transfer rates. I'm tempted to drill a few holes around here and pull cables everywhere. Everywhere.

Thanks!