NETGEAR WNDR3700 Low Wireless Speed

[Maverickster]

I see some people in this thread have reported Wireless-N transfer speeds with this router of between 14MB/s to 18MB/s. I must be doing something wrong because my wireless speeds are nowhere near that. My wired speeds are barely in that range.

Any suggestions on what I can do to improve my Wireless-N results? The following is my setup and the results I'm currently getting accessing the referenced attached USB drive. If a setting is not referenced, that means it's at the factory default.

Equipment:
WD 1.5TB USB Drive (ext3 formatted)
WNDR3700 Router (latest firmware, media server disabled, QoS on for MAC address of Vonage Device only)
WNDA3100v2 Wireless Dongle
Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller
Dell D820 Notebook (Win 7 Pro 64 bit)
1' USB 2.0 Cable
7' Belkin Cat6 Cable

Wired Setup:
Vonage Device (via Cat6)
Playstation 3 (via Cat6)
DirecTV DVR (via Cat6)
Backup NAS (via Cat6)
USB Drive (via USB 2.0)

2.4GHz Band Wireless Setup:
Security: WEP, 64-bit
Channel: Auto
Mode: Up to 300Mbps
Devices:
Wii (Wireless-G)
PrintServer (Wireless-G)
iPhone (Wireless-G)
Wife's Notebook (Wireless-G)

2.4GHz Band Guest Wireless Setup:
Security: None

5.0GHz Band Wireless Setup:
Security: WPA2-PSK [AES]
Channel: 153
Mode: Up to 300Mbps
Video Network: Disabled
Devices:
My Notebook (Wireless-N WNDA3100 USB Dongle; Win7 Pro 64 bit)

Wireless Results (5GHz Band; Wireless N) to attached USB Drive:
Upload: 20-35Mbps sustained
Download: 35-50Mbps sustained

Wired Results (Cat6; Gigabit) to attached USB Drive:
Upload: 115-130Mbps sustained
Download: 115-130Mbps sustained

Thanks in advance!

 

[thiggins]

Looks like you are using the 2.4 GHz band for all G devices. So set it to G mode only. No sense having it look for N clients.

My test using ReadyShare showed only 11 MB/s write and just under 10 MB/s read. So your wired results (to attached USB drive) seem high.

Depending on the distance between router and client, 20 - 50 Mbps isn't that low for 11n. Try setting the 5 GHz radio to 20 MHz channel width. 40 MHz mode can actually reduce performance under low signal conditions.

 

[Maverickster]

Looks like you are using the 2.4 GHz band for all G devices. So set it to G mode only. No sense having it look for N clients.

By "G mode only", do you mean change the "Mode" from "up to 300Mbps" to "up to 54Mbps"?

My test using ReadyShare showed only 11 MB/s write and just under 10 MB/s read. So your wired results (to attached USB drive) seem high.

I'm pretty sure you were using an NTFS formatted drive, though, correct? Your results are about what mine were when the drive was formatted NTFS (I had peaks a little closer to 100Mbps). I reformatted to ext3 and read/write speeds increased dramatically.

Depending on the distance between router and client, 20 - 50 Mbps isn't that low for 11n. Try setting the 5 GHz radio to 20 MHz channel width. 40 MHz mode can actually reduce performance under low signal conditions.

Those are the results I'm getting in the same room, 15' apart, clear line of sight. I think I should be getting markedly better than that. I've seen this suggested before but how do I set radio to "20MHz channel width"?

Thanks!

--Mav

EDITED: I think I found the answer to my questions: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=13254&postcount=122

 

[thiggins]

By "G mode only", do you mean change the "Mode" from "up to 300Mbps" to "up to 54Mbps"?

Yes.

I'm pretty sure you were using an NTFS formatted drive, though, correct? Your results are about what mine were when the drive was formatted NTFS (I had peaks a little closer to 100Mbps). I reformatted to ext3 and read/write speeds increased dramatically.

Good point. NTFS performance tends to be low because of the open-source drivers available.

Those are the results I'm getting in the same room, 15' apart, clear line of sight. I think I should be getting markedly better than that. I've seen this suggested before but how do I set radio to "20MHz channel width"

Set to "Up to 130 Mbps mode".

I agree you probably should be seeing somewhat higher speeds. But you're not going to get anywhere near 100 Mbps. Look at the Performance Table in the Wireless Charts (check the WNDR3700 in any chart and hit the "Performance Table" button).

Might also be the WNDR3100A client, but I can't promise you'll get better results if you swap to something else.

 

[Maverickster]

Well, I tried every possible combination of channel widths (i.e. up to 54, 130, and 300) on both bands, and my best results were with the settings in my initial post (i.e. up to 300 on both bands). No improvement. Getting 38.64Mbps average on a 2GB download from the connected USB drive; that's about 1/3rd of the speeds other folks are reporting. Any other possible suggestions to improve the Wireless-N speed?

Thanks in advance!

--Mav

 

[Maverickster]

After a little more testing, it's obvious that the bottleneck is at the USB drive. D/L and U/L speeds to/from my Backup NAS (hardwired with Cat6) on the 5GHz band are around 100Mbps. Still not ideal, but definitely passable.

Speeds to/from the USB drive are still as reported above which are not great even though it's formatted to ext3.

--Mav

 

[thiggins]

Well, I'm puzzled. Your first post quoted:

Wired Results (Cat6; Gigabit) to attached USB Drive

:
Upload: 115-130Mbps sustained
Download: 115-130Mbps sustained

 

[Maverickster]

Well, I'm puzzled. Your first post quoted:

That's to/from my laptop and the USB drive attached to the router with my laptop hardwired to the router via Cat6 through my laptop's gigabit ethernet port.

As indicated in the first post, with my laptop accessing the router wirelessly via the WNDA3100v2 11n USB dongle, I'm getting an average of about 40Mbps download from the USB drive (upload is a little slower). Haven't been able to improve this much at all no matter what I try.

HOWEVER, when my laptop is accessing the router wirelessly via the WNDA3100v2 11n USB dongle, it is able to read/write to/from the Backup NAS (which is not the USB drive, but rather a separate Buffalo Linkstation hardwired to the router via Cat6) at around 100Mbps.

In other words, when my laptop is connected to the router wirelessly via the WNDA3100v2 11n USB dongle, upload/download speeds to/from the Backup NAS is around 100Mbps, but upload/download speeds to/from the attached USB drive average 40Mbps download and about 10Mbps slower on upload. All other things are equal.

The only conclusion I can reach from that is that the bottleneck is at the USB drive, and specifically the way the router is handling wireless access to it (since speeds when my laptop is hardwired to the router are much better).

Am I missing something?

Any suggestions for improvement?

--Mav

 

[thiggins]

Since the same computer (your laptop) can write to the WNDA3700's attached drive at over 100 Mbps when it is connected via Ethernet, the problem is not the USB drive itself.

More likely, as you surmise,there is some problem in the router's wireless transfer speed to the USB drive that isn't seen in transfers to the wired LAN. If that's the case, and you've already tried alternative drive formats, then you just need to file a bug report with NETGEAR and hope for a fix (or check their forums to see if someone has already reported one).