Asus AC68U gives a half of 200 mb/s connection

[SSri]

I recently upgraded to 200 mb/s connection. I have been using the stock firmware.

In the last few months, the wired speed has gone down to less than the half of cable broadband speed. I also replaced the stock with Asuswrt Merlin. This has no impact at all. The ethernet speed is still 90-95 mb/s, while the upgraded speed is 200 mb/s. I pay a business grade broadband and phone bundle.

The superhub supplied by the ISP is used as a modem. I am not sure what the problem is. In the past, this router used to give me a full speed, which was the pre-upgrade speed of 152 mb/s.

I am thinking if I should chuck this and perhaps get a Mikrotik or Edgeswitch lite or ER PoE.

I would appreciate comments and recommendations to fix the asus problem.

Thanks,
Sundar

 

[netwrks]

Try replacing the Ethernet cable between the router and modem. Minimum CAT5e.

Also, test throughput directly connected to your modem with a laptop. Could be a ISP issue.

 

[SSri]

Thanks. I tested it directly on the superhub. It gives a steady 195-210 mb/s multiple times on the same cable, while Asus gives less than half of that speed.

 

[pkbristol]

Hi SSRi.
Superhub, are you talking virgin media then ? Superhub 3 ?

Paul.

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks. I tested it directly on the superhub. It gives a steady 195-210 mb/s multiple times on the same cable, while Asus gives less than half of that speed.

Still, replace the cable. A cable that's only borderline out of spec might work better with some devices than others.

 

[SSri]

Yes. Virgin Media. It is a Hitron router, CGNV4.
I will try with a different cable of at least 5e.
thanks

 

[SSri]

I used two new cables..both are cat6. I plugged them sequentially in virgin router to clock a steady 206-211+ each.
Connecting one of them in Asus and the other from Asus to notebooks get me 90-95.

 

[Wutikorn]

I used two new cables..both are cat6. I plugged them sequentially in virgin router to clock a steady 206-211+ each.
Connecting one of them in Asus and the other from Asus to notebooks get me 90-95.

Is "HW acceleration" enabled? Look in Tools section. Is CPU running at 100% when trying to get to 90Mbps?

 

[SSri]

Yes. CTF is enabled. Lan-->Switchcontrol-->NAT--> AUTO.
I am sorry. I cannot see CPU usage in the Tools section. All I am seeing is CPU load average (1,5,15 mins) as .18, .17, .11. It does show HW acceleration as enabled, though. thanks

 

[Wutikorn]

Yes. CTF is enabled. Lan-->Switchcontrol-->NAT--> AUTO.
I am sorry. I cannot see CPU usage in the Tools section. All I am seeing is CPU load average (1,5,15 mins) as .18, .17, .11. It does show HW acceleration as enabled, though. thanks

Sorry, it's my fault. I forgot to say that CPU Usage is in "Network Map", click on router icon and then status if it is not already shown. You will see CPU Usage percentage in real-time. Then open another tab to run speedtest. While running download speedtest, see if CPU Usage is at 100%.

 

[SSri]

I should have checked. My fault.

The CPU core 1 maxed out at 37%, core 2 stayed at 0%

 

[System Error Message]

the problem isnt with the router, the asus ac68U is totally fine, the problem is mainly with virgin media, this is assuming you are using superhub as bridge. The main reason i chose BT over virgin media is the less traffic bias and that virgin has never been reliable in their bandwidth, hence BT actually has higher upload than 200Mb/s virgin media.

Make sure you test on ethernet and check the ethernet port status (if its dropped to 100Mb/s as that can happen if enough errors occur).

Virgin media is a cable ISP and like most cable ISPs they are notoriously greedy, shoddy and dont have as good as a network architecture as they should have. Their FUP also throttles you on some real internet usage (so VPN, streaming, hosting games will likely get you throttled because of bandwidth use). Their very poor upload speeds limit what you can make use so you cant have your own personal file or media server either.

 

[SSri]

Thanks.

Virgin router does not have an AP or a bridge mode. It is either a router or a modem. I mainly use it as a modem. But, for testing, I have enabled virgin in the router mode. The problem is not the upload, which any way is 15 mb/s. I get a steady 14 on virgin and asus routers.

The issue is Asus is giving less than a half of the Virgin speed on ethernet. We are not even discussing the wifi.

I have a business grade broadband. I know they do not throttle my speed. I have never seen my broadband speed going below 90-95% of the speed at any time in the last 8 years with them.

BT is out of question as my area still receives 10-15 mb/s only.

 

[SSri]

Infact, with BT, our area can get only 4.5 mb/s

I connected the cat6 cable on the virgin router. Then, Windows + R, NCPA.CPL. Checked the status of the eithernet adapter. It shows 1 gbps. Using the same cat6 cable plugged Asus router and repeating the same steps show the ethernet adapter speed of just 100 mb/s.

I have not made any changes in the network on the laptop connected to the routers. Just switching the same cable between virgin and asus routers reduce the speed of the ethernet by 9/10th!

 

[System Error Message]

It really sounds like as if ethernet is running on 100Mb/s, so check the ports from the routers themselves. Modem mode is bridge mode. If the problem is not the router as the asus AC68U is capable of up to 300Mb/s NAT without any sort of acceleration. If the problem is not ethernet on 100Mb/s than the problem is definitely with virgin media. Cable architecture isnt particularly reliable for networking. Ethernet's copper is much better than cable or even powerline as ethernet can use parallel transmissions but with a very limited range. Other copper based transmissions have their limitations and dont use a hard limit like ethernet ( bandwidth varies and fluctuates, no standard 10/100/1000 like ethernet).

Virgin media's network architecture isnt particularly good either. It doesnt matter whether you have business grade or not the only difference is that with business grade you get less bias especially if you make money from it.

If ethernet is running at gigabit and not 100Mb/s than the problem is with virgin media and not the router.

Im on BT VDSL and get 20Mb/s upload. Since you dont have it available in your area you dont get much choice in ISP selection but just remember cable ISPs are notoriously unreliable and the problem is even worse in the US around the areas where competition isnt around or where monopoly is given by law.

Even virgin trains are terrible, the seating from those that book early arent given their preference, seating is stuffed as some coaches are filled to full from early booking and some barely have people.

Once you rule out the ethernet port speed mode as the problem than call up virgin media and get them to fix the problem.

 

[SSri]

I understand the issues with Virgin. I have had issues in the past.

The point is this: The same ethernet, the same settings on the laptop. The virgin router auto negotiates or accepts manual setting of speed/duplex on the card to 1gbps. The ethernet speed gets picked at 1Gbps.

Asus, on the otherhand, auto negotiates the ethernet speed to 100 mbps. Manually setting the adapter speed/duplex to 1Gbps wont even connect. The ethernet would stay unplugged.

The bottomline therefore is Asus. I can't think of any other way. Unfortunately, I do not have a spare router to test.

Thanks all for the help.

 

[System Error Message]

I understand the issues with Virgin. I have had issues in the past.

The point is this: The same ethernet, the same settings on the laptop. The virgin router auto negotiates or accepts manual setting of speed/duplex on the card to 1gbps. The ethernet speed gets picked at 1Gbps.

Asus, on the otherhand, auto negotiates the ethernet speed to 100 mbps. Manually setting the adapter speed/duplex to 1Gbps wont even connect. The ethernet would stay unplugged.

The bottomline therefore is Asus. I can't think of any other way. Unfortunately, I do not have a spare router to test.

Thanks all for the help.

ive seen this happen before on other routers, as i said its because of the errors in the transmission. This could b e either from cable, interference or a bad adapter. I hope your asus router is on warranty.

 

[Wutikorn]

Is it possible that you have set bandwidth limiter or adaptive QoS that control your maximum bandwidth? To be sure, you can check again in Tools, Ethernet Ports, and check link states of WAN port(connection from AC68U to your modem router) and LAN port(connection from your AC68U to your PC/Laptop that run speedtest) you are testing it on that they are both gigabit. From the last post, the CPU is not even at 100%, so it's hardly a problem with performance. Last thing I can think of is to do MAC cloning on WAN part of AC68U, in case there was some wrong setting on modem that limit the speed on your current router's MAC address. Btw, that you mentioned that Virgin is either a router or a modem, what exactly does that mean? What is the type of your internet connection? Is it possible to replace Virgin router with AC68U?

 

[Andyf66]

Try putting a switch between the router and the modem, with both devices plugged into it. You might get a better idea of what speeds are being negotiated?

 

[System Error Message]

guys he already found his problem, adding a switch in between isnt going to help. Every adapter has their own tolerance and not all follow standards. The asus ac68u adapter followed standards and lowered the speed down to 100Mb/s as it detected errors. The fact that it wont connect at 1Gb/s isnt the fault of the router, quite often its either the cable or the adapter on one end is bad. Just because your laptop shows you connecting at 1Gb/s doesnt mean its the router's fault. I have seen this before on the RB450G coupled with a netgear prosafe switch. The port between them was dropped to 100Mb/s after a few days due to transmission errors which both the router and switch showed. On the asus router this will be on the WAN port which is connected directly to the CPU and as i said before the problem is either cabling or it could be that virgin media's router is terrible which is the likely problem. Many dont notice this but this has happened to others using the superhub.

Solution is first to change the cable for a better one (make sure it really is cat6 and not one that doesnt pass the cat6 standard as many actually dont and some adapters detect this and refuse to use gigabit), the other could be the superhub's own switch chip isnt working particularly great. PC NICs will ignore the errors and continue on gigabit speeds and many routers like the superhub arent well designed so hardware issues and firmware issues are likely. You should sort out the problem rather than getting a device that tolerates the errors as it would mean your downloads or uploads could be filled with errors that you could just corrupt data that flows (like download a file and the file just gets corrupted which is why md5 and sha file signatures are provided by many linux developers are than malware tampering.) You wont notice this when download media files but the effect is significant on almost every other file type and can allow things to go horribly (like corrupting windows updates) if the problem is allowed to continue (such as NICs that dont drop transmission speed on errors).

you can try changing the asus but i doubt its the fault of the asus router as it followed standards and dropped its speed. Its very likely the superhub is at fault for having either bad firmware or a faulty switch chip. Change the superhub first and if the problem is still there than change the asus router. In my case the switch chip on my RB450G isnt particularly great which is why it dropped down in speed even though my switch had ECC capability but it kept to standards.