Best single stream 80Mhz AC Router...

[Ajai]

Hello all I am in search for the best single stream 80Mhz WiFi AC router. My conundrum has started because of my new HTC M9 which I bought instead of the Samsung S6 Edge knowing full well that the M9 has a single antenna but the dam thing seems much more durable.

Anyway I have an Netgear R7000 with 5Ghz Wifi AC enabled and when connected the phone shows 433Mbps on a 5Ghz 80Mhz Wifi AC line. The M9 has been rooted and is S-OFF as I planed to use SAMBA for data transfer as I have done since long before.

The problem is that the speed of transfer via SAMBA is only around 7-10MBps which is much lower to my estimates from anandtech review here.

I was expecting around 30-40MBps but got only fraction of that my earlier phone was not Wifi AC enabled so I could live with 4-5MBps but Wifi AC was one of the reasons I jumped to a new phone.

I have tried the following remedies unsuccessfully:

1. Bought a Sandisk Extreme PRO 64GB for SAMBA thinking there might be a internal memory bottleneck
2. Turned every power saving feature off in the phone as well as the router and the 1Gbps NIC
3. Turned off 2.4Ghz in the router and selected 5Ghz only operation in the phone
4. Upgraded everything "Drivers for NIC, R7000 and HTC M9"

I have concluded that my router must be the culprate. Thinking of getting the Asus RT-AC68U since anandtech used that router for S6 review and most likely the M9 but I wanted to check in with you ppl before that, what do you all think?



Details of involved hardware:

HTC M9 with latest OTA with 5Ghz only operation
Netgear R7000 with latest F/W on 5Ghz 80Mhz Wifi AC
Asus Maximus 6 Impact with latest F/W and updated Intel I217V NIC driver's

 

[sfx2000]

It's probably not the router, as the R7000 and RT-AC68U are pretty similar in performance over the wifi...

Samba's defaults are pretty conservative, so perhaps some tuning there might help...

Here's a good resource..

http://www.eggplant.pro/blog/faster-samba-smb-cifs-share-performance/

sfx

 

[Ajai]

It's probably not the router, as the R7000 and RT-AC68U are pretty similar in performance over the wifi...

sfx

Thx tried the method but did not work still same if not similar results. I also tried FTP the uploading speed from PC was about the same as Samba but the download from Phone to PC using FTP had increased to 17MBps that is weird.

 

[hank81]

I just tested up/down speed with similar setup: Nexus 5, RT-AC68U, Asus P8P67 Deluxe with Intel 82579V NIC.
Distance: 2m / 6'5 ft.
Negotiated speed/band: 433 Mbps on 5Ghz/80Mhz

Download Phone <- PC: 18'6 - 19'20 MB/s
Upload Phone -> PC: 10'8 - 11'4 MB/s

 

[Ajai]

I just tested up/down speed with similar setup: Nexus 5, RT-AC68U, Asus P8P67 Deluxe with Intel 82579V NIC.
Distance: 2m / 6'5 ft.
Negotiated speed/band: 433 Mbps on 5Ghz/80Mhz

Thx for the report I have tried a lot f protocols FTP included the problem with FTP using the M9 was limited PC -> M9 speed below to what Samba got me. So I put all my eggs into the samba basket bought Servers Ultimate Pro and changed samba lib files with modified files from samba open project.

Its not 100% stable but the speed increase is well liked by me will keep you all updated:

Strangely enough my PC to Phone speed is much slower "10-11MBps" compared to Phone to PC speed of 21-25 Mbps. The NIC usage curve is also not very stable and congruent while uploading from PC to Phone.

 

[System Error Message]

Thats because phones employ power saving techniques which come into play when downloading or communicating with the AP.

There is an app that lets you configure low latency wifi performance for your phone for all or any particular AP. So from the usual 70-100ms of wifi latency it goes down to consistent 3ms or lower indicating power saving was used.

 

[L&LD]

Another reason the phone is slower is because the write speed is slower on the nand used (on the phone) vs. the read speed it is capable of.

 

[sfx2000]

Another reason the phone is slower is because the write speed is slower on the nand used (on the phone) vs. the read speed it is capable of.

Good point - also whether he's saving to internal flash vs. MicroSD card - some SDIO implementation leave a lot to be desired on throughput there...

 

[Ajai]

Another reason the phone is slower is because the write speed is slower on the nand used (on the phone) vs. the read speed it is capable of.

As noted in my first post I am using a Sandisk Extreme PRO 64GB for Samba. The phone is also fully rooted and is in the S-OFF state. A1 Bench rates the SD card speeds at 75-80MBps read and 55-60MBps write. While using a USB cable I can get almost 23MBps even tough the connection is USB 2.0.

Good point - also whether he's saving to internal flash vs. MicroSD card - some SDIO implementation leave a lot to be desired on throughput there...

Its on microSD Sandisk Extreme PRO 64GB, all benchmark test and USB write to SD test confirm no bottlenecks.

Thats because phones employ power saving techniques which come into play when downloading or communicating with the AP.

There is an app that lets you configure low latency wifi performance for your phone for all or any particular AP. So from the usual 70-100ms of wifi latency it goes down to consistent 3ms or lower indicating power saving was used.

I had disabled Wifi power saving in the wifi config file for android is there any where else I need to change the option, BTW what is the name of that application?

 

[Ajai]

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are the results from a R8000 that I bought from the store. Would have returned it if it did not perform well but it seems to make a heck of a difference. The PC to Phone "SD Card" has almost doubled to 22-25MBps with a proper non zig-zag performance curve and Phone to PC speed is mostly the same with a bit of a speed increase.

Other than the router "R7000 to R8000" I did not change anything else. Most settings on the R8000 as well as the R7000 were left to stock.

PC -> Phone "SD"

Phone "SD" to PC

 

[System Error Message]

The wifi high performance app
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ratcash.wifiperf&hl=en_GB

You will also need the terminal emulator as well to test. Use this to ping your wifi AP. If you are getting consistent 3ms and lower than your wifi is not on power saving. If you are getting above 50ms inconsistent than wifi power saving is enabled.

It seems you already disabled wifi power savings but you should usually check using the terminal emulator first by pinging your wifi AP.

 

[sfx2000]

Before we get too wrapped around the axle here - to the OP, what's the performance like on windows machine over wireless?

Might just be the phone's SMB client implementation...

 

[Ajai]

The wifi high performance app
It seems you already disabled wifi power savings but you should usually check using the terminal emulator first by pinging your wifi AP.

Thx for the link will try it out

Before we get too wrapped around the axle here - to the OP, what's the performance like on windows machine over wireless?

Might just be the phone's SMB client implementation...

My HTPC is powered by a pretty old WiFi AC adapter Asus PCE-AC68. Been meaning to change it for a more current version but in India cant find a proper alternative. Here is the result of PC "1Gbps NIC" to HTPC "Asus PCE-AC68"

The drop in the performance curve is my fault accidentally cancelled the copy. The whole setup with the R8000 seems solid have already packed up my R7000 would have tried the test with it also otherwise. This is double of what I am getting on my phone but then again the PCE-AC68 is rated for 1300Mbps and my M9 is rated for 433Mbps link.

 

[sfx2000]

Well, the SMB performance there looks good from your HTPC, and don't worry, the PCE-68 is pretty well sorted, and a good PCI card for 11ac... but this shows that you're AP and Samba server configs are valid and good...

So it's pretty much your device... it's just slow for SMB. The bottleneck is not the WiFi, it's the SMB client/OS/Android to the phone's HW...

I don't know the specific HW, but SDIO/SPI has multiple modes - typically 1bit, 4bit, or 8bit - perhaps your device is taking the slow-train out to the MicroSD card...

It's been about 6 years since I've done any handset design inputs - but back then, on mid-higher end phones, hanging the BT/WiFi chip off the SPI interface was the best way to go - mainly due to the fact that SPI is very low power...

But that was a long time ago - pre-Qualcomm Snapdragon, but still based on their older MSM7200 series chipset (600Mhz ARM11) with 11b/g and BT2.0...

 

[Ajai]

Well, the SMB performance there looks good from your HTPC, and don't worry, the PCE-68 is.........
But that was a long time ago - pre-Qualcomm Snapdragon, but still based on their older MSM7200 series chipset (600Mhz ARM11) with 11b/g and BT2.0...

A1 Bench rates the speed of the card quite high at Read 81.4MB/s and write 72.7MB/s also USB transfer speed is also high around 30-35MBps "Using USB 3.0 pls note that the phone does not have 3.0 but still gives a speed boost compared to 2.0"

Using R8000 has increased the speed quite a bit over the R7000 but anything higher to that will not make any difference at this point. I have seen higher speeds on an S6 Edge but then again it has capability to support two streams where as the M9 has only one.

 

[Ajai]

I give up been testing the R8000 with the M9 using iperf but could not even come close to Anandtech's score of 352Mbps which can be seen here . Either something with my M9/R8000 is wrong or people at anandtech are using some weird command/way of measure.

Client/M9 Phone - 10.209.6.169
Server PC - 10.209.6.200

Over WiFi AC 5Ghz 80Mhz

First test using "iperf -c 10.209.6.200" on mobile

Max is 175Mbps



Second test using "iperf -c 10.209.6.200 -d" on mobile

Max aggregate is 232Mbps



Now I am tapped out for reasons that explain this, tried every which way like removing the microsd card and restoring to factory settings even did a full system wipe. Will send an email to people at anandtech and ask how they measure the speed with iperf.

On a side note the R8000 had to be restarted twice because of huge performance drops while testing. The speed reduced to below 10Mbps in those test's even after restarting the router the first time similar lack of speed was noted after a bit of testing. Leaving the router in OFF state for a few minutes seemed to have done the trick and no further performance drops are noted by me.

 

[System Error Message]

It is common for consumer routers to drop out during stress test but i have not experienced it while stress testing my ASUS router to the point where packets were dropping and using cpu intensive tests.

Some reviewers perform tests in an isolated and ideal environment, this means that the test for wireless will usually be done in a metal box at close range. its also possible that they could've installed android on a different more capable hardware platform (such as a development board or even an x86 tablet/laptop with either SSD or sata hard drive). Some tests were even done by tuning the server and clients network layer to respond better to the tests.

The most i've managed to utilise with wifi is 86% of my AP's wifi bandwidth but not without cpu intensive apps and packets dropping. You can try using a laptop or PC as the client as well. The R8000 has hardware acceleration so LAN networking should not use any CPU on it. From what you say it seems that heat can also affect the speeds too since it is likely that wifi chips are sensitive to heat.

When using iperf try to test between the server and client first directly to find any problems and than place the network hardware in between.

Despite the speeds shown for wifi if i need to do something bandwidth intensive i always plug my device into ethernet instead since for wifi the practical speeds i get for normal usage is many times below the rated signal speed. I even use usb OTG with usb ethernet for my phone if i need to use something with lots of bandwidth.

 

[Ajai]

The most i've managed to utilise with wifi is 86% of my AP's wifi bandwidth but not without cpu intensive apps and packets dropping. You can try using a laptop or PC as the client as well. The R8000 has hardware acceleration so LAN networking should not use any CPU on it. From what you say it seems that heat can also affect the speeds too since it is likely that wifi chips are sensitive to heat.

When using iperf try to test between the server and client first directly to find any problems and than place the network hardware in between.

Despite the speeds shown for wifi if i need to do something bandwidth intensive i always plug my device into ethernet instead since for wifi the practical speeds i get for normal usage is many times below the rated signal speed. I even use usb OTG with usb ethernet for my phone if i need to use something with lots of bandwidth.

Purpose build platforms might be a reason for their high score, I am still happy with the R8000 with the 232Mbps score but still would have liked a bit more. Heat is not a problem with the router the grills on the top do take out the heat very well but yes sun rays were directly on the router at that time since all my routers are placed near the window on the PC table.

I have already tried using iperf via ethernet from 1Gbps NIC to another 1Gbps and it work fine gives high speed results of around 880-930Mbps. I just transferred 23GB's @ 20MBps to the phone after a full wipe it did not take all that long while a USB connection would have done it a bit faster it would not have charged the phone as fast as the charger.

 

[System Error Message]

for practical use even 50% of the speed is actually good. Whenever i use wifi for things like file transfers it only uses 20% or less of the bandwidth so i got sick of using wifi for anything other than web browsing, streaming and documents. For compute,gaming and file syncs i use gigabit ethernet.