RT-AC68U Slow LAN Speeds (Both Wired and Wireless)

[Rajesh]

Hello Experts,

I have been ardent user of ASUS routers since 2012, earlier I owned RT-N66U and now for the last 8months am on RT-AC68U.
Now, Ever since I started using these routers, I have appreciated their reliability, but some how I have been greatly disappointed by the speed on LAN.

On wired I dont get speeds over 15Mbps and on WiFi it is never more than 10Mbps even when I sit right in front of the router and transfer files to my NAS box or any other device.

I always keep the router firmware upto date and am currently on x.x.x.x.382_18881 version of stock firmware.

This was the same speeds I was getting on RT-N66U too, I never used worry about the speed much, but these days due to lots of filesharing work, this is a great concern to me.

I have tried everything I could come across on this forum like changing the default channels, switch controls, Toggling QoS,etc to increase the speed and haven't seen any improvement. Requesting your assistance.


Thanks,
Rajesh

 

[gatorback]

Hello Experts,

I have been ardent user of ASUS routers since 2012, earlier I owned RT-N66U and now for the last 8months am on RT-AC68U.
Now, Ever since I started using these routers, I have appreciated their reliability, but some how I have been greatly disappointed by the speed on LAN.

On wired I dont get speeds over 15Mbps and on WiFi it is never more than 10Mbps even when I sit right in front of the router and transfer files to my NAS box or any other device.

I always keep the router firmware upto date and am currently on x.x.x.x.382_18881 version of stock firmware.

This was the same speeds I was getting on RT-N66U too, I never used worry about the speed much, but these days due to lots of filesharing work, this is a great concern to me.

I have tried everything I could come across on this forum like changing the default channels, switch controls, Toggling QoS,etc to increase the speed and haven't seen any improvement. Requesting your assistance.


Thanks,
Rajesh

Did your test include moving several large (>500MB) files across the LAN only? Are both devices directly wired to the Gigabit router?

 

[Rajesh]

Did your test include moving several large (>500MB) files across the LAN only? Are both devices directly wired to the Gigabit router?

Yes gatorback, all the devices are directly connected to the router. I tried copying files with various sizes. Copying 1.4GB file took about 13mins

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Are you using quality cables? CAT5E or higher?
Not home made?

 

[Rajesh]

Are you using quality cables? CAT5E or higher?
Not home made?

Absolutely.

 

[ColinTaylor]

If you're getting those speeds when you're connecting LAN to LAN, both with cables then it's unlikely to be anything to do with the router. Which would explain why you had the same speeds with your previous router.

You said "I dont get speeds over 15Mbps", how are you measuring that? Are you sure it's Mbps and not Mbytes/sec. If you were averaging 12Mbytes/sec that would be consistent with one of the devices having a 100Mb network interface.

 

[Rajesh]

Hi Colin,

This is the snip I just captured while copying 1.5+ GB file over wifi. I can capture the copy over LAN also if you would like to see.

As mentioned earlier, I have used multiple other cables and this slowness is on WLAN too as I had mentioned earlier.

Please let me know if you need any other information.

Thanks,
Rajesh

 

[ColinTaylor]

Yes that's mega-bytes, not mega-bits. So it would be useful to see the wired LAN to LAN.

 

[Rajesh]

Attached is the capture on wired network. I have seen it on this very forum where users are getting over 100Mbps speed. Am currently on RT-AC68U.

 

[ColinTaylor]

There's big difference (well x8 actually) between Mbps and MB/s.

But what your graph shows (albeit quite a short graph) would be totally consistent with one of the network interfaces operating at 100Mbps.

EDIT: What are the devices you are copying from and to?

 

[Rajesh]

There's big difference (well x8 actually) between Mbps and MB/s.

But what your graph shows (albeit quite a short graph) would be totally consistent with one of the network interfaces operating at 100Mbps.

EDIT: What are the devices you are copying from and to?

am copying from Windows 10 Thinkpad to WD NAS, both wired to AC68U

 

[ColinTaylor]

Check the link speed of the NAS. Either on the NAS itself or on the router at Tools > System Information > Network > Ethernet Ports

 

[Rajesh]

Am sorry, am not seeing that option, attached is the pic of what I could grab, this helps ?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Sorry, my mistake, I forgot you're running stock Asus firmware and not Merlin's. That information won't be there.

Is there anything in the NAS's interface that would show the link speed (not throughput) of the network interface? What is the model number of the NAS?

 

[Rajesh]

Nope, unfortunately, I didnt find anything to measure the network speed on NAS

 

[RMerlin]

Connect to your router over SSH, and run the following command:

robocfg show

 

[Rajesh]

Connect to your router over SSH, and run the following command:

robocfg show

here:
/code
Rajesh@RT-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# robocfg show
Switch: enabled
Port 0: 100FD enabled stp: none vlan: 2 jumbo: on mac: b8:c1:a2:52:49:b4
Port 1: 100FD enabled stp: none vlan: 1 jumbo: on mac: 28:d2:44:cb:19:e8
Port 2: 1000FD enabled stp: none vlan: 1 jumbo: on mac: 00:90:a9:b8:03:9c
Port 3: DOWN enabled stp: none vlan: 1 jumbo: on mac: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Port 4: DOWN enabled stp: none vlan: 1 jumbo: on mac: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Port 5: 1000FD enabled stp: none vlan: 2 jumbo: on mac: 60:45:cb:67:d6:98
Port 7: DOWN enabled stp: none vlan: 1 jumbo: on mac: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Port 8: DOWN enabled stp: none vlan: 1 jumbo: on mac: 00:00:00:00:00:00
VLANs: BCM5301x enabled mac_check mac_hash
1: vlan1: 1 2 3 4 5t
2: vlan2: 0 5
Rajesh@RT-AC68U:/tmp/home/root#

 

[ColinTaylor]

Thanks for the help @RMerlin

@Rajesh If that's your NAS connected to port 1 then there's your problem. Note that the port numbers do not necessarily correlate to the numbers printed on the router. You can check which is which by unplugging the NAS's cable and issuing the robocfg command again.

EDIT: Checking against the MAC addresses shown it looks like port 2 is the NAS, so the problem device is the PC.

 

[Rajesh]

NAS is connected to port 2, port 1 is my laptop.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Well the laptop is only connecting at 100Mbps so that explains the lack of throughput on the wired connection.

If your laptop only has a single antenna (quite common) and is operating at 20MHz bandwidth then the link speed would be 72Mbps which would correlate with your wireless throughput.