Slow smb transfer in ASUS RT AX88U

[makksi]

I Just hot and ASUS RTAX88U.
I tester the wifi 6 connection with a Speed test and It is impressive. 920Mbps in a 1Gb Ftth!

But the transfer speed to an attached USB drive is very slow 4MBps. Same Speed on my old RTAC56U.

So far I tried 3 different hard disk.Same Speed.
I tried transfer with a wifi6 smartphone 12 MBps.
PC with Wifi4 4 MBps.
Didn't try direct connection to PC.
Didn't try PC Wired connected ti router.
Using latest Merlin 386.5 firmware.

Any ideas?

 

[FTC]

Hi, that performance is surely not right. I can do 100MBps SMB transfers with my AX88. In my case, with a USB 3.0 drive NTFS formatted and Merlin 386.3_2. (I am not using 386.5 due to a current incompatibility with pixelsrv... USB unrelated)

I would definetly do the wired test to rule out any wifi sid effect, specially USB interferences. Also check the USB settings under the administration page and make sure the ports are configured in 3.0 mode (2.0 is much much slowlier although it will not cause interferences).

 

[makksi]

Thanks a lot.
For sure, tonight as soon as I get back from work I will try with wired connection. Just to be sure we are on the same page, when you say 100MBps transfer, do you mean with wired o wireless connection?
Moreover do you mean 100MBps and not 100Mbps, don't you?

Thanks a lot

 

[FTC]

Hi, yes, I mean MBps and the figure of 100MBps is wired. However, via wifi it is not so different, i.e Ijust copied a 1.5GB divx film from my router USB drive in 18 seconds via wifi, which is close to 83 MBPs.

 

[makksi]

I have some updates.

I found that I had 3 hard disks connected to the router through a USB 3.0 hub. But one of them was a USB 2.0 hard disk! The other 2 instead are 3.0 hard disks. So the USB 3.0 hub as usual is working at the lowest 2.0 speed.

In fact I attached each hard disk directly to the USB 3.0 router port and I had this results:

10 TB WD hard disk USB 3.0 (powered) -> download speed 114 MBps
2 TB WD Elements hard disk USB 3.0 (portable) -> download speed 98 MBps
2 TB WD Elements hard disk USB 2.0 -> download speed 40 MBps

The problem now is that if I connect directly the USB 3.0 10 TB hard disk to the router and try the download speed from it the speed is still 4MBps!

This is from a PC with WIFI 4 (n) interface. n interface should be up to 150 Mbps while I'm gettin a 32 Mbps, so pretty slower
The good thing is that if I try an Ookla speed test from internet it measures 32 Mbps so preety aligned to local speed

Using instead my Oneplus 8 phone (WIFI 6) Ookla speed test is excellent - 900Mbps- while the local smb download speed is around 14 MBps so 112MBps, pretty slower than 900Mbps. I used ES File explorer as smb client. I noticed also that using a different client (Astro) the speed was 20 MBps still far from wired 114 MBps and the 112 MBps (900Mbps) coming from Ookla speed test.
Probably also the android client play a role in slowing down the speed. Do someone of you found the same issue with android smb clients?

So now the picture should be clearer but I need to understand how to boost my poor smb download from WIFI 6 android terminal

 

[makksi]

Quick update.

On android WIFI 6 terminal ftp download speed is 105MBps!

So it is the Android smb client which probably sucks!

 

[FTC]

Hi, regarding the PC with n interface, note that it is quite usual to get real throughput that is quite smaller than the theoretical max speed in wifi, due to the protocol overhead and being a shared channel with neighbours, other clients,... although I agree that 32 is much smaller than 150. Now this said, I'd begin looking at the Tx and Rx rates in the network map (the max of those less the protocol overhead will dictate your max real throughput at a given moment) and then doing the usual checks like changing to another wifi band/channel, verifying channel width under wifi settings and other affecting parameters such as 'airtime fairness' under professional settings for wifi (having it enabled can degrade max throughput but having it disabled can saturate the wifi band). Also make sure your client's driver is u to date.

Now, with regards to smb client speeds in android phones, and given that your wifi is good there (the ookla and ftp test prove it), I suspect that your only options are just to test different smb client apps.

 

[makksi]

Quick update.
I tuned better my wifi settings for WIFI-n interface. The problem is that I live in a crowded area with lots of wifi antennas. So the degradation of the speed for wifi-n I know that is due mainly to it.
Anyway I forced a 40Mhz band for 2.4 GHz channel and used the les populated channel which is 13. In this case the smb downloada speed i 8MBps (64Mbps) and also the Ookla speed test is around 70Mbps download, so pretty aligned.

I guess I'm ok so far with this configuration, and still very impressed by 900Mbps ookla speed test on my Oneplus 8 throug WIFI6!

Thanks again

 

[Tech9]

I live in a crowded area with lots of wifi

I forced a 40Mhz band for 2.4 GHz

You did exactly what is NOT recommended to do in crowded 2.4GHz environments.

This is from a PC with WIFI 4 (n) interface.

Is it 2.4GHz capable only? 802.11n can work on 5GHz band as well. Or better get an 802.11ac USB Wi-Fi adapter. Even if you don't have USB 3.x ports on this PC, you'll still get about 200Mbps on USB 2.0 port. Much better than the built-in Wi-Fi adapter (or whatever it is there).

 

[makksi]

Hi, regarding the settings for crowded area, I know that expanding the band to 40MHz is something not to do, but the experimental result is that it does increase my transfer speed! Probably occupyng so wide band, forces other close router to choose channels far from the one my router is choosing, thus freeing that channel from high interferences.

Anyway I'm trying now to change my wifi pci-e wifi4 (n) internal card with Mini PCI-Express INTEL AC 7260, hoping it is supported by my motherboard. I have an ASUS N56J notebook.

I will update you after replacement,

 

[Yota]

I found that I had 3 hard disks connected to the router through a USB 3.0 hub. But one of them was a USB 2.0 hard disk! The other 2 instead are 3.0 hard disks. So the USB 3.0 hub as usual is working at the lowest 2.0 speed.

Asus routers do not currently support USB 3.0 hubs, if you use a hub it will be limited to USB 2.0 mode.

The correct way to get USB 3.0 speed is to plug the external USB hard drive directly into the USB 3.0 port, don't use any hub, but you can always use a hub at the USB 2.0 port, but you need to pay attention to the USB 2.0 power supply.

 

[makksi]

I guess RTAX88U does support USB 3.0 hub. In fact I connect directly my 10TB 3.0 hard disk to the router USB port and I got 114MBps download speed, then I connect two hard disks, the 10TB 3.0 HD and the 2TB 3.0 HD to the 3.0 hub and then to the USB router port and I got for 10TB HD 114MBps again, and around 100MBps for the 2 TB hard disk. 114MBps is around 1Gbps not supported by USB 2.0.

 

[makksi]

Quick update. I replaced my pci-e wifi-n/bt card with Intel 7260 AC 867MBps .

Now my download speed to SMB disk is 58 MBps (vs 8MBps with old wifi-n pci-e internal card). It also installed the BT4.0.

So very satisfied so far with this RTAX88U router!

 

[Tech9]

I replaced my pci-e wifi-n/bt card with Intel 7260 AC

Hopefully it works well for you. This one has disconnecting issues in later Windows 10 versions.

 

[makksi]

Good news. After 4 days with my Intel 7260 AC card no problem with wifi. No disconnection and the speed is still what I tald you before. My Windows versione is Windows 10 Home Version21H2.
So also very satisifed with this purchase; around 20€ for this nice upgrade from wifi-n to wifi-ac

 

[Tech Junky]

@makksi

Using your router as a NAS is more of a novelty than something you should be doing in the first place with an off the shelf router.

100MB/s vs 100mbps are totally different bytes vs bits.

So, presuming optimal HW in the router / controller on the disk (spinner) you could probably squeeze up to 200-220MB/s off a single disk. I'm running Raid 10 w/ 4 x 8TB WD Reds and get ~480MB/s which is a bit higher than via USB because they're all internal. USB adds overhead to the calculations along with the PC bus speed.

Now, assuming your 10TB drive is a 3.5" drive getting a better enclosure or cable to promote the best possible speed is an option. Combining the 3 disks into a DAS / USB enclosure would be an option as well but the router might still have an issue seeing them as a single disk if you don't configure the DAS correctly. Though it would simplify things and keep a clean look vs random external drives laying next to the router. Re-purposing a cheap PC though and turning it into a NAS would be the best option though if you're looking for performance.

 

[Tech9]

So, presuming optimal HW in the router / controller on the disk (spinner) you could probably squeeze up to 200-220MB/s off a single disk.

No chance.

 

[Tech Junky]

Thanks @Tech9

 

[makksi]

@makksi

Using your router as a NAS is more of a novelty than something you should be doing in the first place with an off the shelf router.

100MB/s vs 100mbps are totally different bytes vs bits.

View attachment 40282

So, presuming optimal HW in the router / controller on the disk (spinner) you could probably squeeze up to 200-220MB/s off a single disk. I'm running Raid 10 w/ 4 x 8TB WD Reds and get ~480MB/s which is a bit higher than via USB because they're all internal. USB adds overhead to the calculations along with the PC bus speed.

Now, assuming your 10TB drive is a 3.5" drive getting a better enclosure or cable to promote the best possible speed is an option. Combining the 3 disks into a DAS / USB enclosure would be an option as well but the router might still have an issue seeing them as a single disk if you don't configure the DAS correctly. Though it would simplify things and keep a clean look vs random external drives laying next to the router. Re-purposing a cheap PC though and turning it into a NAS would be the best option though if you're looking for performance.

Not sure you correctly understood my usage model of the router. Moreover you probably confused my 114MBps with 114Mbps so you didn't catch my consideration about that the router RT-AX88U does support USB 3.0 hub, otherwise this speed cannot be supported by a USB 2.0 hub (in fact if you see your table USB 2.0 can reach up to 480Mbps (i.e. 60 MBps) while I reach 912 Mbps (i.e. 114MBps).

Moreover regarding the usage of the router as a NAS...
I never said I got a router just to use it as a NAS. I know this is not the best solution for a NAS and this is not my intention.
What I said is that if you have this kind of powerful router and you want to use it in a home environment or a small-office solution a USB attached storage with this speed is a great solution (you can stream video from different TVs, use internet video service for 2-4 devices and still connect with VPN with 1-2 PC for work using also audio/slide sharing with no issue.At the same time I have different scripts which do backups to Amazon glaciers and to my NAS. I work for a big electronic multinational with 5000 employee just in my workplace and honestly I can ensure you that the download speed is lower then the one I get in my home network.

Using a PC as a Nas....I tried it in the past...it could be a good solution, but it has no sense for my usage model mostly because of unuseful waste of energy with unnecessary increase in performance.

Thanks anyway for yout hint probably useful for who wants to build a NAS solution, which was not my intention

 

[Tech9]

this kind of powerful router

Slower than RPi hardware with limited RAM, actually. Asuswrt offers a bit too many features for it to handle. I have one AX88U available for testing and I can give you the recipe for disaster using USB attached storage. Go light and you'll be fine.