Transfer speed slower on media bridge vs wifi only

[L&LD]

Seems like you've tried everything except what was suggested in Post 22.

I wouldn't be trying anything else (CC's).

 

[Tech9]

Not sure why you need this Media Bridge when your built-in AX card is in fact faster. Just one extra device burning electricity.

 

[Jherb]

Seems like you've tried everything except what was suggested in Post 22.

I wouldn't be trying anything else (CC's).

Sorry, I hadn't mentioned it, but I tried various CCs and that didn't impact the issue. I tried channels on the low end (36, etc) and on the high end (149,153, etc). I've avoided dfs channels.

 

[L&LD]

Any reason to avoid the DFS channels?

 

[Jherb]

Not sure why you need this Media Bridge when your built-in AX card is in fact faster. Just one extra device burning electricity.

I use it when I connect multiple computers to the bridge and need to transfer files between them and the basement computer.

The media bridge is twice as fast when the encryption is set to WPA/WPA2 personal. It is 1/6 the speed or less when the encryption is WPA2-Personal. That is what I cannot get around by changing all these settings, and I don't really know why such a drastic slowdown is occurring.

Ideally, it would be great to have both the security and the speed But maybe it won't be possible with this older router.

 

[Jherb]

Any reason to avoid the DFS channels?

Not specifically, but there is an airport near so I was under the assumption that those should be avoided.

 

[Tech9]

Ideally, it would be great to have both the security and the speed

In theory mixed WPA/WPA2-Personal is less secure, but in reality someone in your network range has to start hacking your WPA + TKIP support option. I would suspect the cat lady first.

 

[L&LD]

What is near? If it is 15 miles or less, yes, you should avoid them.

 

[Jherb]

What is near? If it is 15 miles or less, yes, you should avoid them.

Yes roughly that distance. But I can try anyway temporarily.

 

[Tech9]

What DFS channels on RT-AC66U B1? As I remember this model doesn’t have DFS support. Unless something undocumented was done to it…

 

[Jherb]

What DFS channels on RT-AC66U B1? As I remember this model doesn’t have DFS support. Unless something undocumented was done to it…

I can't change the channel directly on the media bridge. I can only change the main router AX86u channel. The media bridge follows suit I think. Isn't that correct?

Although I haven't been able to solve this WPA2 Personal slow down issue, I did find that a lower channel improved the speeds on the AX wifi card. It went from about 32 to 42 MB/s transferring the same file.

So thank you for the CC suggestion.

 

[Tech9]

The media bridge follows suit I think. Isn't that correct?

Only if the router used as Media Bridge supports the channels. Otherwise it won't be able to connect.

 

[glens]

Or it'll connect but only use the channels it knows out of the bonded set.

 

[sfx2000]

Just out of curiousity - what happens when one disables 11ax on the main router, so everything then in 5GHz is 802.11ac, and everything in 2.4 would be B/G/N...

 

[L&LD]

He's already tried that, I believe.

 

[Jherb]

Just out of curiousity - what happens when one disables 11ax on the main router, so everything then in 5GHz is 802.11ac, and everything in 2.4 would be B/G/N...

Yes i tried that. Didn’t help.
The only thing that helps so far is changing the encryption. And I’m not at all clear why that works.

 

[sfx2000]

Yes i tried that. Didn’t help.
The only thing that helps so far is changing the encryption. And I’m not at all clear why that works.

Yeah, that still doesn't make sense, as WPA2 should be fine... at least one would think...

You don't have any of the non-standard WiFi extensions enabled, do you?

Something to note - in both 11ac and 11n, the uplink and downlink MCS rates are negotiated - it's usually based on the SNR of the AP Beacon frames, along with the Probes on the Client side, during the attach, and then dynamically adjusted over time based on frame error rates - and there, the rate adaptation methods on the client side determine the best rates.

Another thing, and I'm not sure anyone has pointed this out - the AC66U-B1 is pretty old, and it's an early 802.11ac Wave 1 chipset, just something to consider, the performance you see might be as good as it gets with this device in Wireless Bridge Mode... the core CPU there is a single core MIPS 74K at 600Mhz, and the radios, while 3*3:3, they are first gen WiFI5/11ac - there's been a lot of improvements over the years.

 

[Tech9]

the core CPU there is a single core MIPS 74K at 600Mhz

@Jherb actually has a different RT-AC66U B1 (thanks Asus for clear model names) with 1GHz ARMv7 dual core CPU. The MIPS model was RT-AC66U with B1 hardware revision, the newer ARM model is RT-AC66U B1 as model name. The same hardware as RT-AC68U in flat package.

 

[Tech9]

Just out of curiousity - what happens when one disables 11ax on the main router, so everything then in 5GHz is 802.11ac, and everything in 2.4 would be B/G/N...

With ax disabled you get:

2.4GHz b/g/n
5GHz a/n/ac

According to Asus though some of their ax routers don't even have ax radio, so...

Asuswrt help on RT-AX86U above. Copy/paste from previous models. Never fixed.

 

[sfx2000]

The MIPS model was RT-AC66U with B1 hardware revision, the newer ARM model is RT-AC66U B1 as model name.

Let's see a syslog and output from cat /proc/cpuinfo to be certain

In any event, the AC66U is long in tooth...