Transfer speed slower on media bridge vs wifi only

[sfx2000]

With ax disabled you get

I know... point there was to eliminate any interop issues with 11ax radios and feature sets - if you recall, there were a lot of issues with early Broadcom 11ac Wave 1 client modes and features like MU-MIMO...

 

[Tech9]

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

No need to. From post #1:

MIPS models support stopped on 382 firmware.

 

[sfx2000]

MIPS models support stopped on 382 firmware.

Fair enough, but still the radios didn't change...

Don't be part of the problem - please - I'm trying to help out here...

 

[Jherb]

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.

I don't know what you mean by non-standard wi-fi extensions, so I assume I don't have anything enabled Its a very basic setup, and I didn't tweak anything really. No QOS, no trendnet, etc.

I have no explanation for this encryption thing causing a slowdown. From everything I've read, there were some reported slowdowns with mixed mode wpa2/wpa3, but I've not seen anything to indicate slowdown with WPA2-personal vs wpa/wpa2 personal.

 

[sfx2000]

Well, at the end of the day - with your config, this is probably as good as it gets...

It's usable for downstream activities like streaming to a TV/STB - which is what most folks use this mode for.

 

[Tech9]

Don't be part of the problem - please - I'm trying to help out here...

You're trying, but I know this router. It is what it is situation. The device is facing EoL soon. It's 12+ years old tech. Was kept alive just because the sibling RT-AC68U was very popular and Asus had to make AiMesh working on it in order to sell more routers to whoever has one.

 

[Jherb]

For what its worth, I installed freshtomato on the same router with the same setup. I configured it as a "wireless ethernet bridge" and encryption was WPA2 Personal. I transferred the same files and did not experience the same slow downs. So it seems its a bug in the AC router software.