Upload speed capped after installing Merlin

[inquam]

I have Fiber in my house and had my Asus ac68u connected to the fiber box. With the stock firmware I got about 245MBit/sec down and 247MBit/sec up. Since my subscription is for 250/250 it's quite close.

I then installed Merlin 380.59 and after that I still get around 240MBit/sec down, but my up speed seems to be stuck at ~145MBit/sec.

If I connect a computer directly to the fiber box I get my original speeds back, so the issue seems to be with the router and it started when I installed Merlin. Any ideas on what the cause could be?

 

[L&LD]

What options and features have you enabled past their defaults?

 

[inquam]

I have a single port forward, wifi 2.4 and 5ghz setup, AiCloud 2.0 "Cloud Disk" and "Smart Access" enabled (but no disks plugged in) and one Open VPN server. I tried turning the VPN off but that made no difference.

This was about to be my response. But I remembered that I actually activated "Malicious Site blocking" and "Infected Device Prevention and Blocking" a while back to test them. I tested with them turned off but still the same result.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Did you reboot the router after disabling those features ? Sometimes a reboot is needed to actually complete the disable cycle.

 

[inquam]

I tried it again and forced a reboot to make sure. Exact same result. Upload maxes out at 145Mbit/sec.

During the speed test the cpu usage on the router hovers in single digits for both cores.

 

[xus]

CTF/hardware acceleration enabled?

 

[inquam]

Where can I fint that setting?

edit: Not sure if this is correct but under "LAN/Switch Control" NAT Acceleration is set to Auto and "CTF (Cut Through Forwarding) and FA (Flow Acceleration) accelerator are enabled." printed besides it

 

[splatee]

Where can I fint that setting?

edit: Not sure if this is correct but under "LAN/Switch Control" NAT Acceleration is set to Auto and "CTF (Cut Through Forwarding) and FA (Flow Acceleration) accelerator are enabled." printed besides it

It is under "Lan" tab and the "Switch Control" and click "Nat Acceleration" to auto. You may have to dissable first and power cycle router. Then Renable it to "Auto" and power cycle again.

 

[inquam]

Tried turning it off, rebooting, back on, rebooting but still the same. One thing changed though. Now it doesn't say "CTF (Cut Through Forwarding) and FA (Flow Acceleration) accelerator are enabled." anymore but instead only "CTF (Cut Through Forwarding) is enabled."

 

[splatee]

Tried turning it off, rebooting, back on, rebooting but still the same. One thing changed though. Now it doesn't say "CTF (Cut Through Forwarding) and FA (Flow Acceleration) accelerator are enabled." anymore but instead only "CTF (Cut Through Forwarding) is enabled."

I'm sorry I missed the part before saying that FA was enabled. I thought it was not. You want to switch it back to FA and CTF. Sorry about that.

 

[inquam]

I'm sorry I missed the part before saying that FA was enabled. I thought it was not. You want to switch it back to FA and CTF. Sorry about that.

Strange thing now is that if I set it on auto it will not say FA, only CTF.

edit: Once I tried turning "Malicious Sites Blocking" off again FA was once again printed as active. But a test still only got 158Mbit upload speed

 

[muffintastic]

Do you have QoS enabled in the router at all? If so, try turning it off and running tests again.

 

[inquam]

Do you have QoS enabled in the router at all? If so, try turning it off and running tests again.

Nope, no QoS, Apps analysis, Web history. Traffic Analyzer - Statistic is not enabled either. I have tried disabling the firewall on both ipv4 and ipv6 but no change.
Just scratching my head here

 

[muffintastic]

OK. Try reverting to f/w version .58
- In Asus recovery mode, I get full speed using.

 

[inquam]

OK. Try reverting to f/w version .58
- In Asus recovery mode, I get full speed using.

Tried roling back but still the same. I noticed that if I kept running the test over and over it would slowly climb a bit. So even in .59 it's now giving me around 170MBit/sec and the same in .58. But if I connect directly to the fiber box I get 248MBit/sec

 

[xus]

try the speedtest with a wired connection (if not already)

 

[yorgi]

Tried roling back but still the same. I noticed that if I kept running the test over and over it would slowly climb a bit. So even in .59 it's now giving me around 170MBit/sec and the same in .58. But if I connect directly to the fiber box I get 248MBit/sec

when you flashed the router did you do a factory reset? cold boot and reboot? and then enter all the data manually? or did you update from ASUS FW to Merlin and kept the same info?
It is strongly recommended to do a Factory reset then unplug the power supply from the wall, leave the power button enabled so that it discharges all capacitors for few seconds, then put the power supply back on the power and boot the router and then enter all the data manually without a config file. Seems you have a problem with VRAM. If you do this, you should be back to normal. Merlin firmware is the same as the ASUS with bug fixes and upgrades to better features. It should not have reduced your upload speeds for any reason.

 

[yorgi]

Could it be that you are double NAT? Is your modem a router as well? If you have NAT on the modem you should disable it. I would leave NAT on the ASUS to auto. If you see the same issue then put the NAT to off and do a cold reboot on the router and try it again.

 

[inquam]

try the speedtest with a wired connection (if not already)

Yea I'm using a wired cat5e network at home

when you flashed the router did you do a factory reset? cold boot and reboot? and then enter all the data manually? or did you update from ASUS FW to Merlin and kept the same info?
It is strongly recommended to do a Factory reset then unplug the power supply from the wall, leave the power button enabled so that it discharges all capacitors for few seconds, then put the power supply back on the power and boot the router and then enter all the data manually without a config file. Seems you have a problem with VRAM. If you do this, you should be back to normal. Merlin firmware is the same as the ASUS with bug fixes and upgrades to better features. It should not have reduced your upload speeds for any reason.

I think I initially did. And I got 150MBit/sec when I first started using Merlin. But then over time, some updates and settings later I arrived at this.
I'll try this again later tonight... Will suck though since I had a lot of OpenVPN and wifi settings changed

Could it be that you are double NAT? Is your modem a router as well? If you have NAT on the modem you should disable it. I would leave NAT on the ASUS to auto. If you see the same issue then put the NAT to off and do a cold reboot on the router and try it again.

The fibre box basically just relays the traffic in. The router gets my public IP just fine.
Is there some way to check if this could be the issue?

 

[yorgi]

Yea I'm using a wired cat5e network at home



I think I initially did. And I got 150MBit/sec when I first started using Merlin. But then over time, some updates and settings later I arrived at this.
I'll try this again later tonight... Will suck though since I had a lot of OpenVPN and wifi settings changed



The fiber box basically just relays the traffic in. The router gets my public IP just fine.
Is there some way to check if this could be the issue?

Don't worry about the fiber box for now. After you do the factory reset, and properly reboot the router do the same tests.
I know its a pain to put all the data in manually but you need to do that at least once after you upgraded from factory firmware.
It is already mentioned in the README-Merlin.txt
QUOTE from the txt

"NOTE: resetting to factory default after flashing is
strongly recommended for the following cases:

- Updating from a firmware version that is more than 3 releases older
- Switching from a Tomato/DD-WRT/OpenWRT firmware

In all of these cases, do NOT load a saved copy of your settings!
This would be the same thing as NOT resetting at all, as you will
simply re-enter any invalid setting you wanted to get rid of. Make
sure to create a new backup of your settings after re configuring."