WRT1900AC Performance Testing including adapters AC580 AC1200 AC1300

[speedingcheetah]

Anyone know of a good mini pcie wifi card that I could get to make use of the higher AC wifi speeds....my current card Intel AC7260 only does 866 link speed.

Also, my laptop is only 2 stream (2 antennas). Not sure if 3 antennas are required to support the higher AC standards. I have tried adding in a 3rd antenna to my laptop, but in my tests with my 3 stream N router at that time, it made things worse and more unstable than just the 2 stream. I was told its has to do with the way antennas and radio signals work and antenna continuity or something. Makes sense, the 2 regular antennas are behind the lcd screen, and the 3rd that I added is under the bottom case of the laptop, completely different orientation than the others.

 

[thiggins]

Broadcom has a full-height 3x3 card used in the newest MacBook Pros. But I don't think it is available as a part and I don't know if it has Windows drivers.

You MUST have three antennas for a 3x3 card. I learned the hard way that not connecting the third antenna will mess you up. When the client reports the link rates it supports to the AP, it will report three stream link rates. But when the AP then tries to use the high rates for the connection, the client can't really connect. This starts a cycle that kills your throughput.

 

[speedingcheetah]

You MUST have three antennas for a 3x3 card. I learned the hard way that not connecting the third antenna will mess you up. When the client reports the link rates it supports to the AP, it will report three stream link rates. But when the AP then tries to use the high rates for the connection, the client can't really connect. This starts a cycle that kills your throughput.

I got one off ebay and tired adding the 3rd antenna. But I have no way of knowing what exact kind the other 2 in my laptop are....so having one very different antenna and in a very different orientation the the others, also gives bad results.....in my tests with my hardware anyway.

Really annoyed at Samsung for only building this laptop with 2 antennas...its(was) a $1,200 laptop, that's not low end at all. I did have an older Asus G series laptop and an even older Hp probook that had stock 3 antennas, though I never upgraded them to a 3x3 card.

I suppose, my only other option to get the higher AC speeds would be a USB dongle....USB 3.0 I would assume, as 2.0 maxes of at about 25MB's ( my current internal wifi card already gives me about 50MB's)

 

[thiggins]

Antenna design and placement takes great care in mobile devices. NETGEAR did a study of various laptops and found a big difference in performance depending on the internal design.

 

[thiggins]

I suppose, my only other option to get the higher AC speeds would be a USB dongle....USB 3.0 I would assume, as 2.0 maxes of at about 25MB's ( my current internal wifi card already gives me about 50MB's)

There is no significant difference between USB 2.0 and 3.0 for AC867 class (2x2) adapters. See AC1200 USB Wireless Adapter Roundup

 

[speedingcheetah]

There is no significant difference between USB 2.0 and 3.0 for AC867 class (2x2) adapters. See AC1200 USB Wireless Adapter Roundup

USB 2.0 buss maxes out at about 25MB's...so best any usb 2.0 adapter can push is that anyway. Just goes to show that the 3.0 adapter is not well made if it can't make full use of the 3.0 buss speed and bandwidth.

I actually owned that Edimax usb 3.0, it was horrible. I found the Linksys AE3000 to perform better and much more stable in my tests...and its not an AC or usb 3.0 adapter. Either way, I hate USB adapters sticking out. I have broken to many USB ports thanks to a flash drive or some dongle sticking out. PCI-E is far superior anyway.

 

[speedingcheetah]

Antenna design and placement takes great care in mobile devices. NETGEAR did a study of various laptops and found a big difference in performance depending on the internal design.

Very interesting article. Never thought about the antenna cables being positioned poorly. I always assumed those were shielded cables.

Anyway, I find it odd that it mentions Lenovo laptops. I have a low end Lenovo I gave to my mother to use and that thing picks up more wifi networks than most of my other devices. But, annoying that Lenovo have bios whitelist for their hardware, so I can't upgrade the junk N150 card in it to a nice dual band AC card.

 

[chadster766]

WRT1900AC

Firmware 1.1.7.160177

Test network all 1 gigabit ethernet.
Testing results from "Microsoft NT Testing TCP Tool"

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LAN to LAN throughput: 935.152 Mbit/s

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WAN Configured Static IP or DHCP
WAN to LAN throughput: 876.810 Mbit/s

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PPPoe Test Platform MikroTik RouterOS 6.10
MikroTik Server Windows standard PPPoe client throughput: 767.342 Mbit/s

--------------------------------------------------​--------

WAN Configured PPPoe (Auto MTU)
WAN to LAN throughput: 522.629 Mbit/s

WAN Configured PPPoe (Manual MTU 1492)
WAN to LAN throughput: 554.619 Mbit/s

--------------------------------------------------​--------

WLAN testing with WPS "Disabled"
WMM Support "Enabled"
WPA2 Personal Security
WRT1900 Antennas all vertical



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Intel Wireless N Adapter

Wireless N 2.4GHZ 20MHZ Channel Width
WLAN to LAN throughput: 56.178 Mbit/s

Wireless N 2.4GHZ Auto Channel Width
WLAN to LAN throughput: 97.700 Mbit/s

Wireless N 5GHZ 40MHZ Channel Width
WLAN to LAN throughput: 182.671 Mbit/s

Wireless N 5GHZ Auto Channel Width
WLAN to LAN throughput: 181.655 Mbit/s

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Linksys AC580 Adapter
AE6000
On USB 3.0

Wireless A/N Only 5GHZ Auto Channel Width
WLAN to LAN throughput: 105.35 Mbit/s

Wireless Mixed Mode 5GHZ Auto Channel Width
WLAN to LAN throughput: 169.157 Mbit/s

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Linksys AC1200 Adapter
WUSB630
On USB 3.0

Wireless A/N Only 5GHZ Auto Channel Width, Channel = 48
WLAN to LAN throughput: 139.927 Mbit/s

Wireless Mixed Mode 5GHZ Auto Channel Width, Channel = 48
WLAN to LAN throughput: 290.790 Mbit/s

--------------------------------------------------​--------

Linksys AC1300 Wireless Bridge 4 Ethernet Ports
WUMC710

Wireless Mixed Mode 5GHZ Auto Channel Width, Channel = 48
WLAN to LAN throughput: 282.549 Mbit/s

--------------------------------------------------​--------

Notes:

30 seconds to detect a down PPPoe connection and reconnects.

UI can sometimes appear to be locked up at progressbar but isn't. It's just delayed. *Fixed in Firmware v1.1.7.160​582

A "Router not Found" warning seems to be a bug in firmware function "isAdminPasswordDefault()". Once this warning appears you have to close the browser to get rid of it. *Fixed in Firmware v1.1.7.160​582

After using Media Prioritization and then disabling it. Devices still shows on main screen widget as Prioritized but are not. (which is good)

WLAN Auto channel works fine on 2.5ghz wireless startup and doesn't change channels until next reboot but not so well for the 5ghz. I recommend "Wifi Analyzer" to find out which channels are free in the 5ghz range.

WMM Support must be enabled for Wireless N to function.

Strong 5ghz signal.

 

[sfx2000]

WLAN Auto channel works fine on 2.5ghz wireless startup and doesn't change channels until next reboot but not so well for the 5ghz. I recommend "Wifi Analyzer" to find out which channels are free in the 5ghz range.

Something I noticed also - channel scanning in 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz only happens on boot up.

5GHz it did auto-select on top of an adjacent 802.11ac AP rather than tune around it.

Specifically that the adjacent AP was on 149, the WRT1900ac selected 153 as the primary AC channel.

2.4GHz was interesting - putting AP's on channels 1 and 11, it correctly selected Ch 6 and stayed in narrow channel mode (20/40 auto selected) - when the AP on Ch 1 was turned off, the WRT stayed on Ch 6 narrow

In the second test - AP on Channel 11, WRT selects Ch 1 and 5 for wide channel - bringing up second AP in Ch 6 after the WRT is running, auto remained with 1+5 in wide mode with all AP's having same RSSI (they're all within feet of each other). When the second AP was re-tuned to Ch1, the WRT remained in wide channel mode, even though the second AP has Fat Channel Intolerant Bit explicitly set (AP2 is a Apple Airport Express 11n, the older one, not the current)

Test 3 was Auto-Fallback with overlapping AP (again, the AirPort Express) - WRT on Ch 5 plus 1 (5 is primary) - bring up AP2 on Channel 1 and the WRT did not fall back to narrow channels - reboot and the WRT remained on Ch 5 with narrow channel only - remove AP2 and WRT remains in narrow mode.

So automatic channel selection and auto 20/40 mode need some work here - it should periodically scan over overlapping adjacent AP's - right now it doesn't appear to.

Tools used - InSSIDer, WiSPY Classic, Kismet to capture traces, Wireshark to analyze and post-process

Adjacent AP's in use - AirPort Express 802.11n (first gen), AirPort Extreme 2012

 

[chadster766]

Wow your testing is excellent. Thanks for the info

 

[sfx2000]

Wow your testing is excellent. Thanks for the info

trying to come up with a good test case for 5Ghz Dynamic Channel allocation...

 

[chadster766]

sfx2000,

Do you know of software that can stress test the WRT1900AC wireless frequencies and protocols? Something that would connect, disconnect, change connection and put workloads on the connection.

 

[sfx2000]

sfx2000,

Do you know of software that can stress test the WRT1900AC wireless frequencies and protocols? Something that would connect, disconnect, change connection and put workloads on the connection.

Sounds like something that could be scripted on the linux shell using iwconfig and curl/wget/netcat/iperf perhaps - and then iterate xx number of times.

 

[jalyst]

Sounds like something that could be scripted on the linux shell using iwconfig and curl/wget/netcat/iperf perhaps - and then iterate xx number of times.

Yup, & I'd be alarmed if Belkin/Lnksys don't already have something like this internally.

 

[chadster766]

Yes I'm sure they do

I'm a Linksys rep but they don't give me that kind of access.

I'm also independent and my testing process, methods and result are my own.

 

[chadster766]

Sounds like something that could be scripted on the linux shell using iwconfig and curl/wget/netcat/iperf perhaps - and then iterate xx number of times.

Would you have time to put the curl script together? I can run the test if you like.

I'm hoping to download the WRT1900AC OpenWRT source to see what's up with the 5ghz wireless N issue. I've done software development for embedded Linux systems before so I'm hoping I can help with the OpenWRT development. Unfortunately I'm very busy as I'm sure you are too.

 

[chadster766]

I figured out that the 5GHZ wireless setting "802.11n" doesn't work but that "802.11an" broadcast Wireless "N" just fine!

 

[sm00thpapa]

Anyone know of a good AC1900 USB adapter?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[thiggins]

Anyone know of a good AC1900 USB adapter?

No 3x3 USB adapters exist, neither AC1900 nor AC1750.

 

[chadster766]

Anyone know of a good AC1900 USB adapter?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I'm asking the team if one is available.

The fastest I've tested is the AC1200 (WUSB6300) adapter. Keep in mind the driver is only compatible with PC's.