# extremely slow transfer in wifi 802.11n



## jetmantrunks (Oct 14, 2010)

i've lately purchased an edimax BR-6424n wireless router and have connected my win xp pc to it directly with LAN and my win7 laptop using wifi.
up untill a few days ago i've been using my built in laptop wifi adapter (b/g) and got around 35% signal strength and could transfer files from my laptop to my desktop at around 1.5-2.5MBps.
this seemed very slowed to me so i've purchased a usb wifi adapter with a 5dbi antenna which claims to be 300mbps (in 802.11n on 40mhz). after installing it's drivers i can see on it's control panel (realtek 11n software) that my Tx and Rx keep jumping around, but even when they are Tx:150 Mbps, Rx:300 (or is it the other way around? i forgot) i still get only around 1.5-2.5MBps transfer between my desktop and laptop (a bit slower when uploading from my latop to my desktop). 
the realtek control panel states my link quality is 98-100% and signal strength bounces around 58-60%. any idea why i get such low speeds?

also i can choose to keep both my built in laptop wifi adapter connected to my router on 802.11g and my usb wifi adapter connected to 802.11n, is that supposed to improve my connection or will it just use the best connection?

stats:
*my router is configured to use either 20 or 40mhz automatically
*my router transmits on 2.4ghz(B+G+N)
*Tx power on my router is set to 100%
*when i look at my active wireless clients i see my built in wifi and usb wifi adapters at such:
802.11 PhyMode    Power Save   BandWidth
OFDM                   ON                20M                     (the built in one if im not mistaken)
HTMIX                  OFF              40M


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## CrackerJack (Oct 14, 2010)

those speeds sounds about right, little tweak might help. i get the same. what network card you using on desktop


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## Batou1986 (Oct 14, 2010)

CrackerJack said:


> those speeds sounds about right, little tweak might help. i get the same. what network card you using on desktop



that's about right for N 150, wired 100mb lan i get 10 Mb/s gigabit lan nets around 100Mb/s

Long story short if you want high speed transfers get a gigabit router and use wired connections


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## theonedub (Oct 14, 2010)

Sub'd 

I get 512-800 KB/s over G (on a good day!) and 1.5MB/sec over N  Just awful.


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 14, 2010)

Sounds about right.  There is a lot of overhead involved in that connection.  Your data is being encapsulated, changed to a wireless single, possible encrypted depending your router settings, transferred to the router, verified, transmitted to another computer, and then translated back to a file.  You can improve it by setting it to N only or G/N only, making sure the channels you are using are not being used by a lot of other people in the area (only important if you live in an apartment), and turning off any encryption.

Dual connects can improve throughput, but they would have to be bound together.  If the are not linked together it will just use the fastest one available.  It could also use the one built in to board and ignore the adapter all together.  I am not sure.  Hit Ctrl+alt+del and look at the network traffic to see what adapter is transmitting.


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## jetmantrunks (Oct 15, 2010)

crackerjack its just a generic 10/100mbps card i believe, never really put much thought to it.

TheLaughingMan i just changed it to N only (no option for n+g) and didnt see much change if any.
i already used inSSIDer a few days ago to see which channels are flooded and decided to go with channel 2 with channel 1 being empty, and 1 other connection on 3 since that connection is set to channel 4 and is leaking to 3. i believe you know what i mean even though im not that good at explaining it.

also i've used wpa at first but then changed to wpa2 a week ago, but it shouldnt matter speed-wise, right?

i've been told to turn off the onboard wifi because making the router work with one client on g and one on n would just slow it down.

btw i've noticed that my Rx and Tx jump around a lot, my Tx i sometimes as low as 30 and my Rx only 1, is that normal


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 15, 2010)

jetmantrunks said:


> crackerjack its just a generic 10/100mbps card i believe, never really put much thought to it.
> 
> TheLaughingMan i just changed it to N only (no option for n+g) and didnt see much change if any.
> i already used inSSIDer a few days ago to see which channels are flooded and decided to go with channel 2 with channel 1 being empty, and 1 other connection on 3 since that connection is set to channel 4 and is leaking to 3. i believe you know what i mean even though im not that good at explaining it.
> ...



Good, forcing it to use the adapter you want should help.

Fluctuation in power is normal.  You may want to try turning off your laptop's power management to minimize it doing that.

Also, I meant no encryption at all.  No WPA of any kind. It will help, but not by much.

What are you trying to do.  If you are just transferring some files, wire the laptop into the router with a Cat5 and transfer the files.  It will be 30 to 40 times faster.  Then you can move smaller files as needed with what you have now.


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## CrackerJack (Oct 15, 2010)

jetmantrunks said:


> crackerjack its just a generic 10/100mbps card i believe, never really put much thought to it.
> 
> TheLaughingMan i just changed it to N only (no option for n+g) and didnt see much change if any.
> i already used inSSIDer a few days ago to see which channels are flooded and decided to go with channel 2 with channel 1 being empty, and 1 other connection on 3 since that connection is set to channel 4 and is leaking to 3. i believe you know what i mean even though im not that good at explaining it.
> ...



then those speeds are perfectly normal. you would need a 1gb router to get any speed increase...


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## jetmantrunks (Oct 15, 2010)

*TheLaughingMan *the power saving is off, its no use to me since my laptop is almost always connevted to the power because it's battery is almost dead now, managing barely 20 minutes.

no encryption would be too risky considering im in a 5 story apartment building with 15 other networks all secured and probably isnt worth the risk of someone hacking me or the hassel of mac filtering.

yes im transferring large files 200-700mb. up untill now i've used usb flash drives to transfer files i need fast since i get an upload rate of about 5MBps and a download rate of 10-11MBps. can the cat5 grant me faster speeds?
also im not really familiar with cat5, how can i check if my rj-45 is a cat5? and i need a regular or a crossed one? 


*CrackerJack *that type of router would be too expensive i think. is the 300mbps promise of 802.11n really such an exaggeration? even when considering overhead and all its still very disappointing


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## CrackerJack (Oct 15, 2010)

jetmantrunks said:


> *TheLaughingMan *the power saving is off, its no use to me since my laptop is almost always connevted to the power because it's battery is almost dead now, managing barely 20 minutes.
> 
> no encryption would be too risky considering im in a 5 story apartment building with 15 other networks all secured and probably isnt worth the risk of someone hacking me or the hassel of mac filtering.
> 
> ...



your wireless may support 300mbps, but your lan card doesn't. it's only max 100mbps.. which you'll almost never get. but if your do wireless to wireless transfer then you'll better results, which in your case your doing wired to wireless. so the speeds your getting is perfectly normal. like i said before, you can tweak a few settings.



*note, i get those exact same speeds on this network setup
F5D8233-4 Router
Built-In Realtek Network- 10/100/1000 speeds
Wireless laptop/desktop on the G network (Even if they were N, the speeds wouldn't be affected much) 

The whole "B" "G" "N" "N1" Wasn't built just on speed bases, but for range.


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 15, 2010)

jetmantrunks said:


> *TheLaughingMan *the power saving is off, its no use to me since my laptop is almost always connevted to the power because it's battery is almost dead now, managing barely 20 minutes.
> 
> no encryption would be too risky considering im in a 5 story apartment building with 15 other networks all secured and probably isnt worth the risk of someone hacking me or the hassel of mac filtering.
> 
> ...



"mbps" does not equal "Mbps"  The unit of measure you and windows use to monitor your network speed is a much larger unit of measure than the wireless N rating standard.

*802.11n	 (Variable 300.0 Mbit/s Max or variable 37.5 MB/s Max)*

What you are getting is normal and the best you are going to get in your environment.  Even if you are on a clear channel their is still signal interference, signal lose due to passing through walls, error correction, etc.  You are not doing anything wrong, except having unrealistic expectations.

And Encrypting your data and securing your wireless network are two different things as well.  Encryption prevents people from copying your packets (blocks of data) and viewing your information.  Security locking your network does not prevent me from viewing/downloading your data packets.  It does however prevent me from logging onto your router as user.  This prevents people from using your Internet service that you paid for and viewing any shared information on your network.

*Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-X) = 1,000 Mbit/s or 125 MB/s*

If they will both be jacked into a router, you need standard Cat5 cables.  If you are going to connect it directly from one computer to another.....don't because it is a pain in the ass.  Long story short, a Ethernet cable is about 10 times faster than your thumb drive...well 20 since copy is only done once.

How to tell if the RJ45 is a Cat5.  If it was made in the last 12 years or so, it is CAT5 or better.  It should also have CAT5e patch cable written on the wire somewhere.


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## francis511 (Oct 15, 2010)

I usually get 6-10 mbps on wireless-n. 2-3 is normal for for g not n. Win 7 helps a lot. Try moving the antennae if you can which does actually work ! Try sending the files from both ends of the connection as well.


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## theonedub (Oct 15, 2010)

If you aren't even cracking 1MB with G what are some things to look at? I've tried Netsh commands, disabling RDC, disabling Remote connections and nothing helps.


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## jetmantrunks (Oct 16, 2010)

> "mbps" does not equal "Mbps" The unit of measure you and windows use to monitor your network speed is a much larger unit of measure than the wireless N rating standard.
> 
> 802.11n (Variable 300.0 Mbit/s Max or variable 37.5 MB/s Max)


yes i know, thats what i meant, and is why i also was careful to clearly mark MBps and mbps on my previous posts. i means 3.5 Mbps is very disappointing compared to the 37.5MBps promise. even with the 100mbps desktop bottle neck.




> Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-X) = 1,000 Mbit/s or 125 MB/s
> 
> If they will both be jacked into a router, you need standard Cat5 cables. If you are going to connect it directly from one computer to another.....don't because it is a pain in the ass. Long story short, a Ethernet cable is about 10 times faster than your thumb drive...well 20 since copy is only done once.



to get the speeds your talking about i will have to replace my desktop and somehow also my laptop's network adapters since they only support 10/100 mbps, right? otherwise the very best i can hope for would be 12.5 MBps. would the router also have to be replaced? where can i check if it supports these speeds?
and thanks for all the help


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## andrew123 (Oct 17, 2010)

If you're using Gigabit, some nice Cat6 patch cords will provide the best connection. (More Twist, Slightly smaller gauge and pair separation).


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