Media bridge performance suddenly digraded

[rleeden]

I've got an RT-ATX88U (Merlin 385.6_2) as my Wireless router, and an RT-AC68u (Merlin 385.6_2) as a Media Bridge. I have one device attached to the Media Bridge via LAN cable - a HP server running Centos.

This has been running fine for over 6 months, and I was regularly getting connection speeds of ~ 380Mbs, but suddenly a few days ago this has dropped to ~90Mbs or less. I haven't changed anything with my configuration recently and the link speed on the Media Bridge is fairly stable at 1300Mbs. If I connect my server directly to the router (via a long cable trailing through the house - so not a good permanent solution!) I get over 380Mbs, so it doesn't look like a problem with my server.

All other connections to the router (wired and wireless) are performing as expected.

I've factory reset the Media Bridge and changed the cable between my server and the bridge with no change to the problem.

I know Media Bridge performance has been discussed previously on this forum, with no real definite conclusions from what I can see, but does anybody have any suggestions?

 

[bbunge]

Good luck with that firmware version(should be 386.5_2)
Try going back a version (386.4) on the AC68U or to Asus firmware.

 

[rleeden]

Good luck with that firmware version(should be 386.5_2)
Try going back a version (386.4) on the AC68U or to Asus firmware.

Sorry - that was a typo. Both are at 386.5_2.

 

[ColinTaylor]

If I connect my server directly to the router (via a long cable trailing through the house - so not a good permanent solution!) I get over 380Mbs, so it doesn't look like a problem with my server.

"Mbs" isn't a valid unit. Do you mean mega bits per second or mega bytes? If it's mega bits then that translates to ~48 MB/s, which is pretty poor for a server (that's running "fine"). But then you didn't say whether that was reading or writing, or what application or protocol you're using. In which case I'd first be looking for issues on the server.

On the WiFi side, have you tried changing to a different channel?

 

[eibgrad]

Might be a good idea to use something like iPerf for making these measurements, so we know we're comparing apples to apples, and minimizing the impact of IO devices, protocols in use, etc. You also specifically mentioned "link speed", which does NOT represent measured throughput, but more the signal quality of the connection, which is NOT something you can rely on for comparison purposes.

 

[rleeden]

Might be a good idea to use something like iPerf for making these measurements, so we know we're comparing apples to apples, and minimizing the impact of IO devices, protocols in use, etc. You also specifically mentioned "link speed", which does NOT represent measured throughput, but more the signal quality of the connection, which is NOT something you can rely on for comparison purposes.

Thanks for the suggestion of using iperf.

From my server to the Media bridge using iperf I get:

------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.0.119, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 221 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.0.13 port 50518 connected with 192.168.0.119 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 678 MBytes 568 Mbits/sec

And then between the Media bridge and my router I get:

------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.0.1, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 1] local 192.168.0.119 port 53867 connected with 192.168.0.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 1] 0.00-10.16 sec 52.4 MBytes 43.2 Mbits/sec

So obviously a dramatic difference.

And I realise that I'm not going to get anything like the "link speed", but just thought it worth mentioning as it shows the quality of the connection seems to be good.

 

[lepa71]

I have had similar issues. I got AX3000 and trying to make ac68 to a bridge. With 386.5_2 fw on both, I can only get half of my internet speed. I have 200/5 Mbps. It seems that wired connections are suffering a lot. I also tried to set up both as AIMesh(router+node) and wired connections are still slow. I tried official Asus FW on ac68, still slow. The only one that worked was John's fork FW set up as a bridge.
I don't know what the expected speed should be for node-wired clients. The link on AX3000 does show a full 1300 for the 5 GHz band.

Have you figured it out?

 

[rleeden]

I have had similar issues. I got AX3000 and trying to make ac68 to a bridge. With 386.5_2 fw on both, I can only get half of my internet speed. I have 200/5 Mbps. It seems that wired connections are suffering a lot. I also tried to set up both as AIMesh(router+node) and wired connections are still slow. I tried official Asus FW on ac68, still slow. The only one that worked was John's fork FW set up as a bridge.
I don't know what the expected speed should be for node-wired clients. The link on AX3000 does show a full 1300 for the 5 GHz band.

Have you figured it out?

I solved my issue, but no, I didn't ever really figured it out. I ended up swapping my AC68U bridge for a Netgear EAX20 and now getting similar speeds as if my server was wired. Regular tests from my server to speedtest.net are getting close to 400Mbps, which is my expected broadband speed.

 

[lepa71]

I still have Netgear R7000 and it was set up as a bridge but it had some issues reconnecting to the main router( ac68 at that time). Now, ax3000 is the main router. I was able to put John's fork on the ac68 and I'm getting full speed but no matter what I do with AC68 with official and Merlin's latest firmware I can't get the full speed.