Poor Wired Performance

[Dilvish]

Poor Wired Performance - Not the Router's fault

Edit: After extensive testing, I found that the problems mentioned in the OP were apparently due to a failing PC NIC card and not the router.

Hi Everyone,

I've browsed this site for a while, but only registered today.

I recently bought an RT-AC66R from my local Best Buy. I'm afraid I may have gotten a defective unit. Unfortunately, my local BB doesn't stock these (I had to have them ship it to the store), so getting another would take a while. Also, they recently changed their return policy to 15 days, so I don't have a lot of time for testing.

The router is connected to my PC via a Cat 6 cable. I'm only using it wired right now.

I must say that I'm very disappointed in the performance. I get an assortment of problems intermittently. Things such as: "Server not found", "Connection reset", etc.. If I refresh/reload the page in my web browser, it will sometimes load fine, other times it takes several reloads. This does not happen when I'm directly connected to the cable (Comcast) modem.

I've run several speed tests at Speedtest.net. Some with the router connected and others with my PC connected directly to the cable modem. Sometimes they are close to each other, however quite often the router kills my speed. I ran two tests, one with the router and one without back to back. The one without gave me ~38Mbs down, the one with the router gave me ~8Mbs. Things seem to sputter.

Also, my email checkers will periodically fail to connect etc. This does not happen when I'm directly connected to the modem.

The stock firmware is 266. I've tried 270 and 354 but still had problems.

Is there a known problem with wired connections? Are there some diagnostic tools I could use to test the router? Any suggestions, or did I get a junk unit?

Thanks in advance.

 

[RMerlin]

When moving a cablemodem between a router and a PC (or another router), you have to ensure it fully resets your connection. Power off the modem for 5-10 minutes, then power it back on whenever moving it to a different device.

Also make sure you don't install Download Master, as it can kill networking performance, and that the cable between the modem and the router is also Cat5e or Cat6.

 

[Dilvish]

When moving a cablemodem between a router and a PC (or another router), you have to ensure it fully resets your connection. Power off the modem for 5-10 minutes, then power it back on whenever moving it to a different device.

Also make sure you don't install Download Master, as it can kill networking performance, and that the cable between the modem and the router is also Cat5e or Cat6.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give the power cycling a try and let you know. FYI, I'm using the cable that came with the router to connect it to the modem.

Do the different firmware versions effect wired performance, or do they mainly address wireless performance/issues? Which firmware version do you suggest I use?

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give the power cycling a try and let you know. FYI, I'm using the cable that came with the router to connect it to the modem.

Do the different firmware versions effect wired performance, or do they mainly address wireless performance/issues? Which firmware version do you suggest I use?

The firmware has very little influence on wired performance.

Some people have better experience by disabling HW acceleration on the LAN -> Switch Control page. Worth a shot as well.

 

[Dilvish]

The firmware has very little influence on wired performance.

Some people have better experience by disabling HW acceleration on the LAN -> Switch Control page. Worth a shot as well.

I powered off and disconnected the modem, router, and PC for about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the problem still occurred after I powered back up.

I disabled the HW acceleration and it seemed to fix the intermittent problems for the rest of the evening. However, they started reoccurring the next morning.

Thanks for the suggestions RMerlin, I appreciate the help!

I think there is definitely something wrong with the router. I could never get a gigabit link between the PC and router. It was always 100 Mbit. The LAN ports are supposed to be gigabit. Even trying to use the webui was painfully slow and inconsistent.

I've never had this much trouble with a router. My ancient Linksys WRT54G just worked for years.

I'm planning to return the router. I really wanted to like this router and get it to work. It seems to have a lot of potential. However, I'm hesitant to try another ASUS. If they can't get the wired connection to work correctly, I don't have a lot of faith in them getting the wireless right.

Any suggestions for a replacement router?

 

[Pierino]

Check the settings on your nic. I found our computers at work kept showing a 100MB connection and I knew the lan supported 1Gig. I had to set the speed on the nic's to full 1 gigabyte speed. Am I making sense?

 

[RMerlin]

I think there is definitely something wrong with the router. I could never get a gigabit link between the PC and router. It was always 100 Mbit. The LAN ports are supposed to be gigabit. Even trying to use the webui was painfully slow and inconsistent.

I've never had this much trouble with a router. My ancient Linksys WRT54G just worked for years.

Your ancient Linksys was NOT gigabit capable however. So if you have either a bad Ethernet cable (make sure it's Cat5e or Cat6, otherwise it won't be gigabit-capable), or a problem with your PC NIC (bad configuration, driver, or defective gigabit support), then that would explain why the issue only shows up on the RT-AC66U.

 

[Dilvish]

Check the settings on your nic. I found our computers at work kept showing a 100MB connection and I knew the lan supported 1Gig. I had to set the speed on the nic's to full 1 gigabyte speed. Am I making sense?

Perfect sense. I did check my nic settings. It was set to auto sense, so I set it to 1 Gbit. It seemed like it scanned because my net meter widget flashed and the connection speed display paused, cycled to 10Mbit, then to 100 Mbit, but stopped there. The PC was connected via a Cat 6 cable.

 

[Dilvish]

Your ancient Linksys was NOT gigabit capable however. So if you have either a bad Ethernet cable (make sure it's Cat5e or Cat6, otherwise it won't be gigabit-capable), or a problem with your PC NIC (bad configuration, driver, or defective gigabit support), then that would explain why the issue only shows up on the RT-AC66U.

Yeah, one of the reasons I wanted a new router was to get gigabit speed. I'd like to setup a network disk for sharing and hopefully backups if it's fast enough.

I downloaded and installed the latest Realtek driver I could find for my NIC today and retested, but the problems persisted.

A bad cable or a problem with the PC NIC would explain why I'm not getting the expected speed/link. I don't think it explains why I get errors, timeouts, etc. while browsing through the router while I don't have the problems when the PC is directly connected to the cable modem. However, I'm not a network specialist, so I may be missing something.

 

[Dilvish]

After extensive testing, I still couldn't resolve the problems I mentioned in the OP. In desperation, I bought a new NIC for the PC. The new NIC installed automatically and linked up at gigabit speed immediately. I haven't noticed the intermittent problems mentioned. Also, navigating the router's webui is snappy and glitch free now.

Apparently, the old NIC was starting to fail and/or couldn't handle the new, higher speed. I feel so stupid.