Slow USB storage access

[vrapp]

I noticed that the speed of download from USB-attached storage is very low. I'm only 90% sure, but I think that in the past it was much higher, so wondering if this was brought by the new firmware 386.1b4

This is on AP-68P; I tried downloading by Samba and by FTP; from USB2 and from USB3 port; from two physical USB drives, one external EXT3-formatted, another NTFS-formatted USB stick. In all cases, the speed of the download was below 300 KB/sec. On USB3 slightly higher, about 280KB/sec, on USB2 slower, about 200-240KB/sec. But if I'm not mistaken, it's all far below the expectations.

The speed of download from the internet (from https://www.thinkbroadband.com/download) to the same client machine is 3MB/sec, i.e. 10+ times faster.

Wondering if others see the same.

 

[L&LD]

Are you using the 2.5GHz band radio on the router? Are there other AP's in the near vicinity doing so?

 

[vrapp]

No, on the computer where I tried, it's 5GHz. There are other wireless networks in the air, obviously, belonging to the neighbors.
But like I said, when I'm downloading on the same computer using the same router and the same WiFi from an internet website, it's 10+ times faster than from the USB drive attached to the router.

 

[L&LD]

Yes, I read your post. Wi-Fi can be much faster than any USB attached network devices plugged into an underpowered router (which currently, is all of them).

What router do you have? What specific USB drives are attached? What firmware are you using? Does using a wired Ethernet computer result in the same speeds?

What kind of files are you downloading? What sizes are the files being downloaded?

Was this ever working to your satisfaction on the same equipment? What changes were made to degrade the speeds? What are the speeds you expect it to be?

What client device are you downloading to? What Wi-Fi adaptor is it using? Are all the drivers up-to-date?

 

[vrapp]

> What router do you have?
AC-68P

> What specific USB drives are attached?
I tried it with Seagate external storage, EXT3-formatted, and with USB stick, NTFS-formatted. Copying the same file from the same USB stick, when inserted into Windows 10 desktop computer, had speed 15-17MB/sec.

> What firmware are you using?
386.1 beta 4

> Does using a wired Ethernet computer result in the same speeds?
Yes, just tried.

> What kind of files are you downloading? What sizes are the files being downloaded?
I tried some compressed installations as well as video files, sizes from 100MB to 2-3GB.

> Was this ever working to your satisfaction on the same equipment?
I'm pretty sure that it was. I did not ever make benchmarks, but I'm sure I would have noticed this long ago if it was this slow - like I noticed it now.

> What changes were made to degrade the speeds? What are the speeds you expect it to be?
I think, the speed should be at least the same as downloading from internet , which is about 3MB/sec, about 10 times faster. The only changes were new versions of Merlin firmware. I even did factory reset of the router. I can try with an older version of the firmware if it helps to find the reason.

The speed of copying the file in Windows from Samba share was very unstable, fluctuating between 0 and 300KB/sec all the time.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Is the speed writing to the USB drive equally slow?

If writing to the router is faster turn off any QoS that you might be using.

 

[vrapp]

That was it. I forgot to mention in the changes that I also changed QoS from adaptive to Traditional, because of the issues I described in this post - by switching to Traditional QoS, they got resolved, but apparently it created this new problem. Indeed, writing speed was high, and turning QoS off, as well as changing it back to Adaptive, brought the download speed back to 7-8MB/sec. I'm wondering though why was that with Traditional QoS. With no other clients competing for the bandwidth, why is it limiting this particular traffic? Can it be adjusted to avoid it? I realize that Traditional QoS is not "recommended" mode, but the practical fact is that it did the job while Flexible did not.