memilanuk
Occasional Visitor
So... we've got a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 Air Station serving as wifi AP, router, firewall, etc. The local provider connection is billed as 25Mb/s down, 2Mb/s up. The best I'd been able to get out (using their local speedtest page) of it was ~11 down, 1.3 up, and that was using an Ethernet cable plugged into a LAN port on the Air Station which is in turn connected via the WAN port to the fiber outside.
One of their techs came out today to check the physical connection... unplugging the cat5 running from the box to the house, and plugging in his laptop, he showed ~23Mb/s down, ~1.5 up. We talked a bit, and he suggested power-cycling the router, and possibly unplugging/reconnecting the WAN cable inside, as an option to paying them to troubleshoot for me. Seemed like a good idea, so I thanked him for the courtesy call and went inside to test things out.
Power-cycling the AP (and disconnecting the WAN cable at the same time) got things up to 20-21Mb/s down, ~1.4 up while connected to the LAN ports on the AP with my laptop. Good enough... I thought.
I did some digging around on this site, and started noodling around with lperf/jperf (since I mostly run Linux when I can - both the laptop and desktop are still dual-boot for the occasional game or otherwise obstinate software package). From the AP, I run Netgear Homeplug 200 connectors to several other spots in the house. According to lperf, I'm getting about 55Mb/s between the laptop (plugged into the AP) and my 'server' downstairs - the actual electrical run is *very* short. From the upstairs desktop to the server is about 40-45 Mb/s, and from the laptop wifi to the server about 22-23 Mb/s. All good.
Then I tested the WAN connection again from the laptop (using Ethernet)... back down to 10-11Mb/s download speed. Cycled it, unplugged the WAN cable for a while... got back up to 18-19, then back down to 12-13 and its pretty much stayed there. Plugging the WAN cable directly into the laptop yields 23+ Mb/s down, 1.5-1.6 Mb/s up... basically the same as the tech got.
At this point it seems like the 'problem' isn't the external connection to the ISP, and its not the rest of the internal network - even the connection speed from the laptop wifi through Powerline Ethernet to the server in the basement is faster (almost 2x) than what I'm regularly seeing from the AP WAN connection.
One of the ISP's techs I talked to on the phone earlier had mentioned that some of the 'older' wifi AP routers didn't necessarily have a very fast connection between the backplane of the switch, and the WAN port, because previously most consumers couldn't realistically *use* all that speed, and most people's WAN connection from their provider had been the limiting factor - vs now, where I could theoretically get a 100 down, 10 up connection for less than I used to pay for ISDN 15 years ago.
I'm not sure if thats true, or if they're just blowin' smoke in my direction...
Has anyone else had similar experience with the WAN port of their router or AP being so much of a choke point? Is there any way to know which 'newer' routers this would *not* be the case for?
TIA,
Monte
One of their techs came out today to check the physical connection... unplugging the cat5 running from the box to the house, and plugging in his laptop, he showed ~23Mb/s down, ~1.5 up. We talked a bit, and he suggested power-cycling the router, and possibly unplugging/reconnecting the WAN cable inside, as an option to paying them to troubleshoot for me. Seemed like a good idea, so I thanked him for the courtesy call and went inside to test things out.
Power-cycling the AP (and disconnecting the WAN cable at the same time) got things up to 20-21Mb/s down, ~1.4 up while connected to the LAN ports on the AP with my laptop. Good enough... I thought.
I did some digging around on this site, and started noodling around with lperf/jperf (since I mostly run Linux when I can - both the laptop and desktop are still dual-boot for the occasional game or otherwise obstinate software package). From the AP, I run Netgear Homeplug 200 connectors to several other spots in the house. According to lperf, I'm getting about 55Mb/s between the laptop (plugged into the AP) and my 'server' downstairs - the actual electrical run is *very* short. From the upstairs desktop to the server is about 40-45 Mb/s, and from the laptop wifi to the server about 22-23 Mb/s. All good.
Then I tested the WAN connection again from the laptop (using Ethernet)... back down to 10-11Mb/s download speed. Cycled it, unplugged the WAN cable for a while... got back up to 18-19, then back down to 12-13 and its pretty much stayed there. Plugging the WAN cable directly into the laptop yields 23+ Mb/s down, 1.5-1.6 Mb/s up... basically the same as the tech got.
At this point it seems like the 'problem' isn't the external connection to the ISP, and its not the rest of the internal network - even the connection speed from the laptop wifi through Powerline Ethernet to the server in the basement is faster (almost 2x) than what I'm regularly seeing from the AP WAN connection.
One of the ISP's techs I talked to on the phone earlier had mentioned that some of the 'older' wifi AP routers didn't necessarily have a very fast connection between the backplane of the switch, and the WAN port, because previously most consumers couldn't realistically *use* all that speed, and most people's WAN connection from their provider had been the limiting factor - vs now, where I could theoretically get a 100 down, 10 up connection for less than I used to pay for ISDN 15 years ago.
I'm not sure if thats true, or if they're just blowin' smoke in my direction...
Has anyone else had similar experience with the WAN port of their router or AP being so much of a choke point? Is there any way to know which 'newer' routers this would *not* be the case for?
TIA,
Monte
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