My home Wifi network used to allow me to FTP files to my Android phones at rates exceeding 1MB/s, I think that 1.9MB/s was my record. With that sort of speed transferring a 200MB or 300MB TV show to a phone was reasonably quick. Performance wasn't always great, sometimes it was as low as 400KB/s, but even that was usable. In the past I had even watched TV shows on my phone over HTTP (from a local server) with no performance problems. In the last few days performance has dropped to below 60KB/s with rates like 40KB/s (that would be 320Kb/s) being common. Because Android doesn't let me know what's happening I connected my Thinkpad T420 via Wifi and saw the following result: # iwconfig wlan0 wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"abcdef" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:on Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-30 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:286 Invalid misc:11 Missed beacon:0 What's going on here? I ran "iwconfig wlan0 rate auto" which made it briefly claim a rate of "130 Mb/s" but then it reported 1Mb/s again. 1Mb/s rate for the Wifi connection would be expected to give something like 40KB/s FTP transfer speed so it seems that the phones are connecting in the same way as my laptop. It says that "abgn" is supported which should give lots of options for rates higher than 1Mb/s, especially when the quality is 70/70 and the Wifi access point (a Netgear DGN 2200 ADSL modem) is about 2M away from my laptop with nothing of note in between. Any suggestions for what I can do to improve performance? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
My thinkpad is almost the same model number as yours. I've noticed that I get good speeds (5+mb/sec) over the wifi in Windows, but only around 40kb/sec in Linux. I'm guessing poor Linux driver support is to blame. Although that can't explain your situation if it used to be fast. Try running inSSIDer (or similar) to see if your neighbours have recently started broadcasting on the same channels as your AP? On 1 November 2013 15:14, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
My home Wifi network used to allow me to FTP files to my Android phones at rates exceeding 1MB/s, I think that 1.9MB/s was my record. With that sort of speed transferring a 200MB or 300MB TV show to a phone was reasonably quick. Performance wasn't always great, sometimes it was as low as 400KB/s, but even that was usable. In the past I had even watched TV shows on my phone over HTTP (from a local server) with no performance problems. In the last few days performance has dropped to below 60KB/s with rates like 40KB/s (that would be 320Kb/s) being common.
Because Android doesn't let me know what's happening I connected my Thinkpad T420 via Wifi and saw the following result:
# iwconfig wlan0 wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"abcdef" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:on Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-30 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:286 Invalid misc:11 Missed beacon:0
What's going on here? I ran "iwconfig wlan0 rate auto" which made it briefly claim a rate of "130 Mb/s" but then it reported 1Mb/s again. 1Mb/s rate for the Wifi connection would be expected to give something like 40KB/s FTP transfer speed so it seems that the phones are connecting in the same way as my laptop.
It says that "abgn" is supported which should give lots of options for rates higher than 1Mb/s, especially when the quality is 70/70 and the Wifi access point (a Netgear DGN 2200 ADSL modem) is about 2M away from my laptop with nothing of note in between.
Any suggestions for what I can do to improve performance?
-- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
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On Fri, 1 Nov 2013, Toby Corkindale <toby@dryft.net> wrote:
My thinkpad is almost the same model number as yours. I've noticed that I get good speeds (5+mb/sec) over the wifi in Windows, but only around 40kb/sec in Linux. I'm guessing poor Linux driver support is to blame.
My real problem here is Android Wifi performance and as it affects 3 phones with different models and different versions of Android (Xperia X10i, Galaxy Note 2, and Nexus 4) I'm quite sure that the problem is with the access point (or maybe interference as you note). I'm trying to debug the performance of my Thinkbad because I can do things there. Android really isn't a good example of free software.
Although that can't explain your situation if it used to be fast. Try running inSSIDer (or similar) to see if your neighbours have recently started broadcasting on the same channels as your AP?
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll investigate that later. On Fri, 1 Nov 2013, James Harper <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> wrote:
Did you ever take any of those readings before the problem started? It's been years since I had to look at wireless on Linux (outside of OpenWRT), but at the time the signal quality measurements were never useful in any way.
No. In retrospect I should make a practice of recording such things. In this case I don't care about Thinkpad Wifi performance at home for any reason than debugging the Android problem. As for quality measurements, I've noticed that the number varies and a higher number is correlated with faster transfers. So while the number is fairly dubious in many ways it does seem to be a useful measure.
I'd start with identifying what might have changed. The weather has warmed up here (central vic) over the last few days - has your house/office been warmer lately? Has someone erected a large bronze statue next to the router?
I don't think it's much warmer. 22C now, cooler late last night when I was trying to transfer some files. It worked well during the day a month ago and it should work well during the night now if heat is the issue.
What channel are you set to? Try changing it. Maybe your neighbors have bought some new wireless hardware (baby monitors are supposedly great for disrupting the 2.4GHz spectrum!)
Good idea, I'll try that.
Can you turn off the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz radios in the router independently? In my experience they are normally different radio's and bridged together in software.
I don't think that's possible.
Failing any of that, can you get another wireless access point to try?
I guess that's the next thing to try if the other suggesstions from you and Toby don't work. Thanks! -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Toby Corkindale <toby@dryft.net> wrote:
My thinkpad is almost the same model number as yours. I've noticed that I get good speeds (5+mb/sec) over the wifi in Windows, but only around 40kb/sec in Linux. I'm guessing poor Linux driver support is to blame.
Possibly, but in my case it was the Intel firmware. Loading the version of the firmware supplied for my card at http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/iwlwifi#Firmware improved performance and reliability somewhat. The version of the firmware included in the Debian package, on the other hand, was much less reliable. The laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad X200, with an Intel IWL5100/5300 card (it's variously reported as either 5100 or 5300 by different tools, as I recall).
Toby Corkindale <toby@dryft.net> writes:
Although that can't explain your situation if it used to be fast. Try running inSSIDer (or similar) to see if your neighbours have recently started broadcasting on the same channels as your AP?
Don't forget that each channel "spills over" into the two adjacent, so if someone else is using ch4, avoid ch[345] (but 2 or 6 would be OK). (No cite because this is from memory, and therefore may be totally wrong. And ICBF looking it up.)
On 03/11/13 10:32, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Don't forget that each channel "spills over" into the two adjacent, so if someone else is using ch4, avoid ch[345] (but 2 or 6 would be OK).
They are a bit wider than that; on the older 802.11b, each channel is 5.5MHz apart, but the bandwidth is nominally 22MHz; so only channels 1, 6, and 11 should be used as the centre. The other versions of wifi get a bit more complicated. Glenn -- sks-keyservers.net 0x6d656d65
What's going on here? I ran "iwconfig wlan0 rate auto" which made it briefly claim a rate of "130 Mb/s" but then it reported 1Mb/s again. 1Mb/s rate for the Wifi connection would be expected to give something like 40KB/s FTP transfer speed so it seems that the phones are connecting in the same way as my laptop.
It says that "abgn" is supported which should give lots of options for rates higher than 1Mb/s, especially when the quality is 70/70 and the Wifi access point (a Netgear DGN 2200 ADSL modem) is about 2M away from my laptop with nothing of note in between.
Did you ever take any of those readings before the problem started? It's been years since I had to look at wireless on Linux (outside of OpenWRT), but at the time the signal quality measurements were never useful in any way.
Any suggestions for what I can do to improve performance?
I'd start with identifying what might have changed. The weather has warmed up here (central vic) over the last few days - has your house/office been warmer lately? Has someone erected a large bronze statue next to the router? What channel are you set to? Try changing it. Maybe your neighbors have bought some new wireless hardware (baby monitors are supposedly great for disrupting the 2.4GHz spectrum!) Can you turn off the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz radios in the router independently? In my experience they are normally different radio's and bridged together in software. Failing any of that, can you get another wireless access point to try? James
participants (6)
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Glenn McIntosh -
James Harper -
Jason White -
Russell Coker -
Toby Corkindale -
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