slow network transfer speed

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I have 4 computers on my LAN. I just did a full backup of each of them and transfered it to my NAS through my gigabit network. The speed was very fast and it took less than 10 minutes to transfer the backup.

Problem is that my last computer is connected through wifi and the speed is VERY slow. 1.50mb/s to 3mb/s maximum transfer speed. It will take 15 hours to transfer the backup instead of 10 minutes.

I tested it with two different wifi adapters and i get the same result

- TP-LINK TL-WN823N
- BELKIN|F5D8053 11N RTL
Router is very good (Netgear Prosafe FVS318N)

I tried doing a Speedtest with the wifi connection, i get 10gb/s which is the exact same result as on the wired connection.

So what's wrong ?
 
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nukemaster
Disconnections from wireless can happen for many reasons the 2 biggest I have seen are compatibility and interference(because 2.4 is so overused it happens, even running a microwave can cause issues).

I once had a WRT54G from Linksys and it just did not get along with my old notebook I would disconnect all the time when doing file transfers. While these kinds of issues are more rare, they may still happen with some setups.

If you happen to have more devices on wireless that also effects the overall bandwidth as well.

Your wireless speed should not pose an issue for the CCTV camera setup(you are still faster than your internet connection by the look of things), but if they CCTV cameras are always recording to the wireless system that...
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Nov 23, 2004
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The simple answer would be that wireless is not that fast compared to wired.

You have to make sure you are understanding the speeds here.

Is your notebook running wireless N and what speed does it report(depending on conditions it may fall back on lower speeds). You generally have to cut that speed in HALF for collision avoidance.

Now lets say you happen to have 150megabit connection of wireless N, you take off HALF of that to get your actual speed after collision avoidance. So we are at 75 megabit/sec, more than enough for your 10 megabit network connection(I am guessing the gb was a typo since 10gigabits would not even work to full speed on your normal systems).

So now we have to convert that to megabytes. so 75 / 8 = 9.375 megabytes a second. This would be compared to the theoretical 125 megabytes/second you would get on 1 gigabit wired.

My recommendation is to ensure your wireless speeds are not the issue. Your operating system should show you the current connection speed. If it is falling from interference, that would be the issue. Again even speeds all the way down to about 20megabit before avoidance would still show just fine for Internet, but be quite painful on your internal network.

It is also important to know that 2.4ghz MIMO standards work by using more than one channel. This can give extra speed, but some of the channels may be susceptible to interference. 2.4 Ghz is the most used frequency and many wireless devices use it leading to even more issues.
 
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ungovernable

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The simple answer would be that wireless is not that fast compared to wired.

You have to make sure you are understanding the speeds here.

Is your notebook running wireless N and what speed does it report(depending on conditions it may fall back on lower speeds). You generally have to cut that speed in HALF for collision avoidance.

Now lets say you happen to have 150megabit connection of wireless N, you take off HALF of that to get your actual speed after collision avoidance. So we are at 75 megabit/sec, more than enough for your 10 megabit network connection(I am guessing the gb was a typo since 10gigabits would not even work to full speed on your normal systems).

So now we have to convert that to megabytes. so 75 / 8 = 9.375 megabytes a second. This would be compared to the theoretical 125 megabytes/second you would get on 1 gigabit wired.

My recommendation is to ensure your wireless speeds are not the issue. Your operating system should show you the current connection speed. If it is falling from interference, that would be the issue. Again even speeds all the way down to about 20megabit before avoidance would still show just fine for Internet, but be quite painful on your internal network.
Click to expand...
My adapter is supposed to support up to 300mb/s
Windows indeed says i'm connected through 802.11n but the reported speed varies between 78mb/s and 117mb/s

signal is 5/5
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Nov 23, 2004
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So you are getting about 4.8-7.31 megabyte/sec. Now some other things on the network or the files being transferred may cause some more slow downs.

Are you backing up images or individual files to the NAS. Most times many small files transfer much slower than large files. I recommend picking a large file to see what your average speed would be.

Your routers information page does not even seem to list how many channels it can use at once or much at all aside of its security features. It is also strange to advertise a 1gigabit/sec WAN port and then list 95 megabit/sec as the WAN to LAN Throughput(maybe the security features cause that much overhead, but that seems like a marketing idea to advertise 1gigabit WAN port)

I think your are mostly looking at hitting the limits of wireless. Now dual band as well as more channels can help improve these speeds, but I do not think you want to start swapping all kinds of hardware.

EDIT.

I do not always trust the signal indicator as I have seen some notebooks show full signal while connected much slower while others should show lower signal with the same connection speed. Both perform the same, but one just claims it has full signal.
 
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ungovernable

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Thanks for the reply,

I ensured everything is closed on the network when i did the test. Also, the files i am transfering are around 10gb each.

Another problem is that the computer transfering the files gets disconnected from the network after around 30 minutes of file transfer. I had this problem with both wifi adapters.

Would dual-band be a great improvement ?

Also, do you think i would get a faster image speed when streaming images on the internet if i use a wired connection instead of wifi ? The PC using wifi is actually a DVR server for CCTV cameras, i'm wondering if i could get a better speed when remotely viewing the cctv stream.
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

Titan
Nov 23, 2004
19,626
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74,965
Disconnections from wireless can happen for many reasons the 2 biggest I have seen are compatibility and interference(because 2.4 is so overused it happens, even running a microwave can cause issues).

I once had a WRT54G from Linksys and it just did not get along with my old notebook I would disconnect all the time when doing file transfers. While these kinds of issues are more rare, they may still happen with some setups.

If you happen to have more devices on wireless that also effects the overall bandwidth as well.

Your wireless speed should not pose an issue for the CCTV camera setup(you are still faster than your internet connection by the look of things), but if they CCTV cameras are always recording to the wireless system that is going to effect your bandwidth for backing up(it may even cause cut outs in the recording). For a test you can always run a wire to the system temporarily to see how it works for you.

Everyone's setup will be different so you generally have to find out what works best for you.

Onto the dual band. Dual band allows you to use 5ghz or 2.4 or both at once to get better speed as well as less interference. The 5ghz band has less interference because it is not used as much(this is the same reason most cordless phones(even cell phones tend to run a lower frequencies) have moved to DECT 6.0[dect 6.0 runs at 1.9ghz and is only called 6.0 because customers would never buy a 1.9 ghz phone when clearly the large number 2.4 and 5 must be better :) ]). Either way if the 2.4 ghz connection gets to much interference the 5 will just keep on going(or of it happens the opposite way, but it is more rare). Now in these cases you are looking at a more reliable connection. Top speed still depends on many factors.

Now you may have another option that does not require running wires and has a more constant speed, but still not as fast as gigabit lan. Homeplug based products work on your homes electrical wiring. They have more consistent speeds, but are still not perfect. This is just the next best option for a system that is not mobile and difficult to get a normal network cable to.

These devices generally have one or more Ethernet ports on each side and are not seen by your computer. Your system just sees a Ethernet cable at the highest supported speed all the time.

Sorry for the wall of text, but you have limitless options for connecting computers and devices together.

EDIT, your file sizes(10 gigabytes) should be optimal for network transfer.
 
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