Improve wireless connection to R6 server

[Draugauth]

I have my own home built server that is using R6.

Current server specs
4 2TB drives in R6
1 80GB Drive (OS)
P5N-SLI Asus motherboard
X6600(or is it 6800) Intel CPU
8GB Corsair memory
soon to be installed Corsair 750W PSU with 12 Sata power connectors
Highpoint RocketRaid 3560
Dlink 100MB NIC (my 1GB nic is being RMA'ed due to overheating issues causing it to drop connections constantly)


Wireless Router is the Asus RT-N66U

Wireless Device is the Acer Aspire 4830TG Laptop with the Intel Centrino Wireless allowing both 2.4GHz and 5GHz N band connections

Other wireless devices are as follows
Droid Razr
Xbox 360 LE's X 2 (Gears of War LE and Star Wars LE)
Dish Vik722 DVR
Samsung 2D Smart TV LED
WD Media Player


Currently I can copy something from the server to the Acer at around 5MBs. But copying something from the Acer to the server I get LESS than 100KBs

I'm at a loss at this point on what to do.

I've set both bands at specific channels and tried both 20MHz and 40MHz. Power on both devices for transmitting are at max. Acer shows 200MBPS+ connection to the router.

Thanks in advance for any ideas, tips, suggestions, and help provided!

 

[Pinhedd]

Welcome to the world of wireless. Copying between two wireless endpoints through a common access point has always been extremely slow. The more wireless devices you have, the slower it gets.

The sync rate has very little to do with the error rate. Some wireless NICs have a bad habit of trying to sync at unsustainable speeds for marketing purposes. Advertised speeds are often overstated by as much as 10-20 times what is practically obtainable, it's a bad industry. I had a wireless G access point advertised at >100MBPS (some Linksys turbo thingy) and with my old wireless G laptop I wasn't even able to get 2mbps while sitting 3 feet away from it. I could get great throughput when connected to enterprise grade access points at school. 200Mbps doesn't mean anything if its completely saturated with error handling. Set the maximum transfer rate to something more reasonable like 56Mbps so that it spends less time trying to sync to an unsustainable speed.

Here are some common causes of low transfer speeds:

Endpoints using draft-N have problems with devices conforming to full N specifications. This was caused by manufacturers creating products 2 years before the specification was finalized, it's stupid. Any wireless device manufactured after 2009 should be fine.

Metal walls, solid walls, earthwork, foundation.

Electrical wiring, significant ductwork, water pipes.

The best place to put your wireless router is in the attic. If you need to get better coverage elsewhere in the house, use a repeater.

Good luck

 

[Draugauth]

The server is wired not wireless. So it is between a wireless and wired.

I ran CrystalDisk on the R6 and here are the results.

I ran CDM and here are the results. How do they look to you all?


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 196.916 MB/s
Sequential Write : 143.366 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 45.280 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 40.638 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.653 MB/s [ 159.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.698 MB/s [ 170.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 4.175 MB/s [ 1019.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.337 MB/s [ 326.4 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [D: 36.0% (1341.0/3725.7 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/06/23 0:14:09
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

 

[Pinhedd]

Well the problem most likely is not on your server. Run a speedtest just to be sure.

You also don't need Raid-6, certainly not with 4 drives. Raid-5 will work just fine and will have a less significant performance impact (although the HighPoint RAID controllers are pretty good)

 

[Draugauth]

Oh I understand on the R5 idea however I am working towards 24 drives and R6 will provide much better redundancy in that 2 drives can fail safely vs R5's 1.

Speedtest is a good idea. I'll go run that real fast and see what happens.

 

[Pinhedd]

oh okay, if you're expanding it then I suppose that makes more sense

 

[Draugauth]

To see how the laptop does using speedtest.net I got the following
D/L 31.38 Mpbs
U/L 4.22 Mpbs

 

[Pinhedd]

Well that's not bad. Doesn't really say much because your upload speed will be constrained by your ISP. How does your server do?

 

[Draugauth]

30.7 and 4.26

 

[Pinhedd]

Do you have another wired PC to which you can test the transfer rate between it and the server?

Take a look at your access point's settings. See if it has any optimizations for file streaming or packet framing

 

[Draugauth]

Wired is 9-10Mbps both ways. (limitation of the current nic)

I've looked at various settings but the only thing I could think of is maybe QOS is causing a problem. I'll try turning it off and see what happens.

 

[Draugauth]

Ok ProTip for Asus routers. DISABLE QoS! Since disabling it my speeds copying from the laptop (wireless) to the server went from < 100KBs to >6MBs.

I thought QoS was suppose to improve performance? Wonder if Asus is aware of that problem.

 

[Pinhedd]

Windows has its own QoS stack, there's no need for any hardware stuff

 

[Draugauth]

Yes but windows QoS stack is on a per system. Routers QoS is suppose to handle all traffic going through the router.


For most people though the Windows QoS would be fine. For people like me who have LOTS of devices utilizing the router the router QoS should handle all of those duties.


3 wired computers (one is a R6 server)
1 wireless computer
wired receiver
wireless dish box
wireless TV
2 wireless 360's
wireless media player
wireless phone

future will include another wireless computer, 1 more wireless 360 and a wireless PS3 plus whatever friends bring over.

 

[Pinhedd]

Yeah, but multiple QoS stacks can conflict with eachother, probably what happened here