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wifi performance (rum)
Hello everyone,
I'm currently using a Belkin USB network adapter on my old OpenBSD server laptop, on a USB 2.0 port: rum0 at uhub3 port 2 "Belkin Belkin 54g USB Network Adapter" rev 2.00/0.01 addr 3 rum0: MAC/BBP RT2573 (rev 0x2573a), RF RT2528, address XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX it is very stable; the issue is performance... I get ridiculously low transfer speeds, peaking at 150 KB/sec on NFS, Samba or SSH transfers (a quick test with netcat confirms it's the network link). The same client and server, if using a wired fxp interface over powerlines, yield 4 MB/sec (but that connection drops out when other devices are activated - different story). OpenBSD and the wireless AP are 5 meters away and have line of sight between them. Latency between the two is good and consistent (2-4 ms, 0.0% packet loss) ifconfig rum0: rum0: flags=28843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST ,NOINET6> mtu 1500 lladdr XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX priority: 4 groups: wlan egress media: IEEE802.11 autoselect mode 11g (DS1 mode 11g) status: active ieee80211: nwid XXXXXX chan 6 bssid XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX 119dB wpakey <wpakey> wpaprotos wpa1,wpa2 wpaakms psk wpaciphers tkip,ccmp wpagroupcipher tkip 100dBm inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255 Clearly they can hear each other just fine (110+ dB) The only thing I find odd is: 'DS1 mode 11g' - why would 'media autoselect' settle for the (I'm guessing) slowest setting? 'ifconfig rum0 media' lists a large number of options, from DS1 to OFDM54 (I can paste it here if you want) I could try and force it to e.g. OFDM54 but I'm wary of losing connectivity as I'm remote to the machine, so I figured I'd ask for opinions or pointers before I try that. Thank you for reading this post. Any ideas? |
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High = good, I'm pretty sure about that (typical readings in that building are 70-80 dBm, in other rooms further away from the AP).
So I used an at job 5 minutes in the future to reset the interface if things went wrong, and another to restart the server if that failed, 5 minutes later. I applied the change remotely to force OFDM54 mode, and it came back after a few seconds. I cannot actually test right now, but the latency over 1000 is consistently lower than in DS1 mode. Fingers crossed, I'll check it later today and report back. For reference: ifconfig rum0 media OFDM54 mode 11g Thanks! MW |
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Quote:
I've never thought of doing that for a test of this type... ...I'm feeling like I've wasted a lot of time over the last several decades, forgetting all about at(1). |
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Glad I could help with the at trick!
So I ran a bandwidth test (netcat) having forced OFDM54... throughput was roughly 4x higher, from 160KB/sec to 600 KB/sec. Good progress! Then I thought about transmit power... this "server" uses a cardbus extension for USB 2.0, and the card has a power socket. I have nothing I could plug in there, but... Default settings -> 160 KB/sec OFDM54 11g -> 600 KB/sec ifconfig rum0 txpower 15 -> 1.1 MB/sec !! ifconfig rum0 txpower 5 -> 1.1 MB/sec ifconfig rum0 txpower 100 -> 1.1 MB/sec Go figure... At least I've now got 6x the original throughput, but it's still only 20% of what it can theoretically do and 25% of the 100 MBps wired interface going over power lines. I'll see if I can find something else, but any other ideas are welcome. |
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I have two of these: http://support.netgear.com/product/WNHDE111
One is configured as wireless access point, the other as wireless bridge. When I scp a file from my OpenBSD firewall (behind the AP) to my PC (Debian stable connected tot he wireless bridge) I get slighty more than 5.0 MB/s: Code:
753MB 5.1MB/s 02:28
__________________
You don't need to be a genius to debug a pf.conf firewall ruleset, you just need the guts to run tcpdump |
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Very interesting... I'd forgotten that these things existed.
I found another USB wifi adapter that uses the uath driver (under a pile of toys...), so I'll benchmark this tonight. If all else fails, wireless bridges can be quite cheap. Thanks for the tip! |
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I just measured the distance: 9.50 meter.
My house has a strange shape. The following ASCII art is an attempt to illustrate it. AP is the access point, and B is the bridge Code:
| AP | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |------ door ------| \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ B \
__________________
You don't need to be a genius to debug a pf.conf firewall ruleset, you just need the guts to run tcpdump |
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Thanks for that. mickywicky had mentioned 5m in his case, so I thought a similar comparison would be helpful.
My only other thought is that since you're using 2 identical devices, perhaps inter-manufacturer interoperability is less likely to be an issue. |
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Besides being from the same manufacturer, these devices also have multiple antennas. And it also helps I am the only user of this wireless link
__________________
You don't need to be a genius to debug a pf.conf firewall ruleset, you just need the guts to run tcpdump |
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No luck with uath() - got the firmware, the device is recognised but uath0 never appears in the list of interfaces:
uath0 at uhub3 port 1 "Atheros Communications Inc WG111T" rev 2.00/0.01 addr 2 uath0 detached But never mind for now. 1.1 MB/sec is slow but sufficient, and the link is stable. Eventually I'll move the OpenBSD box close to the router and go wired again. Clearly J65nko has higher-end h/w than I do |
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