EA8300 poor download speed (upload is normal)

Hi, I am a beginner to OpenWRT. I have a linksys EA8300 and I am having issues with the download speed over the 5 Ghz band. My internet speed should be 500mbps up and down, which I do get consistently over a wired connection. However, over a wireless connection, I can only get about 250mbps in a direct line of sight only about 3 feet from the router. My upload speed is still a full 500mbps even in other rooms. When I run these tests, I only have one active device on the network. It might be worth noting that I live in an apartment with crowded wireless space, but I have made sure that I have an ideal DFS channel selected (I have verified that it is actually using this channel and nobody else is), and a good signal to noise ratio. I have tried switching between 20/40/80 Mhz bandwidth among many other things as well. What could possibly be the problem here? I am beginning to wonder if my router is just not very good. I am new here so forgive me if I am missing important information, I will be happy to provide more if needed.

That sounds about right. Each 5Ghz radio will give you around ~360Mbps if your device can handle it. What device did you use to test it?

I have tried multiple devices. I used a samsung galaxy note 9, a Windows laptop with an Intel wireless adapter, and a desktop PC with a TP-Link TX3000e wireless adapter, all with the same results. Again, I was able to get the full 500mbps upload speed, but only 200-250 down.

Try running iperf3 from the PC with the TX3000e to a wired laptop to measure the throughput the TX3000e to EA8300 is capable of. I did this with my EA8300 between 2 wired laptops and saw 400Mbps peak, 360Mbps average (between two EA8300's in a mesh about 15ft apart at -50dBm of signal).

Ssh into the router and post your network and wireless configs. Strip out any personally identifying info like passwords, MAC addresses.

cat /etc/config/network
cat /etc/config/wireless

OTOH I don't think the EA8300 can get up past 350-400Mbps in typical usage (per 5Ghz radio).

The galaxy note 9 is 4x4 MU-MIMO and the EA8300 is 2x2x2 = you are only getting half the throughput the note 9 is capable of.

The TP-Link TX3000e is 802.11ax the EA8300 isn't.

I know the EA8450 is 802.11ax compatible. I don't know if it is a good match for you.

If you have a C7 it can do around 500Mbps according to the above link. It's 3x3 MU-MIMO so that makes sense. (ie. around 175 Mbps per radio). But it's not 802.11ax (WiFi 6).

The EA8450 is listed in the TOH as snapshot, (no stable release), so it is WIP.

Make sure software/hardware flow offloading is enabled:

LuCI --> network --> firewall

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Had same issue on EA8300. This fixed it for me. Thanks :slight_smile: