Post up your cat /etc/config/wireless and a speedtest
Are you using different 2.4ghz and 5 ghz SSIDs? What type of wifi client are you testing with? Maybe there is something subtlety different.
config wifi-device 'radio0'
option type 'mac80211'
option hwmode '11a'
option path 'soc/1b500000.pci/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0'
option htmode 'VHT80'
option legacy_rates '0'
option country 'US'
option channel 'auto'
option short_preamble '1'
option txpower '23'
option channels '36 40 44 48 149 153 157 161 165'
option beacon_int '101'
option disabled '0'
config wifi-device 'radio1'
option type 'mac80211'
option hwmode '11g'
option path 'soc/1b700000.pci/pci0001:00/0001:00:00.0/0001:01:00.0'
option htmode 'HT20'
option country 'US'
option legacy_rates '0'
option channel 'auto'
option short_preamble '1'
option txpower '21'
option channels '1 6 11'
option beacon_int '103'
option disabled '0'
No, but I make sure that the client is connected to the 5GHz AP before testing.
A few years old MacBook Pro.
Some of the older macOS clients don’t support AC. I recently retired a Mac laptop with a wireless N adapter (don’t know the age of yours. For me the wireless speed...slowness...was starting to become very noticeable):
Apple has a good write up on macOS clients. I’d evaluate your environment settings to get the best balance for your clients.
Especially: “macOS always defaults to the 5 GHz band over the 2.4 GHz band. This happens as long as the RSSI for a 5 GHz network is -68 dBm or better.”
Try this:
-
Doesn’t take many obstacles for 5ghz to drop to -68 dBm. I’ve found it better to split the 5 and 2.4ghz SSIDs (and have my higher performance clients forget the 2.4ghz SSID) so that I retain the higher performance of 5ghz. There is much more bandwidth and less interference from household items on 5ghz.
-
do a survey of your local area and pick a channel rather than going with Auto. Pick a 80Mhz wide non DFS channel - 36 or 161.
-
if you have other 5ghz clients try fast.com speedtest.net or http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest to compare against your macOS device
you should max out your 300/300 connection easily via wifi.
Thx, but I already did all these basics steps without any improvements. My laptop does support AC and the auto channel works great and does pick the best channel, even though I tried setting different channels manually.
As far as I know, there is no real automated channel selection in OpenWrt at this time. The first allowed channel in your regulatory country setting is selected in "auto" e.g. channel 36.
Also the number of 80 MHz channels is even more limited. See the non DFS 80 MHz 11ac channels: https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33210-160-mhz-wi-fi-channels-friend-or-foe
That is not correct: I have it enabled and it picks other channels when the conditions are right. I just added DFS and it picked the channel form the DFS range.
That is why I added DFS channels to experiment.
What are people's performance comparisons between OEM stock firmware and the latest OpenWRT?
For stock OEM I get wired to wired performance of ~940mbps.
For wireless I get 629mbps from an ax200 client to wired server on lan switch.
Any numbers for OpenWRT?
A half of that...
I really don't understand?
Wired to r7800 (serving as a dumbap with activity) as iperf3 server(no -P):
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 111 MBytes 932 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 111 MBytes 933 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 111 MBytes 929 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 111 MBytes 933 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 111 MBytes 931 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 111 MBytes 933 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 111 MBytes 929 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 111 MBytes 927 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 111 MBytes 927 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 111 MBytes 927 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 10.00-10.00 sec 141 KBytes 910 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.08 GBytes 930 Mbits/sec receiver
-P 8 on my android phone gets:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 115 MBytes 96.9 Mbits/sec 777 sender
[ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 115 MBytes 96.7 Mbits/sec receiver
[ 7] 0.00-10.00 sec 95.3 MBytes 80.0 Mbits/sec 650 sender
[ 7] 0.00-10.01 sec 95.3 MBytes 79.8 Mbits/sec receiver
[ 9] 0.00-10.00 sec 113 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec 736 sender
[ 9] 0.00-10.01 sec 113 MBytes 94.2 Mbits/sec receiver
[ 11] 0.00-10.00 sec 104 MBytes 87.0 Mbits/sec 337 sender
[ 11] 0.00-10.01 sec 104 MBytes 86.7 Mbits/sec receiver
[ 13] 0.00-10.00 sec 104 MBytes 86.9 Mbits/sec 742 sender
[ 13] 0.00-10.01 sec 103 MBytes 86.5 Mbits/sec receiver
[ 15] 0.00-10.00 sec 97.7 MBytes 82.0 Mbits/sec 305 sender
[ 15] 0.00-10.01 sec 97.4 MBytes 81.6 Mbits/sec receiver
[ 17] 0.00-10.00 sec 105 MBytes 87.8 Mbits/sec 949 sender
[ 17] 0.00-10.01 sec 104 MBytes 87.4 Mbits/sec receiver
[ 19] 0.00-10.00 sec 106 MBytes 88.9 Mbits/sec 387 sender
[ 19] 0.00-10.01 sec 105 MBytes 88.4 Mbits/sec receiver
[SUM] 0.00-10.00 sec 839 MBytes 704 Mbits/sec 4883 sender
[SUM] 0.00-10.01 sec 837 MBytes 701 Mbits/sec receiver
Now try it with NAT, and watch your numbers be magically sawed in half like a magicians assistant.
2 Likes
@rbeede With AX200 wifi chipset I'm getting:
- stock firmware : ~920 mbits down / 400 mbits up (I don't if download is limited by wireless or my internet access which is supposed to be 1 gbits)
- openwrt 19.07.2 : 550 mbits down / 400 mbits up, I tried quite a lot of options wihtout being able to get more than that.
I've seen that 19.07.3 has just been released, are there possible improvements? Someone tried it?
No, it is all gonna stay the same including master and the next release.
920mbps via wifi means your are using an 160mhz channel with your 2x2 AX200.
550mbps makes sense for a 2x2 80Mhz OpenWRT setup. When comparing firmware with near double speed difference - make sure you fully posting your settings and testing methods. What does it look like when you use a 160 MHz channel on OpenWRT?
@ACwifidude : I was using 160 MHz in both cases, CPU was fully loaded with OpenWRT and that's probably the limiting factor
Check your country code and channel selection - makes a big difference for OpenWRT (select something legal).
160mhz in the US is doable selecting 100 for the channel, waiting a couple minutes for the router to scan for radar interference then running testing:
Run your CPU at performance governor or more aggressive ondemand settings. Turn on software offloading and turn off SQM.
I'm located in France and specified the right country code for that.
I switched back to stock firmware at the moment, but my tests were performed with performance governor, flow offloading enabled. Apart from that I was close to a default configuration, I did not touch SQM, I don't know if it's enabled ou disabled by default?
SQM is disabled by default.
Doesn’t sound like your adapter was truly connected at 160mhz. EU probably prefers lower channels I’d guess. I’d run the latest master build with the latest CT drivers to get the best results.
Post your wifi configuration and adapter phy rate if you decide to test again. 160mhz should give you high 800mbps / low 900mbps.
I actually got worse performance with master build, I could not get 160 MHz working, giving ~ 300 to 400 mbits download / 450~500 mbits upload (better in upload):
wlan0 ESSID: "NETGEAR56-5G"
Access Point: 8C:3B:AD:2D:1D:2B
Mode: Master Channel: 44 (5.220 GHz)
Tx-Power: 23 dBm Link Quality: 52/70
Signal: -58 dBm Noise: -103 dBm
Bit Rate: 396.6 MBit/s
Encryption: WPA2 PSK (CCMP)
Type: nl80211 HW Mode(s): 802.11nac
Hardware: 168C:0046 168C:CAFE [Qualcomm Atheros QCA9984]
TX power offset: none
Frequency offset: none
Supports VAPs: yes PHY name: phy0
Back to 19.07.3, I have the same numbers as 19.07.2 ~550 mbits down / 350 to 400 upload:
wlan0 ESSID: "NETGEAR56-5G"
Access Point: 8C:3B:AD:2D:1D:2B
Mode: Master Channel: 44 (5.220 GHz)
Tx-Power: 23 dBm Link Quality: 65/70
Signal: -48 dBm Noise: -103 dBm
Bit Rate: 783.0 MBit/s
Encryption: WPA2 PSK (CCMP)
Type: nl80211 HW Mode(s): 802.11nac
Hardware: 168C:0046 168C:CAFE [Qualcomm Atheros QCA9984]
TX power offset: none
Frequency offset: none
Supports VAPs: yes PHY name: phy0
My AC wireless config:
config wifi-device 'radio0'
option type 'mac80211'
option hwmode '11a'
option path 'soc/1b500000.pci/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0'
option htmode 'VHT160'
option channel '44'
option country 'FR'
That's the same channel as the one I was using with the stock firmware giving a big 900 mbits down / 400 mbits up. I've tried to play with channels without success. One thing I have noticed is about power, on the client side I can see:
OpenWRT 19.07.3:
Interface wlan0
ifindex 4
wdev 0x1
addr 24:41:8c:e1:aa:a0
ssid NETGEAR56-5G
type managed
wiphy 0
channel 44 (5220 MHz), width: 160 MHz, center1: 5250 MHz
txpower 20.00 dBm
Netgear 1.0.2.68:
Interface wlan0
ifindex 4
wdev 0x1
addr 24:41:8c:e1:aa:a0
ssid NETGEAR56-5G
type managed
wiphy 0
channel 44 (5220 MHz), width: 160 MHz, center1: 5250 MHz
txpower 22.00 dBm
I've seen in dmesg of the client that it's negotiating more power with stock firmware than with OpenWRT firmware:
wlan0: Limiting TX power to 20 (23 - 3) dBm as advertised by 8c:3b:ad:2d:1d:2b
CH 44 is no valid 160Mhz channel and your bitrate confirms it, only CH100 is valid for 160Mhz. Netgear probably uses 80+80, you can't currently configure this in openwrt webif.
I switched to channel 100:
wlan0 ESSID: "NETGEAR56-5G"
Access Point: 8C:3B:AD:2D:1D:2B
Mode: Master Channel: 100 (5.500 GHz)
Tx-Power: 26 dBm Link Quality: 55/70
Signal: -55 dBm Noise: -97 dBm
Bit Rate: 1560.0 MBit/s
Encryption: WPA2 PSK (CCMP)
Type: nl80211 HW Mode(s): 802.11nac
Hardware: 168C:0046 168C:CAFE [Qualcomm Atheros QCA9984]
TX power offset: none
Frequency offset: none
Supports VAPs: yes PHY name: phy0
The max download speed is still stuck at 550 mbits, as I said in my first comment, I don't really see how to get more without finding a way to ease CPU job, as it is fully loaded at this speed, even without SQM and with performance governor.