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Topic: TP-Link 1043nd Wireless N performance

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Hi,

I'm having trouble trying to get my TP-Link 1043nd to operate at 130 Mbits/sec. I can only seem to get it to connect to wireless n devices at 65 Mbits/sec. I have had connection at 130Mbits with stock firmware and my n devices but can't seem to configure in OpenWRT to do the same.

Has anyone had luck with this router? If so, can you please post you're settings or any tricks?

I'm running Backfire 10.03.1.

Thanks!

You have to:
-Enable Wireless n/g
-Enable 40MHZ Fat Channel
-Enable No Scan
-Make sure the wireless adapter you are using is able to negotiate 300Mbps as well. NOT ALL Wireless N supports 300Mbps
Wireless N defines 150 per Transmit and Receive so your adapter needs to be 2 Transmit X 2 Receive to negotiate 300Mbps
1 Transmit X 1 Receive only negotiates 150Mbps

(Last edited by alphasparc on 11 Apr 2012, 04:37)

@alphasparc:

bad advice!
1. this wouldn't help him to get 130Mbit/s instead of 65Mbit/s
    65Mbit/s is 1 statial stream with 20MHz Channel
    135Mbit/s are 2 statial streams with 20MHz

so that he only get 65Mbit/s is because he has only one spatial stream not because he runs only a 20MHz Channel.

So your advice will get him to 150Mbit/s (1 stream 40Mhz) maximum, not 300Mbit/s !

and to suggest everyone to enable "no scan" is really bad, too. There is a reason for this scan, so that one AP don't fill up the whole available spectrum at 2.4GHz (ok not the whole only 82%, but still too much). If 2,4 GHz is so crowded that is doesn't work with 40MHz without the "no scan" option there is a really good reason for it, and you won't be happy if your neighbor would use this option, either.

so it would be a good idea to figure why it can only use one stream before you show anti-social behaviour like the "no scan"-option.

what's the receiving device? laptop with build-in antennas? a usb-stick (with sticks it's often impossible to get more than 1 stream because the antennas are too close)
how near is the device. try a few meters, maybe with an obstacle in between. being too near isn't good for MIMO. 

And sure you can try to set 40MHz (but please without "no scan") but be aware that some wifi-cards don't allow 40MHz on 2,4GHz e.g. the intel 4695.

Many thanks. I do agree with eleon, if I have wireless n/g enabled and 20MHz channel on the stock firmware, it does connect at 135 MBits. OpenWRT should be able to do the same thing. My wireless space is crowded, so trying for 2 channels (40MHz) is silly, so 2 statial streams @ 20MHz works well.

As for the receiving devices, I've tried 2 laptops @ 1m, a desktop with two wireless antenna's @ 2m, and an HTC Incredible S. Nothing will connect over 65 MBits even though I've had all running at 135MBits with stock firmware. I'm thinking there must be some setting that's not right.

/etc/config/wireless is as follows:

config 'wifi-device' 'radio0'
        option 'type' 'mac80211'
        option 'macaddr' 'ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff'
        list 'ht_capab' 'SHORT-GI-40'
        list 'ht_capab' 'DSSS_CCK-40'
        option 'htmode' 'HT20'
        option 'hwmode' '11ng'
        option 'channel' '4'

Any ideas?

I have a WDS bridge between two WR1043ND routers using 20MHZ and the connection is 130Mbit/s. My laptop is also connected to the WDS AP at 130Mbit/s.

I'm guessing you don't have encryption enabled.

j8soot wrote:

I have a WDS bridge between two WR1043ND routers using 20MHZ and the connection is 130Mbit/s. My laptop is also connected to the WDS AP at 130Mbit/s.

I'm guessing you don't have encryption enabled.

No, the other section of /etc/config/wireless has

option encryption psk2

any other ideas? Do I need a different encryption setting?

I also have option encryption psk2.

One thing that is strange is that you say your HTC Incredible S connected to the stock router at 135Mbit/s and this is the first time I have heard of an Android phone connecting above 72Mbit/s. Even my Galaxy Nexus connects at 65Mbit/s.

My WR1043ND is v1.8 and I am using a self-compiled version of trunk but I don't remember having your problem when I used backfire.

how do you test the connected speed?

if you want an accurate rate run "iw wlan0 station dump" on the router to see the connected clients and the  brutto-bandwith and coding scheme for rx and tx you can check the datarate table here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009 to see if its using 1 or 2 spatial streams (MCS 0-7 -> 1 stream, MCS 8-15 -> 2 streams)

And make sure that your client makes some (or better a lot of) traffic. If there is no or only litte traffic a slower MCS is used. I guess that's for powersaving and stability.

(Last edited by eleon216 on 12 Apr 2012, 08:28)

Also be aware that the rates reported by "iw dev wlan0 station dump" are those of the last received packet, not the average over all client traffic, so reissue the command a few times to get an idea.

pmerrill wrote:

Hi,

I'm having trouble trying to get my TP-Link 1043nd to operate at 130 Mbits/sec. I can only seem to get it to connect to wireless n devices at 65 Mbits/sec. I have had connection at 130Mbits with stock firmware and my n devices but can't seem to configure in OpenWRT to do the same.

Has anyone had luck with this router? If so, can you please post you're settings or any tricks?

I'm running Backfire 10.03.1.

Thanks!

Hi all, i´m new to the forum, I´m having the same issue running a TP-Link 1043nd V1.8, and OpenWrt AA 12.09 beta.
Both a Desktop with TPlink Pci express wifi card and a Asus 1201T netbook, connect at 65 Mbits/sec. Using stock firmware works normal at 150Mbits/Sec.

Also having the ath: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms error in kernel and wifi resets, not able to track down when it happens.

@J8soot: What version from trunk version are you using on your router?

Edit: yesterday i tested setting wifi to 802.11g and 802.11b as some sugested on forum and Bug tracker, but had the same disconnecting issues, manage to replicate issue by steaming a HD video from youtube. So i changed to 802.11n again and tried different second channel settings, with the same results max speed at 65Mbits/s and disconections. I´ll try some more tests today and post any news on a new topic.

(Last edited by Coragem on 26 Sep 2012, 15:01)

I´ve done more testing and come to a setup that apparently solved my wifi disconnections. And the speed issue.

I´m using a TP-LINK 1043ND V1.8 router with the new bootloader from factory and running the AA 12.09 Beta.

First i tested using the noscan option as suggested and it indeed allowed the wifi card to connect at 150Mb/s however performance testing the wifi i noticed the real speed was around 24Mb/s and sometimes as low as 2Mb/sec or 4Mb/sec.

So after this i turned back to setting noscan=0. and tryed up the wifi.
Got the "20/40 MHz operation not permitted on channel pri=10 sec=6 based on overlapping BSSes" so i tried with other channels with the same error.
I have a lot of other wifi networks near mine, i can get 10+ on my desktop wifi card at any time.

So i went back to single channel 65Mbit/Sec connection, and performance monitoring the router showed average speed of 60Mbit/sec without much variance.

So that closed my speed issues, the wifi network speed is ok now.

To help with the disconnection during load, i tried the settings bellow.

RTS THRESHOLD: 2432 (Same as my old D-link router)
FRAGMENTATION: 2346 (Same as my old D-link router)
lowered Tx power set to 10dBm (Still gives me 5 bars on signal at me desktop so its still fine).

Its working fine so far for the last 3 days, i have been playing battlefield 3 and several youtube videos and wifi seems to be solid now. Hope it helps.

Excuse me, you talk of 130 and 65 Mbps, but why not 300 and 150??

nebbia88 wrote:

Excuse me, you talk of 130 and 65 Mbps, but why not 300 and 150??

Nebbia88, Both my Laptop and Desktop Wifi cards are 150Mbps max. Can´t go any faster unless i buy new cards, and considering what i learned from this, will only be worth buying if i buy a new 5Ghz Wifi Router. For now If my WLan can go faster than my Internet Connection, it fits my needs.

Ah ok you have single stream wifi cards, now i understand.


"So i went back to single channel 65Mbit/Sec connection, and performance monitoring the router showed average speed of 60Mbit/sec without much variance."

How do you test this? Could you try a real world scenario like ftp transfer?
Usually you get HALF of the displayed "bitrate" for example an old 54 Mbps card will do 25 Mbps, i'm expexting 35 Mbps (~4 MB/s) or so from your 65Mbps connection!

Thanks!

(Last edited by nebbia88 on 29 Sep 2012, 07:40)

Really? Still nobody has resolved that?
of course I have the same problem...

20Mhz channel -> 65Mbps
40Mhz channel -> 150Mbps not 300Mbps... Why? Who know...

what are your clients wifi card?

Hello! Same problem on tp-link 703, 720, 3020 and d-link 505. Stock firmware works on 130. What's wrong here? sad

No you do not have the same problem.

At least the first two routers you listed are 150Mbps only. You cannot get 300 on a device that does not have the hardware to support 300.

Maybe my message was not clear enough. I mean i can't get 130 mbps on these routers, only 65/73.

Those are only single stream routers. It is not possible to get 130Mbps (65x2/MCS14/15/20) on single stream routers. No such mode exists.

look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009

look at the values for
1 stream 20 MHz (example: iPad 1 not capable of 40MHz) 65Mbit
1 stream 40 Mhz  130Mbit
1 stream 40MHz + Short Guard Interval (short-gi) 150Mbit

There are only 3 non-overlapping 20MHz channels available in 2.4GHz. Using 40MHz might result in unstable connections because of distortions

Read the page more carefully. There is no 1 stream 40 Mhz 130Mbit as I already said. 130Mbit is only possible on 2 stream and 3 stream devices.

Single stream has the option of 120, 135, and 150Mbit. There is no 130 possible.

Also there are four non-overlapping 20Mhz channels in 2.4Ghz in most of the world. The limitation of 3 only applies in North America.

(Last edited by qasdfdsaq on 10 Jun 2014, 14:59)

indeed there seem to be no 130 mode

so the statement "Stock firmware works on 130." is flawed - a bug or simplification in the Stock-UI might happen - resulting in confusion;
since TP-Link advertises the 3020 device with "up to 150mbit" that mode should be supported by stock os
and should work with OpenWrt too when configured (40Mhz, Short-GI)

Theoretically, it should be capable. However remember WiFi certification, 802.11n interoperability, and general good practice requires devices to automatically switch off 40Mhz if it detects other access points in any part of the overlapping band. Which will be the vast majority of the time, unless you are in a very isolated environment.

OpenWrt obeys this by default as well, so more than likely it has switched off 40Mhz to avoid interfering with nearby access points.

(Last edited by qasdfdsaq on 10 Jun 2014, 18:14)

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