Low Throughput on 5.2 GHz Link

rafit · Tue Sep 21, 2004 6:19 pm

Hi All,
I have a 13 Km 5 GHz a/g link.
Signal Stength = -72 dB
Data Rate = 24 Mbps.

I have Router OS version 2.8.16, wireless-lagacy installed. I get ftp of rate of 240 KB/s. I am not using Nstream. I thought I should have something far better than this. Am I missing something?

Solomon.

rafit · Wed Sep 22, 2004 3:44 pm

Hi All,
I have a 13 Km 5 GHz a/g link.
Signal Stength = -72 dB
Data Rate = 24 Mbps.

I have Router OS version 2.8.16, wireless-lagacy installed. I get ftp of rate of 240 KB/s. I am not using Nstream. I thought I should have something far better than this. Am I missing something?

Solomon.

Hi Again,
On a better Channel, (I guess my antennas may be tuned for that channel) I get a signal strength of -66 dBm and Data Rate of 36 Mbps. My ftp throuput goes up to 370 KByte/s. Still nowhere near the data rate of 36 Mbps.
Any experiences and advice?

Solomon.

tully · Wed Sep 22, 2004 4:53 pm

On 13km, it would improve your speed to use Nstreme -- most likely. At this distance, the time for ack packets start to really hurt your max throughput potential.

John

mp3turbo2 · Wed Sep 22, 2004 6:35 pm

all-in-all, this shouldn't be at 370kB/s ... rafit, create a user account for me, I will log on, change your settings, delete that user afterwards... just try to think about way how to get username/password to me - definitely not here in forum, I could send you my email address or something...

btw, are you definitely sure that you have your antennas properly aligned? We have seen some signal 'leakage' and nice dB indicators, but throughput was poor, of course.

Or otherwise : copy your interface wireless print output here and I will try to suggest you something.

KimC · Wed Sep 22, 2004 7:19 pm

Hello

we have just tried something similar. The wireless signal and speed were reporting OK and running stable, but with a very low real throughput in one of the directions. The reason was an incompatibility/driverproblem with a 4-port MT-NIC and a Via-based motherboard.

Please check the ethernet performance in each direction with the MT-bandwidth tester.

Regards
Kim C

tully · Thu Sep 23, 2004 7:49 am

If you are talking about the EPIA V, then it has a problem with the Atheros radio and will not work correctly -- it doesn't work with its own Ethernet well if you have an Atheros card in it. It has nothing to do with software, it is simply a bios problem. And nothing to do with a four port Ethernet card.

If it is not the EPIA V, then we would need to test it to see if it has the same issues.

John

rafit · Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:38 am

Hi All,
with my good channel ( I guess less noise), 3 supported-rates (6, 9 & 18) and nstream I now get an ftp throughput of 1,500 Kbyte/sec from ap to client and 960 Kbyte/sec from client to ap. The client is within the city in a rather noisy rf environment. This is acceptable for an 18 Mbps link. Thanks.

John, please what does ccq measure? Is it sucessful transmission as against dropped packets? Please explain?
Thanks.

stephenpatrick · Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:52 am

Hi John, and other users:

Can you elaborate on problems with EPIA V?
I was hoping to use this as a platform using Atheros cards and MT.

Any other users got this working, or is this a "dead duck"?

Many thanks

Stephen

Michaelg · Thu Sep 23, 2004 3:05 pm

Running Epia 800 mhz, 1 Atheros 5211, 2 5212.

system resource> pr
uptime: 30d12h49m57s
free-memory: 97452 kB
total-memory: 119296 kB
cpu: VIA
cpu-frequency: 800 MHz
cpu-load: 1
free-hdd-space: 19934 kB
total-hdd-space: 61484 kB
write-sect-since-reboot: 26514
write-sect-total: 104680

system resource pci> pr

# DEVICE VENDOR NAME IRQ
0 02:0b.0 Atheros Communications AR5211 (rev: 1) 11
1 02:0a.0 Atheros Communications AR5212 (rev: 1) 10
2 02:08.0 Atheros Communications AR5212 (rev: 1) 12
3 01:00.0 Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 (rev: 106) 11
4 00:14.0 Hint Corp HB1-SE33 PCI-PCI Bridge (rev: 21)
5 00:12.0 VIA Technologies VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev: 81) 11
6 00:11.4 VIA Technologies VT8235 ACPI (rev: 16)
7 00:11.3 VIA Technologies USB (rev: 30) 10
8 00:11.2 VIA Technologies USB (rev: 30) 10
9 00:11.1 VIA Technologies VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/...
10 00:11.0 VIA Technologies VT8231 [PCI-to-ISA Bridge] (rev: 16)
11 00:01.0 VIA Technologies VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia AGP] (rev: 0)
12 00:00.0 VIA Technologies VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia] (rev: 5)

bandwidth-test
address: XXX:XXX:XXX:XXX
status: running
duration: 50s
rx-total-average: 15.3Mbps

stephenpatrick · Fri Sep 24, 2004 11:45 am

Hi Michael,

Is your EPIA-V, or which board specifically?
Looks like I have this problem of "slow throughput" on a short-range lab test.

EPIA V10000 (1GHz CPU)
Atheros mini-PCI 5212 and 5211 from MT, including their PCI<>mini-PCI adaptors
RouterOS 2.8.16

Have tried pretty well all modes, it's just not giving good throughput from Lan-Wireless-Lan using the Windows bandwidth test tool on PCs.
CPU loading low, about 10% peak.
Running the bandwidth tester inside MT between the routers over the wireless, it shows quite good performance, with 39Mbps sustained, but the CPU loading is 100% (as expected).
When I first loaded the RouterOS I didn't have the wireless cards, and running the internal bandwidth tester between the 2 routers showed 93Mbps sustained (one way) through our LAN switches. So the Ethernet ports certainly work on their own.
So it's performance through the routers LAN<>wireless that seems to be the problem. I'm suspecting that the Ethernet and Atheros cards don't like co-existing.

Can anyone advise on good/bad motherboards, and what version RouterOS running, to help me (and others) solve this issue?

Many thanks

jonbrewer · Mon Sep 27, 2004 1:34 am

We have four EPIA V boards deployed, two using 2PCI card risers, and two using a single PCI card. Below an AP that regularly bursts >10mbps over wireless links.

uptime: 49d37m
free-memory: 875992 kB
total-memory: 904636 kB
cpu: VIA
cpu-frequency: 533 MHz
cpu-load: 2
free-hdd-space: 31174 kB
total-hdd-space: 61476 kB
write-sect-since-reboot: 2856
write-sect-total: 6686

0 01:00.0 Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 (rev: 106) 10
1 00:14.0 Atheros Communications AR5212 (rev: 1) 11
2 00:13.0 Atheros Communications AR5212 (rev: 1) 10
3 00:12.0 VIA Technologies VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev: 81) 10
4 00:11.5 VIA Technologies VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev: 64) 12
5 00:11.4 VIA Technologies VT8235 ACPI (rev: 16)
6 00:11.3 VIA Technologies USB (rev: 30) 5
7 00:11.2 VIA Technologies USB (rev: 30) 5
8 00:11.1 VIA Technologies VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/C/V...
9 00:11.0 VIA Technologies VT8231 [PCI-to-ISA Bridge] (rev: 16)
10 00:01.0 VIA Technologies VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia AGP] (rev: 0)
11 00:00.0 VIA Technologies VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia] (rev: 5)

tully · Mon Sep 27, 2004 2:17 pm

Maybe you have a new version of the bios. I know that they were working on this.

John

stephenpatrick · Mon Sep 27, 2004 2:26 pm

Hi Jon,

Thanks - that's encouraging, though I'm not sure what to try next other than getting different boards in to test.

What BIOS do you have?

Many thanks

Stephen

jonbrewer · Thu Sep 30, 2004 6:42 am

Hi Jon,

Thanks - that's encouraging, though I'm not sure what to try next other than getting different boards in to test.

What BIOS do you have?

Many thanks

Stephen

Hi Stephen, unfortunately I can't get the BIOS info from any of the machines w/out taking them out of service! Machines are on building rooftops in outdoor enclosures. I can tell you that the VIA boards are EPIA V w/ a two slot PCI riser card.

One trick we use is that our APs do nothing but routing and wireless. At every site where we connect to backhaul we have three boxes - a border router, a tunnel server, and a wireless AP. Border routers and tunnel servers (located inside) are just SFF Celeron machines running base Mikrotik license.

pauljatho · Thu Oct 14, 2004 3:12 pm

Hi

I was previously running 2.8.11 on my backbone which comprises 802.11 a + b + g. My throughput on my 5Ghz links was about 15Mbps effective, today I loaded 2.8.17 on my entire network and my speeds are now down to less than 1Mbps !!!!!!

It seems that all of my 2.4Ghz links are still fine throughput wise but all of my 5Ghz links have gone bad.

I have changed nothing on the hardware side of things, I even tried enabling N-Streme but to no avail. Something that I also find very weird is that if I do a bandwidth test from the station to the AP it tells me that the speed is 13Mbps, if I test the same link but from AP to Station it tells me that the throughput is about 1Mbps ????

In the past if I ran an ftp across this link I would easily get about 6Mbps, now I don't even get .5Mbps.

Any Ideas ?

mybfe · Sun Oct 17, 2004 5:48 pm

I just lost my Motorola Canopy backhaul and need to replace it. I have 2 extra RouterBoards sitting around and was planning on just ordering the 11.a/b/g cards and using them for my backhaul.

After reading on the forum of all the trouble with throughput, Im not sure if I should use Mikrotik for the backhaul now. Is anybody having success with this solution? Is it only a Via chipset issue? Will I get good throughput with my RouterBoards?

Thanks in advance

-Brian

ghmorris · Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:13 am

We do OK with MT on backhaul and PtMP. The latest 2.8.17 has fixed the disconnect problems we an others were experiencing.

We see about 8Mb TCP at 10 miles, and about 6Mb TCP at 30 miles. Very reliable generally.

We have had very poor results with Nstreme, to the point we have removed it due to constant link disruption on heavily loaded links.

Aside from that, the latest version of the MT software is rock solid for us.

George

ghmorris · Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:15 am

Brian, those throughput numbers I listed are on both routerboards and VIA gigapro systems. We see no real difference.

EPIA are a different thing altogether.

George

jonbrewer · Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:37 am

Hi

I was previously running 2.8.11 on my backbone which comprises 802.11 a + b + g. My throughput on my 5Ghz links was about 15Mbps effective, today I loaded 2.8.17 on my entire network and my speeds are now down to less than 1Mbps !!!!!!

It seems that all of my 2.4Ghz links are still fine throughput wise but all of my 5Ghz links have gone bad.

I have changed nothing on the hardware side of things, I even tried enabling N-Streme but to no avail. Something that I also find very weird is that if I do a bandwidth test from the station to the AP it tells me that the speed is 13Mbps, if I test the same link but from AP to Station it tells me that the throughput is about 1Mbps ????

In the past if I ran an ftp across this link I would easily get about 6Mbps, now I don't even get .5Mbps.

Any Ideas ?

Suggest uploading .17 "wireless legacy" to all your routers and rebooting. .17 wireless drivers just doesn't seem to work with some card/pc combinations. bloody disappointing.

Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:44 am

Suggest uploading .17 "wireless legacy" to all your routers and rebooting. .17 wireless drivers just doesn't seem to work with some card/pc combinations. bloody disappointing.

warning! never upload both packages. you have to first remove the wireless.npk and only then install the legacy package.

pauljatho · Mon Oct 18, 2004 12:18 pm

I loaded the legacy packages last week and it sorted out my 5.8Ghz throughput problems. I did not first remove the wireless package !! and it seems ok with that. Hopefully the problems with the wireless package will be sorted out in the near future as it has a lot more features than the legacy package.

Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:27 pm

this will only cause problems. if you have problems, remember this. you will have to remove both and then install one

pauljatho · Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:38 pm

Hi Normis,

I need to upgrade these units over the wlan interface, so I will not be able to remove the package's first !!!
When I visit my high site's again I will remove and install the new packages.
What problems can I look out for running wireless and legacy at the same time.

jonbrewer · Fri Oct 22, 2004 4:45 am

this will only cause problems. if you have problems, remember this. you will have to remove both and then install one

I have not had any problems with both wireless and wireless legacy installed. What will happen?

Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:25 am

look at your `/system check-install` and see how many corrupted files you have

jonbrewer · Sun Oct 24, 2004 11:52 pm

look at your `/system check-install` and see how many corrupted files you have

I didn't see any corrupted files - it just says "Done!"

I also didn't see both packages anymore. It seems that adding the "wireless legacy" package gets rid of the "wireless" package.

Mon Oct 25, 2004 12:51 pm

then there is no problem. the question was about having two packages at the same time. i don't see why you even said this

I have not had any problems with both wireless and wireless legacy installed

Low Throughput on 5.2 GHz Link

Low Throughput on 5.2 GHz Link

Re: Low Throughput on 5.2 GHz Link

@stephenpatrick

EPIA V usage

VIA EPIA BIOS

Is this throughput issue only with Via? How bout Routerboard

Who is online