The Situation:
When I try to transfer a file from one computer to another that are both connected via wireless on a WRT54GL (in a office) with dd-wrt firmware I often get bad speeds. In generally they average around 100 kilobytes a second. Either computer can download via wireless from the Internet at at about 2 megabytes a second. The speed is slow with the transfer of one large file.
There are about 20 other wireless networks that the computers can see, so there is a lot of noise, but I don't have the equipment to really monitor the frequencies well. But that still seems pretty slow. I thought maybe it was the transmit on each card, but even when they are 5 feet away with a line of sight I still get these speeds. According to Linux both cards are operating at 54g.
My Questions:
- Is this normal for this sort of
consumer level wireless equipment? - Anything I can do to improve it?
- why is wireless to wireless transfer
slow when everything else isn't? - Whats steps might I take to figure
out what is happening? For example,
are lots of packets not making to the
access point requiring
retransmissions?
Above all, I want to find out what the problem actually is. This may seem odd, but at this point I am more interested in understanding what the problem is than fixing it.
What I have tried:
I have tried messing with lots of settings. Different channels, xmit power, G-Only, none of which has made anything any better. I've also tried upgrading to newer dd-wrt firmware version and doing a reset to wipe out the settings.
Best Answer
No, that router should be pretty quick between computers on the network. I've never had that sort of issue using that firmware.
I would suggest starting with a fresh firmware install of DD-WRT without playing with any of the settings. Leave the network unprotected and test out the speeds. WPA can cause slowdowns if you have that enabled.
The other thing to look at is what kind of files you are transferring. Are they a large number of tiny files? That will considerably slow down the transfers.
Update: A few other things you can look for:
Wireless packet info on /Info.htm - This indicates how many packets are being sent/received and lost.
Try plugging the computers in (wired vs. wireless).
How is your load average (top right of the page) anything under 1 is OK.
On the /Status_Wireless.asp page, check to see what the actual signal strength is as reported by the router. This also gives you the Signal to Noise Ratio. I'm not sure what is good, but on mine the signal is at -88, noise -94, SNR 5. If you are getting bad signal, try changing the channel.