At home I’ve been using a Linksys WRT54GL loaded with DD-WRT for quite some time. I think it’s time has come and gone though. 100Mb LAN speed and no ‘N’ wireless speed.
I’ve decided upon the Asus RT-N16 and I’m going to load Tomato USB on it. This thing supports Wireless ‘N’, has gigabit lan, a faster CPU and hopefully better performance.
I wanted to do a baseline performance comparison of my current set up first. I have an Acer Revo 3610 in my lounge hard wired to my router. The 3610 has a gig onboard NIC. My PC has a gig NIC and is also hardwired. I have a Synology ds210j NAS that has a gig NIC onboard and is hardwired. I also have a Acer Revo 3600 in my bedroom which currently uses it’s onboard Wireless ‘G’ NIC, which xbmc doesn’t seem to like playing media through: http://mellowd.co.uk/ccie/?p=1081 – I also have various other wireless devices.
I have iperf installed on all my main devices, so let’s see what kind of results I get with the Linksys WRT54GL
NAS <==> 100Mb Hard Wired 3610
Simba> iperf -s -p 555 -i 10 ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 555 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ mellowd@XBMCLive:~$ iperf -c 10.20.30.4 -p 555 -i 10 -t 90 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.20.30.4, TCP port 555 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.20.30.140 port 50237 connected with 10.20.30.4 port 555 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.3 Mbits/sec [ 3] 10.0-20.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec [ 3] 20.0-30.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.0 Mbits/sec [ 3] 30.0-40.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec [ 3] 40.0-50.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec [ 3] 50.0-60.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec [ 3] 60.0-70.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec [ 3] 70.0-80.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec [ 3] 80.0-90.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.0 Mbits/sec [ 3] 0.0-90.0 sec 1010 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec
mellowd@XBMCLive:~$ sudo iperf -s -p 555 -i 10 ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 555 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ Simba> iperf -c 10.20.30.140 -p 555 -i 10 -t 90 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.20.30.140, TCP port 555 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.20.30.4 port 51931 connected with 10.20.30.140 port 555 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 10.0-20.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 20.0-30.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.2 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 30.0-40.0 sec 101 MBytes 84.5 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 40.0-50.0 sec 54.5 MBytes 45.7 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 50.0-60.0 sec 54.6 MBytes 45.8 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 60.0-70.0 sec 54.5 MBytes 45.8 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 70.0-80.0 sec 54.5 MBytes 45.7 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 80.0-90.0 sec 54.6 MBytes 45.8 Mbits/sec [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-90.0 sec 710 MBytes 66.2 Mbits/sec
I had already tested the wireless Revo 3600, but here were it’s results:
NAS <==> Wireless Revo
Simba> iperf -s -p 555 -i 10 ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 555 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ mellowd@XBMCLive:~$ iperf -c 10.20.30.4 -p 555 -i 10 -t 600 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.20.30.4, TCP port 555 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.20.30.110 port 45553 connected with 10.20.30.4 port 555 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 19.2 MBytes 16.1 Mbits/sec [ 3] 10.0-20.0 sec 19.4 MBytes 16.3 Mbits/sec [ 3] 20.0-30.0 sec 18.6 MBytes 15.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 30.0-40.0 sec 18.4 MBytes 15.4 Mbits/sec [ 3] 40.0-50.0 sec 18.5 MBytes 15.5 Mbits/sec [ 3] 50.0-60.0 sec 18.4 MBytes 15.4 Mbits/sec [ 3] 60.0-70.0 sec 15.7 MBytes 13.1 Mbits/sec [ 3] 70.0-80.0 sec 16.9 MBytes 14.2 Mbits/sec . . . . . . [ 3] 270.0-280.0 sec 18.7 MBytes 15.7 Mbits/sec ^C[ 3] 0.0-285.7 sec 503 MBytes 14.8 Mbits/sec
Basically an avergage of between 66-94Mb on the wire and 14.8Mb on the wireless. How does the Asus hold up?
NAS <==> 1Gb Hard Wired 3610
Simba> iperf -s -p 555 -i 10 ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 555 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ mellowd@XBMCLive:~$ iperf -c 10.20.30.4 -p 555 -i 10 -t 90 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.20.30.4, TCP port 555 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.20.30.6 port 44203 connected with 10.20.30.4 port 555 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 752 MBytes 631 Mbits/sec [ 3] 10.0-20.0 sec 753 MBytes 632 Mbits/sec [ 3] 20.0-30.0 sec 742 MBytes 622 Mbits/sec [ 3] 30.0-40.0 sec 751 MBytes 630 Mbits/sec [ 3] 40.0-50.0 sec 747 MBytes 627 Mbits/sec [ 3] 50.0-60.0 sec 743 MBytes 623 Mbits/sec [ 3] 60.0-70.0 sec 750 MBytes 629 Mbits/sec [ 3] 70.0-80.0 sec 748 MBytes 627 Mbits/sec [ 3] 80.0-90.0 sec 746 MBytes 626 Mbits/sec [ 3] 0.0-90.0 sec 6.57 GBytes 627 Mbits/sec
NAS <==> Wireless 3610
mellowd@XBMCLive:~$ iperf -c 10.20.30.4 -p 777 -i 10 -t 60 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.20.30.4, TCP port 777 TCP window size: 16.00 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [196] local 10.20.30.14 port 55378 connected with 10.20.30.4 port 777 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [196] 0.0-10.0 sec 38.9 MBytes 32.6 Mbits/sec [196] 10.0-20.0 sec 37.6 MBytes 31.5 Mbits/sec [196] 20.0-30.0 sec 38.8 MBytes 32.5 Mbits/sec [196] 30.0-40.0 sec 39.3 MBytes 33.0 Mbits/sec [196] 40.0-50.0 sec 36.1 MBytes 30.3 Mbits/sec [196] 50.0-60.0 sec 40.0 MBytes 33.6 Mbits/sec [196] 0.0-60.0 sec 231 MBytes 32.2 Mbits/sec
Basically, the wired LAN has improved loads, but not exactly running at 1Gbps. Also the wireless speed has doubled, but nothing to write home about. It’s great for surfing, but forget about streaming HD video
I believe in most cases with 30mbps will be enough for the HD, its not that bad ;)
errtime, I’d like to agree in theory as it ‘should’ work, but xbmc just doesn’t like it: http://mellowd.co.uk/ccie/?p=1081
Even with this speed, i still got xbmc pausing and freezing. Honestly I still think it’s a problem with xbmc
I’m experiencing the same speeds as you are through a wireless-n client. It’s disheartening when I was running Tomato before on the WRT54GL and got 20-21 Megabits/sec and now I’m only getting 32-36 Megabits/sec.
If you find a solution please let me know. I’ve done some initial searching but only found your blog. Glad to see I’m not the only one.