Hello everyone,

I have a server and a wireless laptop connected via a wireless router. I have a bunch of mp3s located on a nfs share on the server and use my wireless laptop to access them from time to time.

I'm trying to figure out if I'm getting the best possible results possible or if I need to tweak some things.

I can't seem to get much more than ~ 300kb/s (kilobytes) in either direction.

I have found and use a very helpful tool called iozone (which really kicks ass when it comes to network benchmarking). It seems that pretty much all of the different rsize and wsize's result in roughly the same speed of 300kb/s.

My question is does that sound reasonable? I don't have much experience using nfs or wireless so I don't have any personal experiences to fall back on.

Also - a note of interest: when I plug my laptop via ethernet cable it takes off - like 10 Mb/s.

Thanks.

PS I have tons of information if you need it. I just don't know what would be helpful. ie: type of wireless card, results of iozone tests, nfs settings, fstab, etc... you name it, I'll get it for you.

Some additional information might be useful.

At a first glance, it seems that you ethernet runs @100Mbit/s which gives 10MB/s - thus it is fully used.

Wireless on the other hand...
300KB/s gives 2.4Mbit/s which is rather normal for an old 11b Accesspoint. form a 11g I'd expect something like 2MB/s (and probably 10MB/s form a new 11n, but I haven't done any testing yet.)

What kind of card and AP are you using (I am more interested in the supported standards, that the action products)?
If the Router supports 11g: Is it configured in mixed (b/g) mode?

cheers
G.

Really quick I want to correct you - I'm getting 300 kilobytes/second sustained transfer rate.

I have a Linksys WRT54GL which uses 11b/11g and claims 54Mbit/second wlan and 10/100Mbit ethernet.

It is configured for b/g mixed - and after just looking at the router it is claiming 24Mbit/sec wireless rate (due to mixed mode?).

Side note (prolly doesn't matter - but may assist you): I installed 3rd party firmware dd-wrt version 24 service pack 1.

Let me know if there is anything else you need.
Thank you!

Well, I just saw the thread, I thought I could answer...

This sort of confirms what I have thought. (Check those 24Mbit/s again: I guess it is 2.4GHz, which is the base band where wireless operates - as opposed to 5GHz for 11a.)

The trouble with mixed mode is its backware compatibility. It sounds great to be able to serve old and new wireless devices.
Fact is, that those 2 standard are quite different. While an AP running in mixed mode with only 11g devices connected, not much it noticed. But I only one (1) 11b devices joins in, the speed drops dramatically as the AP has constantly to switch between the 2 operating modes. You would end up with even worse speeds than what 11b can offer.

Talking of speeds:
11b offers 11Mbit/s = 1.3MB/s at optimal condidtions (even better than lab condidtions). A reasonable estimate would expect 300KB/s as a sustainable speed.
11g offers 54Mbit/s = 6.7MB/s at optimal condidtions. A reasonable estimate for sustainable speed is 2MB/s.

The missing part in the equation would your notebook's wireless card...

Provided that there are no other 11b devices interfierring, my best guess is, that your notebook's card does not support 11g, thus the speed is so low.

Could you run some tests by changing your (or your notebook's) distance to the AP?
Is there anything in the building that might interfer? (Reinforeced concrete (stone already has a dampening effect) between floors is a wireless killer.[I live in Europe, thus we have more stone or concrete buildings than in the US.])

I don't know, whether it is realed or not. I only heard positive feedback from that driver/firmware.

cheers
G.

Thank you for your time in answering my questions.

I will have to check on the exact specs of my card. I know it is an atheros wireless card (my laptop is an Asus Eee 1000ha).

I also have to check on my girlfriend's laptop. These are the only 2 laptops connected to the router. When I do my tests I'm within ~20 feet line-of-sight of the router. There are no walls in the way.

I will check on these things and then possibly try to switch it to only wireless 11g if I can.

Thank you again.

Ok I checked out newegg.com and found my laptop:
Asus Eee 1000ha
LAN 10/100Mbps
WLAN 802.11b/g Wireless LAN

Interestingly enough my girlfriend's laptop happens to use the exact same card... I am going to try to switch my router's settings to purely 802.11g and see what happens.

I will let you know.

I changed the router to 11g only and retested using iozone. It really seems that this is the best I can get.

Let me know if you think of anything that may improve my speeds.
Thank you for all your time.

just thought i would let you know that i had problems streaming video using mythtv wireless and nfs shares i changed my shares to sshfs and the problems stopped completely i wrote a small howto which is now outdated but im sure you could piece the info together its definatly worth trying sshfs you can set it up in /etc/fstab and either auto mount or have a script do it after boot