is my router experiencing a slow death?

[high_revs]

got the asus rt-n56u (aka the black diamond). i noticed that transferring files over wifi experiences issues. for ex., unable to find the map network drive (constantly) that breaks the transfer process. I don't recall it being like this in the last 1-2 months when it started happening. i'm copying over raw and jpeg files from my dslr, and mts files from my camcorder. i do it over wifi and my signals are good.

so i did some comparisons.

over wired ethernet - an avg of say 14.5 MB/s (only a little over 1/10th of gigabit, but pretty low even if you say gigabit is 500Mb/s send and 500Mb/s receive).

over 2.4GHz - piddly 1.8-2.0 MB/s

over 5GHz - an average of 3.8 MB/s (granted 5GHz has a couple of bars less over it's 2.4GHz, but it was going faster).


MB/s = megabytes per second
Mb/s = megabits per second

nothing else running on network (no one streaming, no downloads).

disclosures:

- i'm using a different firmware provided by Asus because the original firmware wasn't recognizing my 3TB seagate drive connected via USB to the router. i got and installed this in July.
- not using the ftp services or torrent services of router.
- using static dhcp since day1
- port forwarding enabled since day 1

i think that's pretty much it for my setup. pretty basic stuff.

[cwilliams]

Is there any information out there regarding that particular Seagate drive having an issue being set up as a network drive (not just with your router)?

Since the hard wired network setup isn't providing the full speed either, it seems it has to do with the connection between the router and hard drive. Also a possibility the hard drive is starting to fail. Have you connected the drive directly to a computer to see if it's getting full USB transfer speeds? Do you have another drive you could hook up to see if there is a speed difference?

You also might reset the router to factor specs and reinstall the new firmware.

I'm just throwing things out there that you may not have tried yet to attempt to rule out the router.

[high_revs]

the hard drive is actually pretty new. only bought it in july when i couldn't get it to work and asus gave me a different firmware (that they said would release soon but haven't yet).

I've not heard of the seagate having issue as a network drive though but will have to search on that. i figure that would be the router's job since that is one of the features? the drive works fine connected directly to my laptop. i do have another drive, though 2.5" in an external enclosure, that i can test tomorrow. if i go back to original firmware, i can only test wifi file transfers from my laptop to nas since the firmware fixed my seagate being recognized by the router. but i could use my old 2.5" drives external enclosures. it was only the new seagate 3tb drive it couldn't recognize while my 2.5" were only 260gb.

also, when i started experiencing drops in file transfers in my LAN, it was from my laptop to my nas (readynas duo) via wifi.

so guess my other tests would be another drive connected to router with current firmware. if no go, then back to oem firmware and test wifi transfers from laptop to nas and laptop to 2.5" older drives connected to router.

i thought my router might be dying since that was kinda the route my wrt52g went (both of them). but i had one of those for years with ddwrt and the other one was a bridged repeater only for a couple of months.

[the86d]

I don't know if this is your issue, but when a buddy's router started acting funny, he got a new one, handed me the old one, and a year later after plugging into some of the ports that failed to register a link, I ripped it apart. Caps were busting...

You can check that too, but I would assume it's the firmware.

Have you checked to see if anyone else is on it (via the router interface... verifying dhcp client leases, or an arp -a [in Windows])? I was really lazy, and never changed from WPA (as when I moved here I had a few devices that didn't support WPA2) to WPA2, and I noticed someone was on my shtuff via DHCP lease checking, after intermittent "not being able to access one wireless camera" I became suspicious of someone disassociating it from the router to get my passphrase. I soon switched to WPA2...

[Ryououki]

Check if the router is running too hot. This will kill transfer speeds especially over WiFi. You could try removing the board from the case, or just have a fan blowing over the router vents to circulate air through it.

I've had similar problems with overheating routers in the past.

[high_revs]

funny you mentioned that. i limit my IP's to the number of devices only on my network (plus the wifi equivalent of them if it's something like a laptop i hardwire or use via wifi). i have an excel file tracking the mac addresses and what statid dhcp ip# i assigned to it. i use wpa2 personal and it's been pretty steady since I installed the router back in Dec 2011.

I was concerned that since I added a couple more IPs to my range, i saw one I couldn't account for last nite. Thinking someone got in, I changed the wifi passwords on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. I then rebooted the router and looked at the dhcp leases log. it was still propping up. So this was most likely hardwired device as it was pretty immediate after i changed the wifi codes. i'm thinking it might be the 3TB seagate hard drive connected to the router? I'm kinda suprised the router would assign it an IP number as the device isn't for network and doesn't have a mac. I did get a new laptop 1.5 mounts ago and i have a docking station but last i recall, docking stations don't have their own NIC and the mac address showing in network details is the same as in my inventory.

so i have a mac address that i can't seem to locate that's hard wired. LOL I'll have to unplug all the devices from the wall ethernet ports and plug them 1x1 to see what mac that is. i certainly don't have new appliances either (tv, nas, etc.).

Have you checked to see if anyone else is on it (via the router interface... verifying dhcp client leases, or an arp -a [in Windows])? I was really lazy, and never changed from WPA (as when I moved here I had a few devices that didn't support WPA2) to WPA2, and I noticed someone was on my shtuff via DHCP lease checking, after intermittent "not being able to access one wireless camera" I became suspicious of someone disassociating it from the router to get my passphrase. I soon switched to WPA2...

it is possible though i was feeling it by hand too. is too hot lukewarm to the touch or hot to the touch? I've not had any routers like that but i can stick a fan next to it to see if that makes a difference.

i was replicating my data across this 3TB seagate hard drive and my nas. so i did notice the performance difference last night as i tried to browse also. (moving like 150gb worth of data to have a tertiary backup).

Check if the router is running too hot. This will kill transfer speeds especially over WiFi. You could try removing the board from the case, or just have a fan blowing over the router vents to circulate air through it.

I've had similar problems with overheating routers in the past.

[bigbearbear]

Check and see if there are any neighbors also using wireless routers in the same channel as yourself. If there are many of them, you will experience a slower performance.

[high_revs]

i forgot to mention, i checked for conflicting channels. i use http://tools.meraki.com/stumbler plus i also have a wifi analyzer app on my android phone. no conflicts showing at 2.4 or 5 GHz.

so i downgraded the firmware of my router back to an original published one (not the one asus gave me that's not published yet). since the asus old firmware won't recognize my 4 month old seagate 3Tb drive, I put a small 2.5" external one that it did recognize.

with older firmware (but published) the external drive attached to router
using wifi at 2.4GHz transfer rates were a 2.2-2.5 MB/sec.
using wifi at 5GHz transfer rates were a little better at 3 to 4 MB/sec
over wired ethernet - varied from 11.6 - 15 MB/sec

with older firmware version to nas - oddly this was a piddly 6-7 MB/sec

i'm leaving it at the older firmware since i use lync a lot and recently, performance with lync was pretty slow. i'm sure it's not the router's firmware, but just to eliminate that factor, i'll leave it on for now.

maybe there's a black friday sale where i can get another router and this time, with the ability of a guest account so i don't have to keep changing the ssid password

[nanoc]

OP, Id recommend trying another router.

Have you checked to see if anyone else is on it (via the router interface... verifying dhcp client leases, or an arp -a [in Windows])? I was really lazy, and never changed from WPA (as when I moved here I had a few devices that didn't support WPA2) to WPA2, and I noticed someone was on my shtuff via DHCP lease checking, after intermittent "not being able to access one wireless camera" I became suspicious of someone disassociating it from the router to get my passphrase. I soon switched to WPA2...

Switching from WPA to WPA2 would not provide anymore security currently. If the password is a non dictionary word or phrase, is of sufficient length, and has a few numbers or symbols it will basically be uncrackable. However you should check if your router has WPS enabled as that is currently the weakest link in most networks configured with WPA and better encryption. Easier to brute force a numeric WPS pin then a WPA passphrase.. Also remember the WEP is completely worthless takes less then 2 mins to retrieve any length password.

[the86d]

funny you mentioned that. i limit my IP's to the number of devices only on my network (plus the wifi equivalent of them if it's something like a laptop i hardwire or use via wifi). i have an excel file tracking the mac addresses and what statid dhcp ip# i assigned to it. i use wpa2 personal and it's been pretty steady since I installed the router back in Dec 2011.

I actually change the default start of the scope from 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.200 for DHCP and as devices populate I set them to static, and drop the static 4th octet to <200. This lets me know if anyone "special" is on, or I have a new device I need to set static. That is how I noticed it.

...Switching from WPA to WPA2 would not provide anymore security currently. If the password is a non dictionary word or phrase, is of sufficient length, and has a few numbers or symbols it will basically be uncrackable. However you should check if your router has WPS enabled as that is currently the weakest link in most networks configured with WPA and better encryption. Easier to brute force a numeric WPS pin then a WPA passphrase.. Also remember the WEP is completely worthless takes less then 2 mins to retrieve any length password.

[nanoc]