Linksys WRT54GL Broadband seems limited to 50Mb/s

Champ · 22-10-2014 6:16am #1

Hi all,
I'm not sure if there's anyone else running a similar setup to mine but basically I have a WRT54GL with Tomato firmware.

I'm using this as a bridge (well technically a DMZ which all my network devices are connected to) for my UPC 120 Mb/s connection which is coming in via a Technicolor Modem / Router.

My PCs are connected via Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet ports on the PCs) to the available LAN ports on the WRT54GL which are rated at 100 Mb/s. The WRT54GL is naturally connected via its internet port to one of the LAN ports of the Technicolor in this bridging setup.

I assumed I would at least get 100 Mb/s but this is not the case. I'm maxing out at 50 MB/s down on all speed tests.

I then bypassed the WRT54GL completely and connected one of my PCs directly to one of the LAN ports of the Technicolor and voila! I'm suddenly getting the full 120 Mb/s!

This guy ran into the issue as well:
http://community.linksys.com/t5/Wireless-Routers/Wrt54gl-with-tc7200u-125Mb-s/td-p/892009

I'm guessing this is a problem due to the age of the hardware as opposed to a firmware issue so I guess its time for an upgrade. The reason why I'm bridging and not inclined to use the Technicolor as anything other than a makeshift modem is because its router configuration and functionality options are extremely limited to say the least.

ED E · 22-10-2014 10:02am

Yeah, id say the integrated switch cant handle it. Get a more modern unit and away you go. Btw the updated version they released last year is useless, doesn't have the promised open source support.

vibe666 · 22-10-2014 10:32am

yeah, highly unlikely that there will (ever) be a tomato port for the WRT1900AC unfortunately.

I moved from a WRT54GS to a Linksys E3000 so I could keep using tomato and it's been grand with my 100Mbps fibre (wired) although wifi tops out at around 50-60Mbps at best in day to day usage.

I think probably one of the newer Asus routers would be the best bet for Tomato right now, just take a note of your config (I wouldn't bother backing it all up) and the do a backup of your usage history (if you care) and off you go. head over to the linksysinfo.org forums for more info.

I'm really disappointed that Linksys screwed the open source community (again!) on the WRT1900AC, but apparently OpenWRT is running on it pretty well, so I might still get one when I'm back in Ireland and see how it looks, just for the craic.

Champ · 22-10-2014 1:08pm

Hi,
Thanks for the replies.

I heard that about the WRT1900AC. That said it is pretty expensive relative to my rather simple needs so probably wouldn't get one unless I had no other choice.;)

@vibe666 I'm definitely going to miss my WRT54GL w/Tomato. That little trooper has flawlessly handled everything asked of it for years but I guess time has finally caught up with it.

The challenge is trying to find a replacement that won't break the wallet and will function with Tomato or one of its variants. I know about the alternative firmwares like DD-WRT but I prefer the more streamlined nature of Tomato. Yes I know there's arguments in favour of DD-WRT etc but let's just say Tomato is more to my liking.

On this particular search my best lead so far seems to be the combo of Asus RT-N16 (made in 2010) + TomatoUSB.

Anyone running a setup with an RT-N16? Will this resolve the 50 Mb/s speed cap issue I have at the moment? (sort of paranoid of forking out the money and effort to swap over to the new setup only to find that it has not improved the situation)

Thanks.

Champ · 22-10-2014 3:57pm

Well this gets interesting.

I've been doing a bit more research and it looks like Tomato, DD-WRT etc and their variants don't support "Fast-NAT" even though the offical firmware preloaded by manufacturers do. Something about it breaking QoS and Access Restrictions.

From: http://www.iptables.info/en/nat.html

In Linux, there are actually two separate types of NAT that can be used, either Fast-NAT or Netfilter-NAT. Fast-NAT is implemented inside the IP routing code of the Linux kernel, while Netfilter-NAT is also implemented in the Linux kernel, but inside the netfilter code. Since this book won't touch the IP routing code too closely, we will pretty much leave it here, except for a few notes.

Fast-NAT is generally called by this name since it is much faster than the netfilter NAT code. It doesn't keep track of connections, and this is both its main pro and con. Connection tracking takes a lot of processor power, and hence it is slower, which is one of the main reasons that the Fast-NAT is faster than Netfilter-NAT.

As we also said, the bad thing about Fast-NAT doesn't track connections, which means it will not be able to do SNAT very well for whole networks, neither will it be able to NAT complex protocols such as FTP, IRC and other protocols that Netfilter-NAT is able to handle very well. It is possible, but it will take much, much more work than would be expected from the Netfilter implementation.

Ina nutshell this means hardware running Tomato, DD-WRT etc can sometimes be significantly slower in speed on the WAN to LAN and LAN to WAN throughput (less noticeable) or effectively for the end user it would seem that their download speed is capped. This is because without the benefit of Fast-NAT your hardware needs more muscle to effectively handle the higher bandwidth so your mileage varies depending on how powerful your hardware is and what "extras" you may or may not be running on your firmware.

Here's an example of someone's testing:
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/tomato-wan-to-lan-throughput-below-par-on-asus-rt-n16-future-bottlenecks.67860/

Thus I'm hopeful someone here is running an Asus RT-N16 with non manufacturer firmware and could give an indication of how well it's coping with connections > 100 Mb/s?

Mayo Yid · 22-10-2014 11:23pm

If you're looking for something really fast buy a Mikrotik, crazy performance for little money

white_westie · 23-10-2014 9:57am

@Champ

Currently running an Asus RT-N16 with UPC 120Mb bb, behind a TC7200 in Bridge mode.

I originally was running a version of Tomato on it when I had a 50Mb connection, but I noticed after been upgraded to 100 and then 120Mb that WAN-LAN speed was topping out at around 80Mb or so. Speed is not an issue in my house so it did not bother me too much as nobody complained (4 adults at the time).
Since most of our wireless devices where 802.11G speeds should have be topping out at about 24Mb, but they seemed to be less, so I started looking into it. Switched firmware back to stock, speeds increased and seemed to be more consistant - even after UPC rolled out their free wifi, when I was suddenly surrounded by double the number of wap's than normal. Thought the issue was to do with the wireless driver in the router firmware, but do recall reading about the lack of fast nat support.
Switched firmware to a Merlin build and have been running successfully since then - getting speeds of 120Mb when on cable and wireless G seems to be holding constant at about 22Mb.
Have had speed issues with UPC connection when speeds fell off in the evening and weekends, but after a few months they eventually fixed it in my area.

Regarding the use of Asus routers behind the TC7200 in bridge mode, I seem to be one of the lucky ones as there is plenty of posts here about WAN connections dropping on the Asus side (some every 15mins|), but not on the TC7200 bridge side - it requires a manual refresh of the Asus WAN connection to get things going again.
So, be warned, it's not all rosy!
There is also some posts over at smallnet about Asus firmware issues causing WAN dropouts
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=8433

My connection has been rock solid for months, BUT I have had 2 wan connection drops in the last month where I had to manually refresh the wan connection on the Asus to get it working again, so am keeping an eye on things.

Be aware that UPC are having to use IPv6 addresses now with some form of ip6to4 natting/gateway at their end which MIGHT end up breaking bridge mode for us who are using it - there are some threads on the UPC forum about this.

WW

Champ · 23-10-2014 12:41pm

@white_westie

Hi!

Thanks for the very detailed and informative post. It's just the sort of information I'm looking for!

It's interesting that when you were running Tomato that your speed cap was in the 80 Mb/s. While looking around the net I've seen that others were getting between 100 - 110 Mb/s. Were you running QoS and / or access restrictions at the time?

You've definitely given me some excellent resources on my little quest (which you seem to have already completed:)). I'm going to be carefully scrutinizing the Merlin-FW aspect and the UPC IPv6 situation.

Again thanks for the very helpful post and taking the time to write it!:)

white_westie · 23-10-2014 1:18pm

Champ wrote: »

It's interesting that when you were running Tomato that your speed cap was in the 80 Mb/s. While looking around the net I've seen that others were getting between 100 - 110 Mb/s. Were you running QoS and / or access restrictions at the time?

No problems.

As regards the 80Mb speed, may not be accurate, as all the laptops I was using at the time did not have gigaspeed nic cards so they would top out at about 96Mbs anyway, but speed was definitely less than expected.
Also, was not using any QOS settings - all set to default.

Nobody games in house or torrents, just streaming and usual internet stuff.
Use vpn for some work, and also use dnsmasq feature in merlin firmware for my 'smartdns' needs. TV/sat boxes/pi/wd live/printer all hardwired.
BB is used every day for about 6 hours, so stability is more important than raw speed - all working good.

Before you purchase, make sure to read the posts about possible disconnect issues with ASUS routers behind bridged UPC TC7200 modems.
They are genuine problems, so beware.
Also think the latest Asus routers are not cheap.

WW

Champ · 23-10-2014 9:34pm

white_westie wrote:

Before you purchase, make sure to read the posts about possible disconnect issues with ASUS routers behind bridged UPC TC7200 modems.
They are genuine problems, so beware.

Found a couple of these posts and they do make interesting reading. What they have in common I believe so far is that their TC7200s are in pure / proper bridge mode (via workarounds given the normal UI doesn't allow this)i.e. acting only as modems which are passing the connection directly to their own ASUS routers.

I'm actually running a makeshift bridge mode which isn't actually a proper bridge mode but in practice behaves like one. For all intents and purposes it's transparent. Someone has already explained this particular setup type so I'll quote him (just sub Technicolor for Cisco):

From User 'Watty'

"If you can't bridge, then set your separate router to a different subnet, i.e. 192.168.3.xxx for everything on LAN.

Then give your router WAN port a static IP in the LAN range of the Cisco Router/Cable Modem and only plug the WAN port into Cisco.
Disable WiFi on the Cisco. Then on the Cisco make the IP of your standalone WiFi/Router a DMZ. Then all ports are forwarded both ways, it's almost like Bridge Mode. To the 3rd party standalone WiFi/Router it will look like the Cisco is in Bridge mode but as if your public IP is the LAN IP on the Cisco set up for DMZ.

The actual Public IP is of course whatever it is."

I can only speculate but I'm guessing this might bypass the disconnect issue as the ASUS router isn't directly handling the connection.

Linksys WRT54GL Broadband seems limited to 50Mb/s

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