Wired only as fast as 5Ghz Wi-Fi

English Network/Internet
1

To me, it’s odd that a wired connection is only about as fast as the 5Ghz Wi-Fi connection, both about 30+ Mbps up/down with speedtest.net.

openSUSE 15.4 using Network Manager
Tested with Enable IPv6 on and off

AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet, Not configured, eth1
AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet, DHCP, eth0
lo.rpmsave, 127.0.0.1/8, lo.rpmsave
WiFi Link 5100, Not configured, wlan1
WiFi Link 5100, DHCP, wlan0

The system is an Acer 1410 netbook with an Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 1.4 Ghz. Acer Nplify 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N.

  • Would speedtest.net results be dependent on the netbook, which isn’t very fast?
  • Is 30+ Mbps up/down just a limit of the hardware and OS running on top?
  • Or should the wired results be more close to my i7 desktop, 90+ Mbps? (ISP service is capped at 100 Mbps.)

Thanks.

2

Depends on the network hardware in the Laptop – my 5 GHz WLAN is indicating WLAN Repeater link throughputs of 263 Mbit/s and 975 Mbit/s …

  • On the Laptop, what do “ip -h -d link show eth0” and “ip -h -d link show wlan0” and “iwlist rate” and “ethtool eth0” indicate?

If, for the Laptop, “ethtool” is indicating a “Speed:” of 1 Gbit/s and “iwlist” is indicating a 5 GHz WLAN rate of better than 1 Gbit/s then, the combination of the Laptop’s CPU and I/O capabilities and the Speed Test are indicating that, the Network is not the problem.

  • The Laptop isn’t new – it possibly still has a HDD, rather than a SDD, which is slowing down the I/O because of the available Write and Read rates to the disk …
3

Wireless is not slower than cable in many cases. It depends on your router/computer. Unless you want 2.5G or 10G.

Wireless will introduce latencies and dropped packages, and if the router is too far away, it will decrease the speed also, but a lot of factors play in this.

The PC is probably reaching its limit at 30 MB, as it seems to be a CPU from 2009.

4

YaST/Network Settings shows eth0 and wlan0 as in the original post, but in the shell, eth1 and wlan1 are configured, thus results for eth1 and wlan1 below…

ip -h -d link show eth1

2: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:26:9e:03:a5:17 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff promiscuity 0 minmtu 42 maxmtu 6122 addrgenmode none numtxqueues 1 numrxqueues 1 gso_max_size 65536 gso_max_segs 65535 parentbus pci parentdev 0000:01:00.0
altname enp1s0

ip -h -d link show wlan1

3: wlan1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:22:fb:64:04:f0 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff promiscuity 0 minmtu 256 maxmtu 2304 addrgenmode none numtxqueues 4 numrxqueues 1 gso_max_size 65536 gso_max_segs 65535 parentbus pci parentdev 0000:02:00.0
altname wlp2s0

iwlist rate

lo no bit-rate information.

eth1 no bit-rate information.

wlan1 unknown bit-rate information.
Current Bit Rate=135 Mb/s

ethtool eth1

Settings for eth1:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Supported pause frame use: No
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Supported FEC modes: Not reported
Advertised link modes: Not reported
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised FEC modes: Not reported
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Auto-negotiation: on
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 0
Transceiver: internal
MDI-X: Unknown
Supports Wake-on: pg
Wake-on: d
Current message level: 0x0000003f (63)
drv probe link timer ifdown ifup
Link detected: yes

The netbook is indeed from 2009.

5

In other words, the machine is using a 1 Gbit/s LAN and, a 135 Mbit/s WLAN and, you have a 100 Mbit/s connection to your ISP.

  • But, for the case of your Laptop system, an Internet throughput test is only achieving 30 Mbit/s.
    A Desktop system on the same LAN is achieving a network throughput of about 90 Mbit/s (90 % of the capability of the connection to your ISP).

You’ll have to check if, the Internet Speed Test is also performing Disk I/O …

  • To inspect the behaviour of the Laptop with respect to “normal” Internet usage such as streaming Video, may I suggest that, you install a CLI program named “btop” – package is available from the openSUSE repositories.
    It’s an improved “top” which supplies information about Network and other I/O behaviour, in addition to the CPU and Memory usage information supplied by the original “top” and, the I/O information provided by “iotop” …