Re: [A bit OT] Diagnosing home network
On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 09:49:43AM -0400, Catherine Gramze wrote:
>
>
> > On May 20, 2017, at 9:38 AM, Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> wrote:
> >
> >> On Saturday 20 May 2017 01:41:20 Mark Fletcher wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello!
> >>
> >> I have some doubts about the throughput of my home network and I'm
> >> hoping for some advice on tools that might help me diagnose it.
> >>
> >> My home network consists of 2 Debian machines, one Jessie and one
> >> Stretch, an LFS mini-ITX machine acting as my firewall, another LFS
> >> laptop that is connected only occasionally, a Windows 8.1 laptop, 3
> >> iPhones of varying ages, 2 iPads, 1 Android tablet device, a couple of
> >> other proprietary tablets and a Buffalo Linkstation that provides most
> >> of the connectivity.
> >>
> >> The internet access is via Cable. I run an ethernet cable from the
> >> cable modem to the firewall machine, then from the firewall machine to
> >> the Linkstation's WAN port. The firewall machine's WiFi interface is
> >> disabled (I didn't include its driver when I built the kernel for that
> >> machine). The Jessie box, a phone-to-ethernet device and a NAS are
> >> plugged into the Linkstation wired LAN ports. Everything else connects
> >> to the Linkstation WiFi. The LinkStation offers 2.4GHz and 5GHz
> >> connections, the 2.4GHz is b/g and the 5GHz is ac I believe. Those
> >> devices that can use the 5GHz connection, are, the rest are using the
> >> 2.4GHz.
> >>
> >> I have my doubts about cross-LAN throughput. For example, as I write I
> >> am using WinSCP on the Windows 8.1 laptop to copy a movie file from my
> >> Jessie box to the laptop. (The movie concerned is not copyright before
> >> anyone asks). The Jessie box is connected to the LinkStation by wired
> >> ethernet, and the Windows 8.1 laptop by WiFi. I am getting a transfer
> >> rate consistently across the life of the connection of 880KB/s. I'd
> >> expect it to be a lot faster than that. I checked the WinSCP software
> >> is capable of limiting the connection speed, but is set not to.
>
> >> .
> >>
> >> Thanks in advance
> >>
> >> Mark
>
> > Delurking. Just a quick suggestion here. Do you have the proprietary non-free firmware installed for all your NICs? When they work without the firmware it is often a much slower connection, like b when the NIC is capable of n or a/c, but only when using the proprietary firmware.
>
Interesting. The Jessie box is using wired LAN via an onboard (ie part
of the motherboard) ethernet controller (motherboard is an ASUS P6T
iirc). I wouldn't expect it to need firmware, would I be wrong?
At the laptop end, it's running Windows 8.1 so gawd alone knows what can
/ should be updated...
Mark
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