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If a copy a file from my desktop to my laptop, the speed is usually 3 or 4 times faster than if I go in the other direction.

Desktop is connected to the router by a cable, laptop is wifi.

If I connect the laptop with a cable, speeds are fast both directions.

Router is a wrt54gl with dd-wrt. Both machines running Win7

Why would this happen? How can I identify the problem and fix it?

foosion
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3 Answers3

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I can say this. Your problem isn't isolated to your situation. Apparently people have been posting about this very same issue for a few years now.... IE slow network transfers in one direction only across wireless.

What I'm finding, is that there appear to be different solutions, and that most appear to be specific to the hardware. For example, from smallbuilder.com...

So, after trying a few things, I set "Enable HW Accelerator" to Off under LAN - Switch Control and now I get 1.5MB/s in both directions!

This previous SU question resulted in a working solution for someone OTHER than the person who posted the question...

I went to the configuration screen of my network adapter and changed the following configuration settings:

  • Large Send Offload V2 (IPv4) = Disabled (was Enabled)
  • Large Send Offload V2 (IPv6) = Disabled (was Enabled)

A solution from a Microsoft Technet post, but no news on whether it was successful...

Try disabling Receive Window Auto-Tuning:

  • 1) Go to Start and type cmd.

  • 2) Right-click on cmd and select “Run as administrator”.

  • 3) Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled and press Enter.

If you want to to re-enable it:

Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal and press Enter.

Also you can try configure the network card :

  • 1) Click the Start Button, type "devmgmt.msc" (without quotation marks) in the Start Search box and press Enter.

  • 2) Double click to expand "Network Adaptors".

  • 3) Right click your network card and click Properties

  • 4) Click Advance tab. High light Speed & Duplex

  • 5) If you would like to use the full functionality, please set the Value to the highest Full.

  • 6) Click OK.

There were also some smaller posts where people fixed their issues after finding that settings in their routers or network adapters had not been set to Full Duplex... that changing from an AUTO setting to a specific Full Duplex setting resulted in equal (and faster) network transfer speeds.

Sorry I don't have one specific answer to the issue... there just doesn't seem to be a single fix.

Community
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Bon Gart
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Your WiFi connection simply does not have the bandwidth of the wired connection, even at a 10/100 ethernet port. More modern routers offer faster wireless connections than the WRT54G, plus gigabit ethernet. See: http://community.linksys.com/t5/Wireless-Routers/WRT54GL-Is-wireless-faster-than-20Mbps-possible/m-p/517359?comm_cc=HSus&comm_lang=en#M227951

JDLowe
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This is part of the nature of the way access points work. Access point to client transmissions will always be more efficient than client to access point transmissions.

A Wifi network wouldn't work unless every node could reach the access point. Thus the access point can transmit very reliably, because it is guaranteed to hear all other nodes. However, client nodes frequently can't hear each other reliably. So it's much more likely for the laptop to have its transmissions stepped on, and thus need to repeat them. This greatly reduces the available bandwidth from the client to the access point.

David Schwartz
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