AX200 Slow LAN File Transfer

[ICB]

Hi there,

I have an ASUS TUF A15 laptop and replaced the terrible OEM Realtek WiFi card with an Intel AX200. So far the performance has been good and it has been reliable. But I can't help but notice that the transfer rate across LAN to a local gigabit file server (up & down ftp/http) is incredibly slow and maxes out at about 200Mbps or ~18MB/s (see picture).

I have a Ubiquiti access point which has very good performance on all other devices. In fact, I have an almost 6 year old iMac that easily gets 60MB/s download speeds over the exact same WiFi access point.

When connected via ethernet on the same laptop, the download speed easily reaches gigabit so the WiFi is certainly the problem.

I've seen other answers but none of them seem to directly address this issue so any help will be great.

[Khun_Doug]

ICB,

You are not the first person to notice an issue with an Ubuquiti AP. You don't mention the exact model of the AP, and if this is a single AP or some type of mesh. You also don't mention if you are using any software package that aims to manage or balance network performance. Sometimes those things do more harm than good.

I can suggest a few easy things to try right off:

1- How is the wireless speed when doing a speed test to Internet? Are you able to achieve your upload/download speed as advertised by the ISP? Is this better than your local LAN copy speed?

2-Try forcing the AX200 to use AC or N instead of AX.

3-Slightly more involved, but do you have a mobile phone or other laptop that can act as a mobile hotspot? If so, try having that be the wireless server for your ASUS TUF A15 and see if the transfer performance improves.

Incidentally, in the one screen snapshot there is a very obvious drop in the graph where throughput seems to be nil, and then resumes. Is that because the copy was done and you started another copy? Or did the throughput plummet on its own and then suddenly resume?

[ICB]

Hi there, thanks for the quick response.

1 - Internet speed is unaffected since it is significantly slower than LAN speed. 18.9 Mbps down/5.6Mbps up.

2 - No speed change, still hovering in at around 200Mbps when set to AC or N.

3 - Direct transfer from phone also hovering around 18MB/s ish, AC modem around 20MB/s, a little bit better but still significantly slower than the old iMac on the same network.

4 - Yes, the copy is completed, it was just to show the max speed of upload and download locally.

[Khun_Doug]

What model Ubiquiti AP are you using? Is this connected directly to some Internet device to supply wireless? Is this a mesh environment?

Without doing a lot more delving into specifics, I suspect there is an incompatibility between the Ubiquiti unit(s) and the AX200/AX201 adapters. That doesn't help you with your immediate problem. One solution to prove this would be to use some other type of wireless adapter. For testing purposes, you can try a USB adapter, probably something that supports AC. Another and slightly more expensive solution would be to either put something in place of the Ubiquiti unit, or in tandem with the Ubiquiti unit. You could put in an AC or AX wireless router, and connect to that and see what results you get.

I am attaching a link to another thread with a user that has an AX201 adapter and an Ubiquiti device, and they also are having trouble: https://community.intel.com/t5/Wireless/WIfi-Issues-with-Intel-AX201-and-Ubiquiti-Wifi/m-p/1296969/emcs_t/S2h8ZW1haWx8dG9waWNfc3Vic2NyaXB0aW9ufEtRVVY1WjRKRElKUldDfDEyOTY5Njl8U1VCU0NSSVBUSU9OU3xoSw#M36685