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[happythatsme]

Hey All,

I'm hoping someone can help me, I had a weak signal in my bedroom usng an Apple Time Capsule therefore I wanted something more powerful, I saw this and it screams power. I now get a stronger signal now in the room but extremely poor wifi performance from the DIR-895, considering its got 8 yes 8 antennas I find this hard to believe.

Old Setup:
1GB Fibre Connection with PCCW - Based in Hong Kong.
Apple Time Capsule AC  -Connected via Single Cat 6 Ethernet cable into WAN port.
Macbook pro retina 2015

Tests:
Connected via ethernet cable directly to my mac pro via thunderbolt adapter 930mb down & 744mb, it's up not quite 1,000mb but close enough.


New Setup ( Same as above replacing Apple with D-Link)
1GB Fibre Connection with PCCW - Based in Hong Kong.
Single Cat 6 Ethernet cable running from fibre modem to DIR-895 plugged into the internet port.
Macbook pro retina 2015

D-Link running latest firmware 1.02 ( I think the performance was better before I upgraded but I didn't save any screenshots)

All wifi tests were performed sitting beside the Apple & Dlink -  While I understand testing using speedtest isn't a good way to measure wifi performance as all kinds of things can affect these tests It's accurate enough. I'm going to setup ipref  to perform some more tests.

Tests:
Connected via ethernet cable directly to my mac pro via thunderbolt adapter 804mb down & 604mb, slower than the apple on the cabled connection.


Wifi Tests
Apple: 342 / 518


D-link ( Smart Connect Enabled) : 35 / 25


I thought maybe something was going on with Smart Connect, I disable that, setup a 2.4GHZ & 5GHZ network

2.4 Performance: 141 / 135 - Better than with Smart Connect Enabled.


5GHZ Performance 43 / 30 - Worse than the 2.4 performance... !


Scan of other networks around:


At this point I'm pulling my hair out, I'm almost going to buy another WIFI dongle... Maybe theres and issues with Mac / Apple products, my Iphone and IPad have the same issues.

Any new beta firmware I can try?  Or any alternate configurations?

I'm gong to try a factory reset now to go back to scratch. I'll report back how that goes.

Thanks.
Wes

[happythatsme]

Factory Reset didn't improve anything.

I tried to download the firmware to version 1.00.B11, I get the message "Firmware Upgrade Failed"

http://support.dlink.com/ProductInfo.aspx?m=DIR-895L%2FR

Help...!

[FurryNutz]

Link>Welcome!

• Was a Factory Reset performed before and after any firmware updates then set up from scratch?

  Link> >FW Update Process

Internet Service Provider and Modem Configurations

• What ISP Modem Mfr. and model # do you have?

Be aware that wireless speeds will not achieve the same speeds seen on wired LAN cable tests. Not all wireless clients are the same and do have limitations. I would ask Apple what they are supporting.

Looking at your wireless scan capture, your channels 1 and and 36 are busy. if you are testing on these channels, then you might be getting some interferences. I would change to 11 on 2.4Gz even thought there is one other on there however looks to be at a distance. 5Ghz I would change to 161 or 165 on one of the 5Ghz radios to test with.

Be sure all other wireless devices are turned OFF and disabled, i.e. Apple WiFi routers.  Set IPv6 to Local Only and Disable WPS as well to test.

Also be aware: >WAN and LAN Connection Rates and ISP Speeds FAQ

[happythatsme]

Hey,

Thanks very much for the reply.

I did a factory reset, tried again it didn't work. I then extracted the zip file and uploaded the bin file and it worked..... Guess i was being a little stupid there...

Ran the test again : almost 400 and 300 - Something is broken with the latest firmware, 1.00 works performs much better for me.


I understand that the wireless will never be as fast as wired even tho they are claiming:
"Simultaneous Tri-Band: Deliver faster Wi-Fi speeds of up to 5332Mpbs (1000Mbps + 2166Mbps + 2166Mbps)"  http://us.dlink.com/products/connect/ac5300-ultra-wi-fi-router/

I'll try moving around the 5GHZ Channels to see if I can improve, It's still not as fast as the Apple... Which really p*sses me off... But I'll continue to test.

Thanks
Wes

[happythatsme]

Ok i tweaked the wifi channels as suggested ( Turning off Smart Connect - doesnt seem so smart anymore)

Yay its faster than my Apple! Im happy now at least...



Thanks for the help, im still avoiding version 1.02 of the firmware tho

Wes

[FurryNutz]

"I understand that the wireless will never be as fast as wired even tho they are claiming:
"Simultaneous Tri-Band: Deliver faster Wi-Fi speeds of up to 5332Mpbs (1000Mbps + 2166Mbps + 2166Mbps)"  http://us.dlink.com/products/connect/ac5300-ultra-wi-fi-router/" Be aware that the wifi speeds mentioned are connection rates between the router and devices, not actual data stream speeds.

If you think there is a bad performance between FW versions, I recommend that you phone contact your regional D-Link support office and ask for help and information regarding this. Notify them of your experiences and definitely reference this forum thread. We find that phone contact has better immediate results over using email.
Let us know how it goes please.

[happythatsme]

Hey,

Just sharing some more info if anyone is interested, I performed some more tests this evening with ipref3

Ethernet Cable 941Mbits
MacBook-Pro:iperf$  /usr/local/bin/iperf3 -c 192.168.0.163 -t 5 -T Ethernet
Ethernet:  Connecting to host 192.168.0.163, port 5201
Ethernet:  [  4] local 192.168.0.123 port 55749 connected to 192.168.0.163 port 5201
Ethernet:  [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
Ethernet:  [  4]   0.00-1.00   sec   113 MBytes   944 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  [  4]   1.00-2.00   sec   112 MBytes   939 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  [  4]   2.00-3.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  [  4]   3.00-4.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  [  4]   4.00-5.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ethernet:  [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
Ethernet:  [  4]   0.00-5.00   sec   561 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  sender
Ethernet:  [  4]   0.00-5.00   sec   561 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  receiver
Ethernet: 
Ethernet:  iperf Done.

5GHZ 761MB
MacBook-Pro:iperf$  /usr/local/bin/iperf3 -c 192.168.0.163 -t 5 -T 5GHZ
5GHZ:  Connecting to host 192.168.0.163, port 5201
5GHZ:  [  4] local 192.168.0.194 port 56124 connected to 192.168.0.163 port 5201
5GHZ:  [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
5GHZ:  [  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  90.7 MBytes   761 Mbits/sec                 
5GHZ:  [  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  92.2 MBytes   772 Mbits/sec                 
5GHZ:  [  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  93.5 MBytes   786 Mbits/sec                 
5GHZ:  [  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  94.3 MBytes   791 Mbits/sec                 
5GHZ:  [  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  93.5 MBytes   784 Mbits/sec                 
5GHZ:  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
5GHZ:  [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
5GHZ:  [  4]   0.00-5.00   sec   464 MBytes   779 Mbits/sec                  sender
5GHZ:  [  4]   0.00-5.00   sec   464 MBytes   779 Mbits/sec                  receiver
5GHZ: 
5GHZ:  iperf Done.

Overall the performance is pretty good and I'm happy with it.

Wes

[FurryNutz]

Awesome, glad it's working better for you.

What version of FW was this tested on?

Request for you, would you make a post on how to set up iPerf3 and where to get it? I'd like to make a FAQ for users here in the forums who'd like to test there router performances. Care to make a post and give full details on what you do to set it up and run it?

[happythatsme]

Hi FurryNutz,

I'm currently on Firmware Version 1.00.B11 ( I may upgrade and try version 1.02 next weekend if I'm bored)

https://iperf.fr

IPerf which is a freeware application that can run under a variety of operating systems such as Windows, MAC OS and Linux. The application requires two machines where one acts as a listening Server and one as a sending Client. ( I'm using a Macbook pro and a Synology NAS ).

IPerf generates traffic from the Client side towards the Server side and the results are displayed on how much traffic we were able to send under a specific time window and what throughput was achieved.

You might be curious to choose another application like FTP or Windows file sharing, however, there is an important detail to highlight here, FTP/SMB relies on the disk read/write speeds, Iperf does not since it is traffic handling on the NIC itself. So in case you are having some really old IDE type Hard Drive on your Server side results will be affected in a negative way. Windows file sharing also can have varying speeds depending on Microsoft proprietary file transfer protocol which lower down the speeds in certain cases. So the bottom line for this is to use IPerf for throughput testing, if you want to test write speed over the network they've added a feature in the latest version to do so.

• Download the executables for both machines ( Client and Server ) https://iperf.fr/iperf-download.php
• Decide which machine is the server and which is the client
• Run the commands below in "quotes" ( Do not type the quotes) 
• Machine1 ( Server ) :  "/usr/local/bin/iperf3 -s"   The server machine is now listening for iperf connections
• Machine2 ( Client ) :  "/usr/local/bin/iperf3 -c xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -t 5"  replace xxx. with the ip address of your server machine. This will test the throughput for 5 seconds.

You should see results similar to this

On the server when you start listening you should see something like so:
MacBook-Pro:iperf$  /usr/local/bin/iperf3 -s
-----------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 5201
-----------------------------------------------------------

On the client machine, you should see something like so: ( Note the -T argument lets you give the test a name)

MacBook-Pro:iperf$  /usr/local/bin/iperf3 -c 192.168.0.163 -t 5 -T Ethernet
Ethernet:  Connecting to host 192.168.0.163, port 5201
Ethernet:  [  4] local 192.168.0.123 port 55749 connected to 192.168.0.163 port 5201
Ethernet:  [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
Ethernet:  [  4]   0.00-1.00   sec   113 MBytes   944 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  [  4]   1.00-2.00   sec   112 MBytes   939 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  [  4]   2.00-3.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  [  4]   3.00-4.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  [  4]   4.00-5.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                 
Ethernet:  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ethernet:  [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
Ethernet:  [  4]   0.00-5.00   sec   561 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  sender
Ethernet:  [  4]   0.00-5.00   sec   561 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  receiver
Ethernet: 
Ethernet:  iperf Done.

There's a really good write up on iperf here: https://www.es.net/assets/Uploads/201007-JTIperf.pdf
There seems to be a windows GUI versions here http://www.iperfwindows.com
https://www.perfsonar.net/media/cms_page_media/3407/1.1-TCP-Labs.pdf

I'm sorry it's not a very detailed guide, however, hopefully this information is useful and will help some people debug network errors as speedtest.net is not the best way.

Wes

[FurryNutz]

Awesome info, any chance of posting details for the GUI version as well? Would be good for both formats. If you can and have time too.

Thank you again for this. Will pull this post out when it's final and make it a FAQ. 

[happythatsme]

I upgraded to version 1.02 as I was curious how it would perform with smart connect disabled.

Results speak for themselves, 1.02 is seriously broken

I've raised the issue with Dlink Support.

[FurryNutz]

Thanks for the test info and feed back. I'll pass this along to D-Link as well.

[FurryNutz]

New FW posted:
http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=65136.0

[happythatsme]

Hi FuzzyNuts,

I tried it, even worse than the previous version, performance is awful on 5GHZ.

I reverted back to verision 1 again and its fine.

Wes

[FurryNutz]

Thank you for the feed back. I'll pass this along to D-Link for review.