Sunday, 13 April 2014

WeTab WiFi throughput test (Atheros AR9285 Mini PCIe)

WiFi throughput test

I decided to check if my WeTab supported the 5GHz WiFi band, but unfortunately it did not (Atheros chip used only supports the 2.4 GHz frequency band). Then I thought that it might be good idea to have another hardware platform to compare my Raspberry Pi WiFi throughput results with. OK there are many differences even though both were tested around the same time. Different antennas and I'm sure that the WeTab's Wifi driver has been tweaked to extend battery life in favour of maximum throughput. RPi's WiFi is USB based and the WeTab is mini PCIe based.

I have censored any identifying information about my local network or personal hardware (or inserted some fake IP address instead).


Here is a quick summary of both sets of results.

Raspberry Pi Results:
802.11a 20MHz bandwidth (54Mb/s)  Summary: Min 1.51 MiB/sec Max 3.37 MiB/sec
802.11n 20MHz bandwidth (72Mb/s)  Summary: Min 3.77 MiB/sec Max 6.15 MiB/sec
802.11n 40MHz bandwidth (150Mb/s) Summary: Min 4.03 MiB/sec Max 9.67 MiB/sec

WeTab results:
802.11a 20MHz bandwidth (54Mb/s)  Summary: Min 1.02 MiB/sec Max 2.93 MiB/sec
802.11n 20MHz bandwidth (65Mb/s)  Summary: Min 3.34 MiB/sec Max 5.67 MiB/sec
802.11n 40MHz bandwidth (150Mb/s) Summary: Min 2.08 MiB/sec Max 6.14 MiB/sec

Hardware Configuration:

WeTab 3G
(RAM upgraded to 2GiB)
(mSATA SSD upgraded to 120GB) 
Both USB ports are empty.
SD slot is empty.
SIM card slot is empty.

+-----+           +------+           +----------------+
|WeTab|->150Mbps->|router|->200Mbps->|Remote webserver|
+-----+  802.11n  +------+ Internet  +----------------+
                     |
                 1Gbps Ethernet
                     |
                     v
            +-------------+
            |LAN webserver|
            +-------------+



[root@wetab ~]# lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 12d1:1404 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. <- WCDMA EM770w
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 04f2:b213 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd  <- Fujitsu Camera
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0eef:72a1 D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd     <- TouchScreen
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 004: ID 0cf3:3002 Atheros Communications, Inc.  <- AR3011 Bluetooth
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
[root@wetab ~]# lsusb -t
Bus#  7
`-Dev#   1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0001
Bus#  6
`-Dev#   1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0001
  `-Dev#   4 Vendor 0x0cf3 Product 0x3002
Bus#  5
`-Dev#   1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0001
Bus#  4
`-Dev#   1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0001
Bus#  3
`-Dev#   1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0001
  `-Dev#   2 Vendor 0x0eef Product 0x72a1
Bus#  2
`-Dev#   1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0002
  |-Dev#   3 Vendor 0x12d1 Product 0x1404
  `-Dev#   4 Vendor 0x04f2 Product 0xb213
Bus#  1
`-Dev#   1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0002
[root@wetab ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Pineview DMI Bridge
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Pineview Integrated Graphics Controller
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Pineview Integrated Graphics Controller
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 04)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 04)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 04)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA IDE Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
02:00.0 Multimedia controller: Broadcom Corporation Device 1615
[root@wetab ~]#  iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"**********"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.472 GHz  Access Point: **:**:**:**:**:**
          Bit Rate=150 Mb/s   Tx-Power=12 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-48 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
[root@wetab ~]# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 48:5D:60:**:**:**
          inet addr:192.168.1.123  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::4a5d:60ff:fe22:7652/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1693 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2639 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:750517 (732.9 KiB)  TX bytes:348880 (340.7 KiB)
[root@wetab ~]# netstat -i
Kernel Interface table
Iface       MTU Met    RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR    TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
lo        16436   0      156      0      0      0      156      0      0      0 LRU
wlan0      1500   0     1712      0      0      0     2659      0      0      0 BMRU
[root@wetab ~]#


I am skipping the Internet test as there are so many uncontrollable variables. And I really want to try and see best case throughputs.

LAN Test

Download a single 100MiB file to the WeTab through WiFi and send the downloaded data to /dev/null. The data source is on the Local network from a machine with a 1 Gbit/sec NIC patched directly into the wireless router with the data being read from a RAM disk to maximise read performance.
root@webserver:~# apt-get install nginx nginx-common nginx-full
root@webserver:~# /usr/sbin/nginx &
root@webserver:~# mkdir /usr/share/nginx/www/ramdisk
root@webserver:~# chmod 777 /usr/share/nginx/www/ramdisk
root@webserver:~# free -m
root@webserver:~# mount -t tmpfs -o size=256M tmpfs /usr/share/nginx/www/ramdisk
root@webserver:~# cp speedtest-100MB.bin /usr/share/nginx/www/ramdisk


[root@wetab ~]#  wget http://192.168.1.234/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin -O /dev/null ; wget http://192.168.1.234/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin -O /dev/null ; wget http://192.168.1.234/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin -O /dev/null
--2014-04-13 04:32:09--  http://192.168.1.234
/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin
Connecting to
192.168.1.234:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `/dev/null'

... snip ... 


Results

I ran three wget commands in quick succession, and the results listed at the end of each line are the average download rates for the same 100MiB test file.

802.11a 20MHz bandwidth (54Mb/s) 
Summary: Min 1.02MiB/sec Max 2.93MiB/sec

[root@wetab ~]# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"**********"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: **:**:**:**:**:**
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=14 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-38 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:6  Invalid misc:14   Missed beacon:0
[root@wetab ~]#


channel  1 Frequency:2.412 GHz  1,64 MiB/s 1.74 MiB/s 1.60 MiB/s

channel  2 Frequency:2.417 GHz  2.08 MiB/s 2.03 MiB/s 2.07 MiB/s
channel  3 Frequency:2.422 GHz  2.20 MiB/s 2.25 MiB/s 2.29 MiB/s
channel  4 Frequency:2.427 GHz  1.65 MiB/s 1.68 MiB/s 1.66 MiB/s
channel  5 Frequency:2.432 GHz  2.64 MiB/s 2.77 MiB/s 2.60 MiB/s
channel  6 Frequency:2.437 GHz  1.20 MiB/s 1.18 MiB/s 1.02 MiB/s
channel  7 Frequency:2.442 GHz  2.65 MiB/s 2.72 MiB/s 2.71 MiB/s
channel  8 Frequency:2.447 GHz  2.92 MiB/s 2.87 MiB/s 2.93 MiB/s
channel  9 Frequency:2.452 GHz  2.60 MiB/s 2.63 MiB/s 2.67 MiB/s
channel 10 Frequency:2.457 GHz  2.65 MiB/s 2.53 MiB/s 2.41 MiB/s
channel 11 Frequency:2.462 GHz  1.91 MiB/s 1.95 MiB/s 1.92 MiB/s
channel 12 Frequency:2.467 GHz  1.78 MiB/s 1.74 MiB/s 1.87 MiB/s
channel 13 Frequency:2.472 GHz  2.53 MiB/s 2.53 MiB/s 2.51 MiB/s

 


802.11n 20MHz bandwidth (65Mb/s) 
Summary: Min 3.34MiB/sec Max 5.67MiB/sec

[root@wetab ~]# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"**********"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: **:**:**:**:**:**
          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s   Tx-Power=14 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-40 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:6  Invalid misc:14   Missed beacon:0
[root@wetab ~]#

channel  1 Frequency:2.412 GHz  4.90 MiB/s 4.01 MiB/s 4.76 MiB/s

channel  2 Frequency:2.417 GHz  4.99 MiB/s 4.97 MiB/s 5.08 MiB/s
channel  3 Frequency:2.422 GHz  3.56 MiB/s 4.10 MiB/s 5.16 MiB/s
channel  4 Frequency:2.427 GHz  5.08 MiB/s 5.28 MiB/s 5.35 MiB/s
channel  5 Frequency:2.432 GHz  5.04 MiB/s 4.91 MiB/s 4.75 MiB/s
channel  6 Frequency:2.437 GHz  3.34 MiB/s 3.64 MiB/s 3.48 MiB/s
channel  7 Frequency:2.442 GHz  5.44 MiB/s 5.60 MiB/s 5.62 MiB/s
channel  8 Frequency:2.447 GHz  5.44 MiB/s 5.50 MiB/s 4.45 MiB/s
channel  9 Frequency:2.452 GHz  5.51 MiB/s 5.67 MiB/s 5.62 MiB/s
channel 10 Frequency:2.457 GHz  5.40 MiB/s 5.58 MiB/s 5.66 MiB/s
channel 11 Frequency:2.462 GHz  5.43 MiB/s 5.49 MiB/s 5.50 MiB/s
channel 12 Frequency:2.467 GHz  5.32 MiB/s 5.41 MiB/s 5.38 MiB/s
channel 13 Frequency:2.472 GHz  5.45 MiB/s 5.50 MiB/s 5.58 MiB/s







802.11n 40MHz bandwidth (150Mb/s)
Summary: Min 2.08MiB/sec Max 6.14MiB/sec


[root@wetab ~]#  iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"**********"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.472 GHz  Access Point: **:**:**:**:**:**
          Bit Rate=150 Mb/s   Tx-Power=12 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-48 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
[root@wetab ~]#

channel  1L Frequency:2.412 GHz  2.08 MiB/s 4.22 MiB/s 4.37 MiB/s
channel  2L Frequency:2.417 GHz  5.60 MiB/s 5.57 MiB/s 5.45 MiB/s
channel  3L Frequency:2.422 GHz  5.86 MiB/s 5.85 MiB/s 5.87 MiB/s
channel  4L Frequency:2.427 GHz  5.97 MiB/s 5.92 MiB/s 5.75 MiB/s
channel  5L Frequency:2.432 GHz  5.49 MiB/s 5.59 MiB/s 5.58 MiB/s
channel  6L Frequency:2.437 GHz  5.68 MiB/s 5.71 MiB/s 5.71 MiB/s
channel  7L Frequency:2.442 GHz  5.72 MiB/s 5.85 MiB/s 5.92 MiB/s
channel  8L Frequency:2.447 GHz  5.70 MiB/s 5.76 MiB/s 5.78 MiB/s
channel  9L Frequency:2.452 GHz  5.50 MiB/s 5.44 MiB/s 5.56 MiB/s

channel  5U Frequency:2.432 GHz  5.24 MiB/s 5.01 MiB/s 5.11 MiB/s
channel  6L Frequency:2.437 GHz  4.90 MiB/s 4.93 MiB/s 4.49 MiB/s
channel  7L Frequency:2.442 GHz  5.51 MiB/s 5.40 MiB/s 5.27 MiB/s
channel  8L Frequency:2.447 GHz  5.41 MiB/s 5.40 MiB/s 5.95 MiB/s
channel  9L Frequency:2.452 GHz  6.14 MiB/s 5.95 MiB/s 5.96 MiB/s
channel 10L Frequency:2.457 GHz  5.81 MiB/s 5.77 MiB/s 5.87 MiB/s
channel 11L Frequency:2.462 GHz  4.89 MiB/s 4.59 MiB/s 5.49 MiB/s
channel 12L Frequency:2.467 GHz  5.59 MiB/s 5.84 MiB/s 5.70 MiB/s
channel 13L Frequency:2.472 GHz  5.63 MiB/s 5.74 MiB/s 5.75 MiB/s

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