Banana Pi USB 2.0 'Gigabit' Ethernet Adapter throughput test
I bought a cheap USB 2.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (Maximum Data Transfer Rate
480 Mbps according to the website), mostly because I wanted to see how it performed on a Raspberry Pi, so now I'm running the same tests on my new board the Banana Pi. It can never reach 480Mbps, but it will be interesting to see how much throughput it can actually achieve. As usual, I have censored any identifying information about my local network or personal hardware.
Hardware Configuration:
Banana PiRAM 1024MB
no overclocking
Inbuilt 10/100/1000 NIC is not connected.
Top USB port has USB 2.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter plugged in and plugged.into router
Bottom USB port is empty
+---+ +------+ +------+ +----------------+
|BPi|->|USB2.0|->1Gbps->|router|->200Mbps->|Remote webserver|
+---+ +------+ Ethernet+------+ Internet +----------------+
480Mibps |
1Gbps Ethernet
|
v
+-------------+
|LAN webserver|
+-------------+
Software Configuration:
I had to add in an extra three lines for this new USB eth1 NIC to get it working on the Banana Pi, the lines in bold below.root@bananapi ~ # cat /etc/network/interfaces
allow-hotplug eth1
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
root@bananapi ~ #
root@bananapi ~ # lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0424:7500 Standard Microsystems Corp. LAN7500 Ethernet 10/100/1000 Adapter
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
root@bananapi ~ # lsusb -t
/: Bus 05.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=sw-ohci/1p, 12M
/: Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=sw-ehci/1p, 480M
|__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=smsc75xx, 480M
/: Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=sw-ohci/1p, 12M
/: Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=sw-ehci/1p, 480M
/: Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=sw_hcd_host0/1p, 480M
root@bananapi ~ # ethtool eth1
Settings for eth1:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supported pause frame use: No
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Link partner advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Link partner advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
drv probe link
Link detected: yes
root@bananapi ~ #
root@bananapi ~ # 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
eth0 1500 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 BMU
eth1 1500 0 457 0 0 0 485 0 0 0 BMRU
lo 16436 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 LRU
root@bananapi ~ #
root@bananapi ~ # ifconfig eth1
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 80:3f:5d:**:**:**
inet addr:*.*.*.* Bcast:*.*.*.* Mask:*.*.*.*
inet6 addr: fe80::823f:5dff:fe08:69ad/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:470 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:502 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:37207 (36.3 KiB) TX bytes:72520 (70.8 KiB)
root@bananapi ~ #
Internet Test (via a 200Mbit/sec broadband connection)
Download a single 100MiB file to the Pi through the USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter and send the downloaded data to /dev/null.
root@bananapi ~ # time wget http://qrng.physik.hu-berlin.de/files/speedtest-100MB.bin -O /dev/null
--2010-01-01 00:17:55-- http://qrng.physik.hu-berlin.de/files/speedtest-100MB.bin
Resolving qrng.physik.hu-berlin.de (qrng.physik.hu-berlin.de)... 141.20.41.134
Connecting to qrng.physik.hu-berlin.de (qrng.physik.hu-berlin.de)|141.20.41.134|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘/dev/null’
/dev/null 100%[=====================================================================================================================>] 100.00M 11.4MB/s in 16s
2010-01-01 00:18:11 (6.21 MB/s) - ‘/dev/null’ saved [104857600/104857600]
wget http://qrng.physik.hu-berlin.de/files/speedtest-100MB.bin -O /dev/null 0.25s user 2.22s system 14% cpu 16.559 total
root@bananapi ~ #
LAN Test
Download a single 100MiB file to the Pi through USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter 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 router with the data being read from a RAM disk to maximise read speed.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@bananapi ~ # time wget http://*.*.*.*/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin -O /dev/null
--2014-11-20 21:10:47-- http://*.*.*.*/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin
Connecting to *.*.*.*:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘/dev/null’
/dev/null 100%[=====================================================================================================================>] 100.00M 39.5MB/s in 2.5s
2014-11-20 21:10:50 (39.5 MB/s) - ‘/dev/null’ saved [104857600/104857600]
wget http://*.*.*.*/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin -O /dev/null 0.24s user 1.60s system 71% cpu 2.572 total
root@bananapi ~ #
Results
Peak Internet transfer rate 10.87MiB/sec (91.2Mbps) - about 13 hops away
Average Internet throughput 6.04MiB/sec - about 13 hops away.
Because this server is so many hops away it's throughput varies wildly with time of day and is effected by so many uncontrolled fluctuations on every hop in between. This result is more an example of a typical Internet based throughput than a maximum throughput.
Peak LAN download transfer rate 38.88 MiB/sec (326.15Mbps) - for 1000Mbps (even limited to USB 2.0 480Mbps) this is a very good throughput.
Average LAN download throughput 38.88 MiB/sec - for 1000Mbps (even limited to USB 2.0 480Mbps) this is a very good throughput.
I'm very pleased with the USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter result for the Banana Pi. I was expecting a result somewhere between 20 MiB/sec and 40 MiB/sec.
I enabled jumbo frames ("sudo ifconfig eth1 mtu 9000") on the webserver and on the Banana Pi to see if I could get a better result, but I couldn't get it to work. I'm not quite sure why, yet but I'm still looking into it.
Additional testing
I decided to try the test in reverse. Install a webserver on the Banana P, and make a 128MiB ramdisk to download a file from the Banana Pi through USB 2.0, through the USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter down to the midrange PC with a Gigabit NIC, and then throw the data away.root@bananapi ~ # apt-get install nginx
root@bananapi ~ # mkdir /var/www/html/ramdisk
root@bananapi ~ # chmod 777 /var/www/html/ramdiskroot@bananapi ~ # free -m
root@bananapi ~ # mount -t tmpfs -o size=128M tmpfs /var/www/html/ramdisk
root@bananapi ~ # cp speedtest-100MB.bin /var/www/html/ramdisk
midrangepc $ time wget http://*.*.*.*/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin -O /dev/null
--2014-11-20 22:39:33-- http://*.*.*.*/ramdisk/speedtest-100MB.bin
Connecting to *.*.*.*:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `/dev/null'
100%[=================================================================================================================================================================>] 104,857,600 19.8MB/s in 5.1s
2014-11-20 22:39:38 (19.7 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
real 0m5.075s
user 0m0.268s
sys 0m1.592smidrangepc $
Average LAN upload throughput 19.6 MiB/sec (156.8Mbps)
I'm not quite sure why upload is always less than download throughput rates, it is something that I'll have to think about for a while.
For two final tests I decided to unplug the USB 2.0 Gigabit ethernet adapter and use the Banana Pi's actual builtin Gigabit NIC and just get the average throughput in each direction (using a ramdisk on each machine to upload the file from as fast as possible).
Midrange server as the webserver: 101 MB/s (Banana Pi as the client, running wget) [808Mbps 96.3MiB/sec]
Banana Pi as the webserver: 71.5 MB/s (Midrange PC server as the client, running wget) [572Mbps 68.2MiB/sec]
