Slow WI-PI WLAN - high excessive Tx count?

Question

Hi all,

I've had, since the start, issues with slow wifi. Copying a file from my MacBook Pro via smb share to my Raspberry Pi takes approximately 20-25 minutes for 1 GB. (around 600 KB/sec). On my MacBook Pro I can easily get speeds of 10 MB/sec for non-Raspberry Pi wifi transfers.

I've noticed that I have a high Tx Excessive Retries count (1171) and Invalid Misc (451). The numbers increase quickly whenever I try to transmit a file. I have little experience with Linux and wifi but I was wondering whether this might be a symptom of my issue?

To add, I'm on a Raspberry Pi 2 model b running OSMC/Kodi.

iwconfig shows:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"Lundin"

Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: A0:F3:C1:74:95:95

Bit Rate=90 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm

Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off

Power Management:off

Link Quality=53/70 Signal level=-57 dBm

Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0

Tx excessive retries:1171 Invalid misc:451 Missed beacon:0

lsusb shows:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter

All the best,

Q

Former Member · Accepted Answer

Replaced my element14 WiPi (Ralink RT5370) with an Edimax 7811Un (Realtek RTL8188CUS). No more errors. I got speeds of 3 MB per second. (Worth noting, I never ran my RT5370 on a powered USB hub. That might have solved it but after plenty of googling I found several issues with RT5370 and decided to switch instead.)

clem57 · Answer

Quinn

Thanks asking and posting details here. As you may know, distance and walls can limit the actual bit rate achieved. Also parameters seems off. See https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=48616 for discussions. Another one http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/11713/rtl8188cus-extremely-slow. Unfortunately no easy answer without knowing the router side stats as well if you can post here.

Clem