WD MyCloud 3TB - how to improve speed via WiFi AC1750

Hello,
I am using MacBook Air Early 2014 connected to TP-Link Archer C7 V2.

Link speed is 1 Gbit/s (125 MB/s )as shows Network Utility:

Using BlackMagic disk speed app Write is about 19 MB/s and Read 30 MB/s:

Via SSH I have turned off indexing and other services as recommend in post: Before you pack up your WD and return it, let's talk about Copying Speeds!

But Write and Read speeds haven’t changed.

Any recommendations what to do? Maybe I am missing something? I hope at least to double Write and Read speeds.

I doubt that your gigabit link speed is the data rate you are getting via WiFi; that seems far too ‘convenient’ a figure, lacking any reasonable precision. I’d expect a measured rate to be specified as something like 978Mbps, giving three digits of precision.

I suspect it is reporting the negotiated link speed to the MyCloud (wired GBE).

I’m pretty sure that link speed is correct, it is maximum speed between mac and router.

It is not the actual maximum speed between the WiFi adapter and the router, it is what the connection is capable of but in reality one rarely if ever achieves the the max speed that a connection is capable of. With WiFi there is almost always network overhead and other factors that affect and reduce the actual speed. Then factor in other issues like the read/write speed of the computer’s hard drive and the transfer speed is even lower. If you haven’t see the following discussion yet it is worth a few minutes to read through:

https://community.wd.com/t/before-you-pack-up-your-wd-and-return-it-lets-talk-about-copying-speeds/91887

More general explanation on advertised vs real world wifi speed:
http://www.speedguide.net/faq/what-is-the-actual-real-life-speed-of-wireless-374

One generally gets better overall speed using a wired connection. If the computer has a Gigabit networking port then connect that computer to the same router as the My Cloud and do another speed test between the computer and the My Cloud to compare against the WiFi results.

It appears that BlackMagic Disk Speed Test app might only test the computer’s hard drive and not the actual read/write speed between the computer and the My Cloud. If this is the case it will only tell you what your computer’s hard drive is capable of not what you should be getting across the WiFi connection to and from the My Cloud.

Could you recommend any app for mac to test real WiFi speed?

Thanks!

I use Crystal Disk Mark for testing my (wired) mycloud read/write speeds.

I don’t think it does raw wifi testing though; the ‘disk’ bit in the name is a hint, I think…

I don’t use or have a Mac but some quick internet searching turns up the following article that may be of interest:

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/answers/how-to-test-speed-home-network-iperf

While your Mac indicates it has a WiFi 802.11ac wireless network adapter it doesn’t appear to list what is the actual AC type of that adapter. If that adapter has a slower speed rating then the router you will run into a wall unless its possible to upgrade or use a newer faster wireless adapter. There are a number of different types each with their own data “advertised” data rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac#Advertised

You may want to read the following older review of that TP-Link router as it indicates some potential speed values that may not be so good depending on distance and other issues. Unknown if these issues affect V2 of that router.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/networking-and-wi-fi/modem-routers/tp-link-archer-c7-ac1750-1198451/review

We liked
Gigabit LAN and WAN ports all round is a big plus. The easy to use and comprehensive interface is another big plus for us. It’s also important that is get a good 50MB/s at 802.11ac in the read tests, this is middleof-the-pack in terms of speed and is what you’d hope for. Oddly more impressively is the long-range 25m 802.11n speeds, which averaged as high as 18MB downstream and 11MB/s upstream. The fastest we’ve seen and one of the best mid-range speeds on record.

We disliked
The oddity for the TP-Link Archer C7 AC1750 was the substandard 802.11ac upstream speeds. Despite a solid 1300mbps same-room connection, the transfer refused to go faster than 14MB/s or so. Even with the latest firmware update it stubbornly refused. It also put in one of the weakest 802.11ac efforts at distance manging a sub-par 16MB/s downstream and 7.6MB/s upstream.

I don’t think we should talk about speed when we really are talking about thru put. A gigabit router does transfer data at gigabyte speed. But the data is transferred in packets of 1500 bytes. Also the 1500 byte packet contains information about the packet. Therefore the real data is about 1440 bytes. Other things that effect thru put.
file layout on the disk. Is it checker boarded. What other network traffic is the router handling. What is the cpu
on the other end doing besides accepting the file. Is the disk space on the receive end contiguous.

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Thank you for your input and links to articles.

Any ideas how to check what is real WiFi speed?

Yes we’re really talking about WiFi throughput (and bandwidth) to the My Cloud. But for layman’s sake the word speed is what the OP and others will use so its what I used to keep the explanations simple. :grin:

iPerf is one such method of testing “speed” (really throughput) from a computer to another computer on the local network. There are others.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/document/12068771/iperf-test-measuring-throughputspeed-wlan-client

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425225,00.asp

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-howto/31679-how-to-test-a-wireless-router

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-measure-wireless-router-performance/

Press WiFi on menu bar while holding alt and Tx rates will be showed.

Tx rates depend on distance from router, i’m getting from 585 to 900 Mbps. This is in range of 73 - 112.5 MB/s.

With this Tx rate i would easily get 30 - 40 MB/s write speeds, but Write speed is about 18 MB/s.