GL-AR750 slow speed

I have a GL-AR750 Creta that won’t go much higher than 30mbps. I’ve tried it on 2G, 5G, direct wire. I have high speed, up to 500mbps, but never that high. I did a test on another device right after the Creta and it was closer to 130mbps.

Is there anything I can do to speed it up?

Did you use vpn, e.g. wireguard?

Did you enable real-time data statistics in the client page?

If yes pls disable them.

I have Nord VPN setup with OpenVPN, but leave the switch in the off position. I just tried it with the VPN on and it wouldn’t even connect to a server.

Just checked data statistics, it’s off. I haven’t really changed any settings, I’ve done a few resets, nothing seems to get it above 30mbps.

The VPN feature was why I bought it in the first place. It’s almost unusable with NordVPN. Even with Nord off it is of not much use to me at these speeds.

I just checked the speed with my Mango GL-MT300N-V2 and it was even slower. Tested the main router first, got 270mbps, then tested the Mango, got 18mbps.
Could it be a setting on the main router?

Can you confirm that you are testing with the main router connected via Ethernet cable to the GL-AR750 WAN and your client device is connected via Ethernet cable to the GL-AR750 LAN? That is, all connections are via Ethernet cable.

Note that the GL-AR750 is advertised by GL.iNet to have a maximum OpenVPN speed of only 15Mbps,

The numbers I mentioned earlier were GL on 5G wifi, device on 2G wifi. I just tried cable from main router to GL, cable to desktop, got even less, 9mbps.

Yes, I’m aware of the OpenVPN speeds, I was hoping that Nord was going to work with Wireguard as easy as it did with OpenVPN, but that isn’t the case. That’s not so much the concern anymore, I got a different router for home VPN now. Those OpenVPN speeds work for me on the Mango that is used for public surfing.

It is reasonable to have only 30Mps over 2.4GHz HT20 wifi between client device and main router, which is the about same for me.

The baffling part is why you get only 9Mbps when everything is connected over Ethernet cable … that is a head scratcher!

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I was expecting a bit more higher speed. The website claims it to be up to 300mbps on 2.4GHz. I guess that solves that. Thanks for your help.

Made a quick test at 5 GHz:

root@GL-AR750:/tmp/usr/bin# ./iperf3 -sV
iperf 3.7
Linux GL-AR750 4.14.241 #0 Thu Jul 29 19:50:28 2021 mips
-----------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 5201
-----------------------------------------------------------
Time: Wed, 09 Feb 2022 21:01:33 UTC
Accepted connection from 192.168.8.215, port 47216
      Cookie: 5l4cur5hiolxpmyribair3vifwy3h5r77syg
      TCP MSS: 0 (default)
[  5] local 192.168.8.1 port 5201 connected to 192.168.8.215 port 47218
Starting Test: protocol: TCP, 1 streams, 131072 byte blocks, omitting 0 seconds, 10 second test, tos 0
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-1.03   sec  19.4 MBytes   158 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   1.03-2.02   sec  20.6 MBytes   175 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   2.02-3.01   sec  20.7 MBytes   175 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   3.01-4.01   sec  22.9 MBytes   194 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   4.01-5.01   sec  21.8 MBytes   183 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   5.01-6.01   sec  23.7 MBytes   199 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   6.01-7.00   sec  22.7 MBytes   192 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   7.00-8.01   sec  25.2 MBytes   210 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   8.01-9.00   sec  25.0 MBytes   211 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]   9.00-10.01  sec  23.2 MBytes   194 Mbits/sec                  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Test Complete. Summary Results:
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5] (sender statistics not available)
[  5]   0.00-10.01  sec   225 MBytes   189 Mbits/sec                  receiver

and the other way round as client:

root@GL-AR750:/tmp/usr/bin# ./iperf3 -c 192.168.8.215
Connecting to host 192.168.8.215, port 5201
[  5] local 192.168.8.1 port 57666 connected to 192.168.8.215 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.13   sec  4.89 MBytes  36.2 Mbits/sec    0   97.6 KBytes       
[  5]   1.13-2.32   sec  5.00 MBytes  35.3 Mbits/sec    0    122 KBytes       
[  5]   2.32-3.01   sec  2.50 MBytes  30.3 Mbits/sec    0    122 KBytes       
[  5]   3.01-4.07   sec  6.25 MBytes  49.5 Mbits/sec    0    129 KBytes       
[  5]   4.07-5.07   sec  6.25 MBytes  52.4 Mbits/sec    0    129 KBytes       
[  5]   5.07-6.15   sec  6.25 MBytes  48.7 Mbits/sec    0    129 KBytes       
[  5]   6.15-7.22   sec  5.00 MBytes  39.2 Mbits/sec    0    129 KBytes       
[  5]   7.22-8.03   sec  5.00 MBytes  51.7 Mbits/sec    0    129 KBytes       
[  5]   8.03-9.05   sec  6.25 MBytes  51.2 Mbits/sec    0    129 KBytes       
[  5]   9.05-10.07  sec  6.25 MBytes  51.3 Mbits/sec    0    129 KBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.07  sec  53.6 MBytes  44.7 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.11  sec  53.6 MBytes  44.5 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.

It is not surprising that 5GHz wifi is much faster than 2.4GHz wifi. Connecting the router over wifi for both WWAN and WLAN would also have a negative effect.

The speeds also depend on the wifi bandwidth setting. In my urban wifi-congested location, I use only 20MHz bandwidth for 2.4GHz and 40MHz bandwidth for 5GHz., which reduce the speeds even more.

GL.iNet’s advertised speeds are only the theoretical speeds of 300Mbps for the 802.11n 2.4GHz frequency+40MHz bandwidth specification and 433 Mbps for the 802.11ac 5GHz frequency+80MHz bandwidth specification. The real speeds are usually at most 50% of theoretical speeds.