sftp/scp speed on N900
 

Hi, sftp/scp speed for me is very very slow. About 150kb/sec. Way too slow to use for copying files over wifi (bluetooth is faster!)

Using same wifi connection on my N95 and SymSMB demo I got several times faster speed copying to it as a samba share from PC, 500kb/sec+.

What speed does everyone else get? Any better way to manage files over wifi?

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

I use scp over wifi and get 500 to 900k/sec.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

I've seen up to 1.8MBytes/s before, but generally I also get around the same as jebba.

-jkq

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

It is really disappointing and slow to the point of being useless. Even a plain http transfer from a server on the local network hits max around 750k/s and even that is not consistent. Multiple runs of a 3MB file go as slow as 150k/s.

It's like N900 is trying its hardest to prevent us from using the 32gb of storage.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

Just tried FTP... same thing, about 750k/s max downloading data into the N900 from a local machine. :-/

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

speak for yourself :)

i easily get 1-2 MByte/s over my wlan using scp, seems like something's wrong with your device or configuration.

edit2:
upon further testing, transfers using scp seem to middle out at 1,2-1,4 MByte/s for larger files (>10 MB).
significantly less for many small files, which is to be expected.

i never gave it much thought, it surely "feels" more than fast enough ;)

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

1-2Mbit/sec is even slower than the speed I'm getting. I'm talking about 750 kbyte not kbit.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

Mbit/s or MByte/s ? 1-2 Mbit/s is pretty pathetic over wifi. To prevent confusion, I would suggest everyone explicitly spell out the bits or bytes they are talking about rather than abbreviating.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

i meant MByte/s of course, sorry.
yeah abbreviations are killer... stlpaul wrote "kb" which is bit, i must've gotten confused ;)

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

Use some protocol without encryption (FTP, HTTP, rsync, ... ?) and you probably will have a much better speed, Encryption wastes CPU power so much... and wi-fi usually haves it's own encryption enabled and I doubt all your files are so sensitive that you need to double-encrypt them at the cost of speed.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

Yeah, good points :) I mean 750000 bytes per second. In reality it's slower, around 450KB/s on average, but about 750KB/s burst speed.

I'm using a WPA2 connection to a cisco access point located less than 3 meters from my N900. What kind of connection are you using?

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

I don't have a speed report (not at home at the moment) but I'll post one when this evening and edit this post. For reference, I have a linksys WRT 54GS router running the latest Tomato firmware. The wifi setup is WPA2, pre-shared key, AES, "G only", Channel 2.

Edit: copying a large media file via sftp (source is Ubuntu 8.04 machine with default ssh and ip stack settings) resulted in a speed of around 1.8MBytes/second and very high cpu use (around 92%/600Mhz), though the cpu didn't seem to be the gating factor as it wasn't bouncing off of 100% (according to my manual observation via Conky, at least).

Copying a large media file via http using wget (same server, apache serving the file) resulted in an average speed of around 700kBytes/second. Cpu utilization was trivial, but the download speed was erratic..it would go anywhere from 300kBytes/second up to nearly a MegaByte/second. Tests done with the phone about 2 feet from the AP.

While not "blazing fast", the sftp speed seems ok.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

Slightly OT, but I got similar performance over wifi using sshfs. I was pleased to say the least.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

Watching with htop, the CPU usage between openssh during a sftp transfer or wget during a plain http/ftp is the same, neither is taxing the CPU much at all (around 15%).

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

I have a Linksys WRT610N running dd-wrt v24-sp2, bgn mixed mode, WPA2 with a pre-shared TKIP key, on Channel 13.

it's in the same room as the tablet.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

Seems about the same setup as me then. I'm jealous :)

Other computers using same wifi in the same location get much, much faster speeds. So I dunno.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

I'm doing mine on an open/cleartext network with ssh and a crappy motorola DSL/wifi modem.

Simply try moving your N900 to a different place. Like even 1 foot somewhere else or a different orientation can affect the signal significantly.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

With my N800 (yes, 8), sometimes the transfer rate would get bad (~100kbytes/s) until I disconnected and reconnected, then it would go back to "normal" (~700kbytes/s). This was in almost the exact same spot. I have not yet had to play that trick on my N900, though.

You could also try putting some load on the CPU -- with my N800 (yes, 8 again) sometimes it seems that the transfer rate speeds up if the CPU is working. I think that the speed of the SD card transfers was related to the clock speed the CPU was currently running at. I haven't paid much attention to this on the N900 yet.

-jkq

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

You mean in the same way typing passwords and locks on doors waste time?

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

(the "conventional" way has it that b=bit, and B=8bits=byte)

stlpaul:
the only way to be sure is to carry out the test using other servers and other wifis.

As jebba said, try moving around. Because of the way TCP/IP is implemented, loss of packets because of bad signal will cause the connecting hosts to further reduce their speeds (to help with congestions, since it is assumed that the packets are lost due to congested networks). Therefore, even slight decreases in signal strength or minimal noise can have dramatic effects on wifi speeds.

I usually get about 1.5 MB - 2 MB, using ftp, scp, or samba or http (when close to the access point). The load doesn't kill my cpu (stays between 15% and 30%), but I do notice the device is a little sluggish.

If you can verify that your device is indeed under-performing, then you should have Nokia take a look at it.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

I use a dd-wrt router and wiscp far manager plugin for speeds around 500kilobytes/sec. However, when I conect the device directly to an Orient USB wifi dongle, the SSH is very unstable. The speed is around 50kilobytes/sec (sometimes 500kilobytes/sec) and the main problem - the connection often fails on the authentication stage. That's very annoying. I'm using the OpenSSH packet.
The same setup works flawlessly with other ssh-enabled smartphones in adhoc mode.

Re: sftp/scp speed on N900
 

I think the problem is, the n900 idles or uses slow clock speed when you're not typing or tapping the screen. I don't know how to fix that.

I'm using rsync over ssh, it works pretty fast if I keep tapping the screen or typing, but otherwise even if I've set the clock to minimum 1150MHz it goes slow at 50kB/sec after a little while. So I guess the CPU is going into some idle / resting mode, and the decryption speed is suffering as a result. How can I prevent that so that rsync will keep running fast when I'm not tapping the screen?