Poor WiFi speed with Toradex USB WiFi module based on RTL8188 chipset

Hi,
Running Toradex USB WiFi module based on RTL8188 with IMX6 and AsterV1.1B carry board.

With last Angsrom Linux 2.7 the WiFi connects properly to the network, but DOWNLOAD is about 300Kb/s UPLOAD is around just 60Kb/s.

That’s measured during simple SCP file transfer (local network) in non GUI environment and CPU load around 1-5%. There is nothing else the system is doing at that time and the WiFi network itself is quite fast, but unfortunately the WiFi speed remains very poor.

It is tested with couple of different Imx6 boards and Toradex WiFi dongles in different networks, but it is exactly the same 300kb/s download and 60kb/s upload.

Could you help or recommend where could be the problem?

You’re testing LM006 or LM816 ?

Could you please try measure WiFi performance using same method and same WiFi dongle but inserted to desktop/laptop PC? And then repeat the measurement immediately using Colibri iMX6.

We’re aware of speed being limited to 1Mb/s on RTL8188EUS, but you should get 3Mb/s at minimum using RTL8188CU chipsets. Starting with Q1 2018 release we’ll include different driver for rtl based devices, hopefully providing higher throughput.

We have tested with:

(Toradex branded one)
also with:

And on our own product board we have soldered USB module with LM822, where it is the same situation with the speed.

BR

Yes, we already did that. It is more than 30MB/s on PC with Linux Mint (Ubuntu 16.04).

Yes, we already did that. It is more than 30MB/s on PC with Linux Mint (Ubuntu 16.04).

What is the max speed you have on your side with imx6 and some of these wifi modules?

Could you recommend any other alternative for WiFi to USB adapter with different driver that can achieve higher speeds? Is the speed limitation st the wifi driver or usb itself? Is there any customer you know, that already solved WiFi speed limitation issue?

We don’t have good experience with usb based wifi, they mostly work but are wildly inconsistent. For Colibri boards we had most success with SDIO based adapters, and for Apalis PCIe is the winner.
Limitation that you’re seeing is partially a driver fault, and that will be fixed for RTLwifi based cards with our end of march Q1 release. You may try running your non-RTL8188EUS adapter over external powered usb hub and compare results. If you can, try with cards based on chipsets from different manufacturers (like marvell, qualcomm etc.).