32 replies to this topic

[Alex Atkin UK]

[SUMMARY]

 

For optimum speed when downloading to Wii U:

1. Use an external USB HDD/memory stick
2. Use a Wii LAN adapter not WiFi
3. Use a local proxy server to help keep a sustained download speed

Downloading to the internal memory is bad, it averages around 400KB/s.  With the changes above I can get 2.5MB/s which is still not perfect (my connection can do 10MB/s) but much improved.

 

[WII U UPDATE 3.0]

 

Dramatic improvement in performance!

 

I was able to get an average of 2.5MB/s from the USB adapter downloading to a HDD with the proxy enabled.  Without the proxy it fluctuates wildly but still seems much faster than before, I suspect it may average around the same but its harder to measure when it fluctuates so much.  Either way its a big improvement.

 

Downloading to internal memory still is garbage at an average of about 400KB/s, it did peak a few times at 1MB/s but then seemed to stall for a second or two (while it saved the data to the storage no doubt).  As previously suspected it seems the internal storage has very slow write speeds which is bottle-necking the download.  Its annoying as if I had known the built-in memory would be this bad I might not have bought the Wii U Deluxe.  This is particularly relevant as saving to a cheap USB memory stick performs almost as good as an external HDD, doing between 1-2MB/s even while playing LEGO City Undercover at the same time which is excellent compared to PS3/Xbox 360 which slow down to 500KB/s when background downloading.

 

One of the big problems with the Wii U is that the downloads seem to be split into many different smaller files which slows down things a lot as the nature of TCP/IP is you start off slow with each connection and gradually speed up as it detects you are capable of handling it.  So its far better to download one big file rather than several smaller ones.

 

The new background installing seems to be a huge problem too now as when its stalling the Wii U becomes unresponsive when trying to move between sections of the UI.  I just tried to view Download Management and its just sat there on the loading screen for about a minute.  The same thing happened when I tried to go into settings earlier, I had to wait several minutes for any response at all, the home menu just locked up.

 

There is one good thing though, background downloading/installing doesn't seem to affect actual retail disc playback at all.  Clearly the issue is downloading to the internal storage while also trying to read the OS from internal storage, is a bad idea.  I While in a disc based game you aren't really doing anything with internal storage (except when saving the game) so things work smoothly.

 

Netflix still doesn't seem to work very well for me though, PS3 continues to remain the most reliable device to playback Netflix in top quality.

 

[ORIGINAL POST}

 

I just encountered a strange Wii U networking issue.

I was trying to watch something on Netflix yesterday and noticed it was stuck on Medium SD quality after previously being on Medium HD quality. So I finally decided to order a Wii LAN adapter to see if it would help. It arrived today and its the strangest thing, as now Netflix is stuck on Low SD quality. So I decided to do a test.

I deleted the FIFA demo and set about re-downloading it.

First I tried the LAN adapter and was astonished to see it averaging 50K/s. After swapping between WiFi and Wired a few times it managed to sustain around 300K/s.

Now here is the odd part, WiFi does between 500K to 800K/s.

Neither is particularly good seeing as on the best client (my laptop) my WiFi can easily max out my 65Mbit broadband and even get 80-110Mbit from the LAN. I get at LEAST 30Mbit on my phone, often twice that.

So what exactly is going on here? It makes no sense for the LAN adapter to function slower than WiFi. At worst they should perform identical, if the slowdown is happening on the Internet itself or the Wii U networking stack.

Now for the record, this IS an unofficial adapter, but by its nature it HAS to be using the same chipset as the official adapter or it wouldn't work at all. I suppose it could be using a slightly different revision of the chipset that has compatibility issues with the Wii U driver, but it seems unlikely.

I must also note that I tested the LAN adapter on Windows 8 and got 100Mbit down, 81Mbit up, so its clearly not faulty.

Has anyone used the official Wii adapter and gotten better results?

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 09 October 2013 - 12:22 PM.

[Tricky Sonic]

This seems to be an issue with many people - both with the Wi and Wii U. Your not alone if finding the Wireless connection works far better than the LAN connection. Right now my speed tests show between 1.50-3.50mbps

Edited by TrickySx4, 04 December 2012 - 09:15 AM.

[Nollog]

I don't have a LAN adapter.
http://www.bandwidthplace.com

[Both to London]
On Wii U : wireless n
8.72 Mb/s
0.72Mb/s

On PC: jiggabit wired
10.4 Mb/s
8.97 Mb/s

I'm on 120 Mb/s
If anyone finds a better non-flash speedtester I'll redo.

Edited by Nollog, 04 December 2012 - 09:21 AM.

[SoldMyWiiUAndLeftTheForums]

My internet speed is awesome on the Wii U, I love it

[Gamejunkie]

My internet speed is awesome on the Wii U, I love it

You must have a super fast Internet connection that some how magically compensates for the slow Nintendo servers and the slowness of the Wii U itself as so many other people are commenting on how slow everything is. Either that or you're easily pleased.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I don't have a LAN adapter.
http://www.bandwidthplace.com

[Both to London]
On Wii U : wireless n
8.72 Mb/s
0.72Mb/s

On PC: jiggabit wired
10.4 Mb/s
8.97 Mb/s

I'm on 120 Mb/s
If anyone finds a better non-flash speedtester I'll redo.

Thanks for that, I had REALLY been hoping for a HTML5 speedtest but couldn't find one.

I will re-test, but even here across the road from my house I can get 24.56Mbit down, 23.25Mbit up over WiFi on my laptop.

As for installing games, ugh. Why is it only Microsoft who managed to figure out how to have downloads install at the same time so once its downloaded, its done?

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 04 December 2012 - 02:08 PM.

[cannonshane]

Im in Australia and even my 1GB update only took like just over 30 mins, And our connections are complete junk compared to the rest of the world.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Pretty sure mine took 90 minutes and both my WiFi and broadband is more than capable.

Then again its odd how the update worked, as I noticed its opened a ton of connection through the router - it was like it was downloading from about 15 servers at the same time.

[3Dude]

Pretty sure mine took 90 minutes and both my WiFi and broadband is more than capable.
Then again its odd how the update worked, as I noticed its opened a ton of connection through the router - it was like it was downloading from about 15 servers at the same time.

You have been gathering some wonderful information. Thanks.

Personally, since I got mine a little late to the party (but sooner than i originally planned). Ive been noticing....

Very inconsistant performance in general.

With both downloads, booting games, and os load times. Sometimes its fast, and sometimes it takes quite a bit.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I think I saved a copy of the ip_conntrack from the firmware update, I will post it if I find it.

One good thing is the servers seemed to be very close, probably in London, but they obviously weren't serving data out all that quickly.

I couldn't find the ip_conntrack but I did monitor the firmware update last night. This time it was clearly just a single download.

[Ecorsbie]

Im in Australia and even my 1GB update only took like just over 30 mins, And our connections are complete junk compared to the rest of the world.

I am pretty sure Kodiak, Alaska has crappy internet just like in Australia...our bandwidth absoultely is horrible. I can get up to 22mbs...but rarely see it, its because our internet provider's network infrastructure can not handle the amount of use. If I want to download something and I start to surf the internet too...the speed almost drops in half. It stinks!

[Soliferum]

3.92 on wii over wifi
11.62 on pc over wifi
WiiU is much closer to the router, something is amiss here!

[Alex Atkin UK]

I am testing again now to see if anything has changed and also so I have a recent comparison to use against the new firmware which I am HOPING will improve things.

 

First things first, it still doesn't work properly without using a proxy server.  This used to be a problem with the PS3 too and still is with the PS Vita.  For me, the WiiU struggles along at 300-800K/s, well under 1Mbit, if I try to use the default settings.  This is pretty bad considering 99% of WiiU users will use this configuration.

 

Now, the latest tests using the proxy server with the data already cached:

Downloading to System Memory: 1.2MB/s (9.6Mbit)

Downloading to USB HDD: 1.6MB/s (12.6Mbit)

 

This SHOULD show us the maximum speed the Wii U can do as its bypassing my broadband entirely and downloading the file directly from my server.  I confirmed this by checking my router which showed very little traffic during the test and the proxy servers ethernet port showing the above outgoing speeds.  By all accounts, these speeds utterly suck.

 

Upon checking my WiFi access point it shows that the Wii U is only connecting at 65Mbit which probably means Nintendo are using low-power WiFi, a lot of mobile phones do the same but then they run on batteries so it makes sense.  Its more than a bit stupid for a games console where some titles will be 25GB+ in size, to limit your connection speed to well below your WiFis capability, even more dumb that the Wii ethernet adapter performs even worse.  For example, my laptop can do 4-8 times that speed on the same WiFi network.

 

The thing is though, even locked at 65Mbit the WiiU should be doing faster than this.  In fact, the PS Vita has the exact same restriction and can do 20Mbit from the proxy NOT cached, actually coming off the Internet itself.

 

If Nintendo hopes to make digital downloads of retail games practical they better get this sorted.  I highly suspect this is a bug in the WiiU firmware as the reason mobile phones/PS Vita only do 65Mbit is they do not support MIMO, usually down to only having a single WiFi antenna.  We know for a fact the WiiU has two antenna, so it not supporting MIMO would be very odd.

 

[UPDATE]
 

Hmm, this doesn't look promising as another product using the identical WiFi chipset is also limited.

Roku 2 is 2.4 ghz only, but quess what ???? They have capped the wifi speed to a max of 65mbs. That's right 65mbs. No matter what your router can provide the new Roku's will only connect at a max of 65mbs.

 

Still, if they fix what is preventing us from even getting the full speed from 65Mbit WiFi then maybe it will also fix the dreadful performance of the USB ethernet adapter.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 10 April 2013 - 10:21 AM.

[routerbad]

I just encountered a strange Wii U networking issue.

I was trying to watch something on Netflix yesterday and noticed it was stuck on Medium SD quality after previously being on Medium HD quality. So I finally decided to order a Wii LAN adapter to see if it would help. It arrived today and its the strangest thing, as now Netflix is stuck on Low SD quality. So I decided to do a test.

I deleted the FIFA demo and set about re-downloading it.

First I tried the LAN adapter and was astonished to see it averaging 50K/s. After swapping between WiFi and Wired a few times it managed to sustain around 300K/s.

Now here is the odd part, WiFi does between 500K to 800K/s.

Neither is particularly good seeing as on the best client (my laptop) my WiFi can easily max out my 65Mbit broadband and even get 80-110Mbit from the LAN. I get at LEAST 30Mbit on my phone, often twice that.

So what exactly is going on here? It makes no sense for the LAN adapter to function slower than WiFi. At worst they should perform identical, if the slowdown is happening on the Internet itself or the Wii U networking stack.

Now for the record, this IS an unofficial adapter, but by its nature it HAS to be using the same chipset as the official adapter or it wouldn't work at all. I suppose it could be using a slightly different revision of the chipset that has compatibility issues with the Wii U driver, but it seems unlikely.

I must also note that I tested the LAN adapter on Windows 8 and got 100Mbit down, 81Mbit up, so its clearly not faulty.

Has anyone used the official Wii adapter and gotten better results?

Unless you have a dedicated OC line coming straight into your gateway, you will never get 80-100Mb throughput to anywhere outside your own LAN.  You will also never get more than 100Mb on FastEthernet within your own LAN, if you have a GigabitEthernet switch you would be getting 1000Mb within the LAN.  This is all great for network communications between the devices in your home, but once past the gateway, you will be limited to the rate that your ISP provides, anywhere from 1.5Mb to 25Mb down, and anywhere from 100Kb to 25Mb up.  500Kb to 800Kb is actually fairly good, to put it in perspective, you are getting between half to nearly a full 1Mbps on a single server connection.

 

I say again it is most likely Nintendo's own backend network that is slowing connections.  They need to work on it, because while not everyone is experiencing this, enough are to cause concern.

I am testing again now to see if anything has changed and also so I have a recent comparison to use against the new firmware which I am HOPING will improve things.

 

First things first, it still doesn't work properly without using a proxy server.  This used to be a problem with the PS3 too and still is with the PS Vita.  For me, the WiiU struggles along at 300-800K/s, well under 1Mbit, if I try to use the default settings.  This is pretty bad considering 99% of WiiU users will use this configuration.

 

Now, the latest tests using the proxy server with the data already cached:

Downloading to System Memory: 1.2MB/s (9.6Mbit)

Downloading to USB HDD: 1.6MB/s (12.6Mbit)

 

This SHOULD show us the maximum speed the Wii U can do as its bypassing my broadband entirely and downloading the file directly from my server.  I confirmed this by checking my router which showed very little traffic during the test and the proxy servers ethernet port showing the above outgoing speeds.  By all accounts, these speeds utterly suck.

 

Upon checking my WiFi access point it shows that the Wii U is only connecting at 65Mbit which probably means Nintendo are using low-power WiFi, a lot of mobile phones do the same but then they run on batteries so it makes sense.  Its more than a bit stupid for a games console where some titles will be 25GB+ in size, to limit your connection speed to well below your WiFis capability, even more dumb that the Wii ethernet adapter performs even worse.  For example, my laptop can do 4-8 times that speed on the same WiFi network.

 

The thing is though, even locked at 65Mbit the WiiU should be doing faster than this.  In fact, the PS Vita has the exact same restriction and can do 20Mbit from the proxy NOT cached, actually coming off the Internet itself.

 

If Nintendo hopes to make digital downloads of retail games practical they better get this sorted.  I highly suspect this is a bug in the WiiU firmware as the reason mobile phones/PS Vita only do 65Mbit is they do not support MIMO, usually down to only having a single WiFi antenna.  We know for a fact the WiiU has two antenna, so it not supporting MIMO would be very odd.

 

[UPDATE]
 

Hmm, this doesn't look promising as another product using the identical WiFi chipset is also limited.

 

Still, if they fix what is preventing us from even getting the full speed from 65Mbit WiFi then maybe it will also fix the dreadful performance of the USB ethernet adapter.

The proxy still cannot send data to the Wii U until it has received it from the destination server.  Again bandwidth within your LAN =/= bandwidth beyond the CDE.  Also, caching does not guarantee it will not reach back to the server to do a checksum.  What are you using to monitor traffic on your router?  Flying squirrel?  

Edited by routerbad, 10 April 2013 - 11:03 AM.

[Alex Atkin UK]

There does seem to be a speed restriction on a single connection when downloading from Nintendo, but its MUCH higher than the Wii U ever achieves.

 

Here I take one of the bigger files from the Squid proxy log and download it using wget to the box running the proxy:

 

Connecting to ccs.cdn.wup.shop.nintendo.net (ccs.cdn.wup.shop.nintendo.net)|80.239.178.217|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 201719808 (192M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `00000010'

100%[==========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================>] 201,719,808 3.71M/s   in 54s     

2013-04-10 22:58:30 (3.58 MB/s) - `00000010' saved [201719808/201719808]

 

So even if it WAS accessing that file directly over the proxy, it should be MUCH quicker than 1.6MB/s. 

 

However, I know the Wii U is using the cached copy:

 

1365562881.835 124463 192.168.1.8 TCP_HIT/200 201720218 GET http://ccs.cdn.wup.s...10EE01/00000010 - HIER_NONE/- application/octet-stream

 

Plus I can see where the traffic is on my LAN and that during the test my broadband was idle apart from a few KB here and there.  So the only bottle-neck here is the Wii U WiFi and network stack.

 

As for my connection having problems doing a good speed over a single connection, nope:

 

Connecting to ---.co.uk (---.co.uk)|78.129.--.--|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 536870912 (512M) [application/zip]
Saving to: `512MB.zip'

100%[==========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================>] 536,870,912 10.0M/s   in 53s     

2013-04-10 23:04:12 (9.61 MB/s) - `512MB.zip' saved [536870912/536870912]

Bearing in mind that is from my VPS which is capped at 100MBit, so anyone accessing my website at the same time will slow it down.

 

I have my own traffic monitoring on my router using iptables rules to track all NAT clients independent of each other, so I can see exactly where bandwidth is being used.  Its all aggregated on a single Intranet page on my server which also shows its own independent bandwidth usage, so I can also see NONE NAT traffic for that particular machine.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 10 April 2013 - 02:10 PM.

[WaddleDee]

this IS an unofficial adapter

 

My wireless is incredibly slow on all my devices (including Wii U) but using the official Wii ethernet adapter the connection speed skyrockets to heaven.

 

If it's bothersome, I'd really recommend trying the official adapter. It's not that expensive if I remember correctly.

[Alex Atkin UK]

That is why I originally asked if anyone else had the same problem with the official adapter AND I checked the adapter worked at good speeds on a PC. 

 

It shouldn't really make any difference if its official or not as it HAS to be the same chipset or it wouldn't work at all.  However, there is a chance, a small chance, that the unofficial adapter somehow is "slightly" different so works but not optimally.  Different firmware, slightly different chipset, there could be many reasons.

 

Like I said though, part of the issue here is that the WiFi is performing much slower than any other WiFi device I own, so it makes me concerned that its the Wii U networking stack that sucks which would impact the wired connection as well, which is pretty much what I confirmed with the unofficial adapter.  So I am reluctant to pick one up as they are 2/3 the price of a game.

 

Perhaps I will pick one up from Game in-store so I can return it if the performance is no better.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 10 April 2013 - 02:45 PM.

[TommyGonk]

On an 80Mbit BT Infinity internet connection I can only get 1.5-2Mbit out of the USB network adapter, on wifi it's about 5-10Mbit. I'm hoping Nintendo have sorted this in the upcoming speedup update.

 

I use the USB network adapter most of the time, it works best for playing Black Ops online, wifi seems to drop in and out even though the Wii U is only a few metres from the wifi router.

 

I wish Nintendo had put a gigiabit network port on the Wii U (and an optical audio output), it would have cost pence.

[Gamejunkie]

On an 80Mbit BT Infinity internet connection I can only get 1.5-2Mbit out of the USB network adapter, on wifi it's about 5-10Mbit. I'm hoping Nintendo have sorted this in the upcoming speedup update.

I use the USB network adapter most of the time, it works best for playing Black Ops online, wifi seems to drop in and out even though the Wii U is only a few metres from the wifi router.

I wish Nintendo had put a gigiabit network port on the Wii U (and an optical audio output), it would have cost pence.

I have the exact same broadband and whilst I haven't measured the actual speed with the Wii U that seems about right.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Makes you wonder if Nintendo only enabled USB1.0 support in the ethernet adapter driver.  It wouldn't make much sense, but it performing slower than WiFi DOESN'T make any sense.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 11 April 2013 - 02:35 PM.