Slow WiFI Download Speeds Over SSH

[n8jb]

Hi everyone!

New to the Raspberry Pi - I ordered two RPI3's and I'm enjoying them so far!
I did run into a road block and was hoping someone out there could give me some suggestions.

The problem:
When I SSH into my Pi 3 (over wifi) the download speeds are slow with a speed test (simple WGET of a 1 GB file). This is a fresh installation of Raspbian Jessie (via NOOBS). However, when I connect my keyboard/mouse/monitor directly to the Pi 3 and try the same speed test over the terminal, the download speed is about 7 MB/s. Over SSH the same test produces 20-500 KB/s.

Does anyone know why this may be? I've already opened the ports on my router (just in case) and checked IPtables.

This is driving me crazy and is making software installation really slow and painful. I could just do all my setup with my keyboard/mouse directly connected to the Pi, but I would like to ideally manage it remotely.

Here's the information iwconfig provides:

Code: Select all

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"Nate + Ash"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 80:EA:96:F0:F5:DC
          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s   Tx-Power=31 dBm
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-39 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

I have no USB devices attached to the Pi and the power supply is 2.5A.

[VexisArcanum]

That's most likely because when you use SSH, the pi has to send you the stdout over the same dongle that's trying to run a speed test. If the test determines how fast the information gets to the machine, and not just to the modem, then hardware limitations are to blame. It's simply doing too much to make the test its sole priority.

[n8jb]

That's most likely because when you use SSH, the pi has to send you the stdout over the same dongle that's trying to run a speed test. If the test determines how fast the information gets to the machine, and not just to the modem, then hardware limitations are to blame. It's simply doing too much to make the test its sole priority.

It's just a wget 1 GB file test. Every download, whilst using SSH, is slow.
So do you think it's a hardware limitation?

[n8jb]

Somebody else told me that simply using SSH shouldn't cause this issue. Can anybody confirm or deny this at all?

If it shouldn't, does anyone have any suggestions on how to remedy this? It would be really nice to manage the device over SSH (including installing updates etc)

Edit: My other Pi 3 does not have this issue. However, it's not running Raspian. So I am going to try to install the same OS on the problematic Pi. If it continues having this issue, I am going to write it off as a bad board I guess.

[n8jb]

Installing OpenELEC on the problematic Pi resulted in full download speeds while using SSH over wifi.... So I'm guessing Raspbian is to blame.

Any suggestions on how to fix it with Raspbian or should I just seek a different distro?