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I've got a raspberrypi zero with this Ethernet Network Adapter. It works fine but the speeds are very slow. On my laptop I can test my ISP's connection at about 50Mbps (down) 30Mbps(up).

But running speedtest-cli on debian jessie I can only get 4Mbps(down) 3Mbps(up).

  • Is there a way that I can improve this?
  • Is it a problem with the Ethernet Adapter itself?
  • Can I improve bandwidth with a WLAN usb Dongle?

here is the result of lsusb:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0fe6:9700 Kontron (Industrial Computer Source / ICS Advent) DM9601 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

UPDATE: I've tried to power the pi with a nexus 5 charger and a ipad charger. Got the same (slow) results. I've plugged the Ethernet Network Adapter to my laptop running win 7. And got the very same (slow) results. So 2 different OS with same results? Poor hardware?

Current with WLAN: enter image description here With the Ethernet Network Adapter: enter image description here

Txugo
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  • Try to set max_usb_current=1 in /boot/config.txt and reboot device. This should increase power output over usb port to maximum. – Huczu Apr 26 '16 at 13:50
  • now that you mention this...I'm powering the pi0 with the router's usb port. Since 'it worked', I thought that was ok...could that be the reason? maybe disabling HDMI might save me some power as well? – Txugo Apr 26 '16 at 14:15
  • And isn't max_usb_current=1 only usefull for pi2? or does it also work for pi0? – Txugo Apr 26 '16 at 14:21
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    According to https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=128842 it should work. If you are powering from router's usb port it could be reason because it's not giving enough power for USB. – Huczu Apr 26 '16 at 14:30
  • Just a thought - is speedtest-cli showing downloaded bits or bytes? –  Apr 27 '16 at 08:22
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    it's bites. but nice thinking. – Txugo Apr 27 '16 at 09:25
  • I've added max_usb_current=1 and turned of HDMI /opt/vc/bin/tvservice -o. And I got, on average, a Mbps extra of download. But no change in upload. So it does seem like it's related to the power source. (I need to be fiscally there to check this and will post the findings.) – Txugo Apr 27 '16 at 09:28
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    the DM9601 needed a kernel patch to avoid the Pi random crashing at high speed, but I have not revisited it since last year. http://jumpstation.co.uk/flog/Jan2015.html#p180120151628 I detailed how to build and apply the kernel patch http://jumpstation.co.uk/flog/Jan2015.html#p190120151932 Hope that helps. – rob Apr 28 '16 at 08:04

1 Answers1

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A lot of the USB to Ethernet adapters available from China (via EBay or Amazon) have old chipsets that are actually USB1 and this limits the potential speed that you can get.

Given you've tried the adapter on a second, more capable, computer I would suggest the problem lies with the Chinese adapter you're using.

You might want to try the likes of Pimoroni (who specialise in Pi stuff) to see if there's a proven adapter on sale there...

Update

I bought this Pimoroni product and tested it using ArchLinuxARM with a PiZero, Pi Model B 256MB and Pi Model B 512MB (I don't have a more recent Pi model). Here are the results I experenced:

test A : nc (pacman -S gnu-netcat)

  • client: nc -vvlnp 12345 >/dev/null
  • server: dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1K | nc -vvn client_ip 12345

Results:

PiZero:  202.867s     5.3MB/s 42.4Mb/s
PiB256:  323.495s     3.3MB/s 26.4Mb/s
PiB512:  325.257s     3.3MB/s 26.4Mb/s
IntelX86: 91.2377s, 11.8 MB/s 94.4Mb/s

test B : iperf (pacman -S iperf)

  • client iperf -c server_ip
  • server iperf -s

Results:

PiZero:   94.0 Mbits/se
PiB256:   57.6 Mbits/sec
PiB512:   58.0 Mbits/sec
IntelX86: 94.1 Mbits/sec

So it would appear that the PiZero with this adaptor outperforms the ModelB.

(compare the above with the 100-baseT ethernet theoretical maximum of 100Mb/s or 12.5MB/s.)

According to labelling, the chipset in this product is a RealTek 8152B. Identifiable product code is YS-LAN26 RT8152B.

starfry
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