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[Bug] AX55 SLOW SMB throughput (3–4 MB/s) on Windows 11 unless SMB signing is disabled

[Bug] AX55 SLOW SMB throughput (3–4 MB/s) on Windows 11 unless SMB signing is disabled

[Bug] AX55 SLOW SMB throughput (3–4 MB/s) on Windows 11 unless SMB signing is disabled
[Bug] AX55 SLOW SMB throughput (3–4 MB/s) on Windows 11 unless SMB signing is disabled
Thursday - last edited Thursday
Tags: #USB Sharing
Model: Archer AX55  
Hardware Version: V1
Firmware Version: 1.5.10 Build 20251119 rel.50509(4555)

On Windows 11, the AX55 SMB share was only 3–4 MB/s. Disabling SMB client signing with Set-SmbClientConfiguration -RequireSecuritySignature $false raised it to about 30 MB/s. This looks like a compatibility/performance issue between the router’s SMB implementation and Windows’ SMB signing defaults.
 

  • FTP stayed fast, so the disk/USB link is fine

  • Tested with both NTFS and eXFAT file systems

  • SMB signing change improves it to ~30MB/s

  • Perhaps related, Ethernet is about ~30MB/s, whereas WiFi goes to about ~40MB/s

 

More info: Reduced performance after SMB Encryption or SMB Signing is enabled

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4 Reply
Re:[Bug] AX55 SLOW SMB throughput (3–4 MB/s) on Windows 11 unless SMB signing is disabled
Friday

Hello @Discokatt ,

The performance difference you're seeing when disabling SMB signing suggests that the router's CPU may be struggling with the cryptographic overhead of SMB signing, which is enabled by default in Windows 11 for security reasons.
Thank you for sharing this solution; it should be helpful to other users as well.

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#2
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Re:[Bug] AX55 SLOW SMB throughput (3–4 MB/s) on Windows 11 unless SMB signing is disabled
Friday

  @Joseph-TP 

 

Thanks for the reply. With respect, I think the CPU overhead may be a symptom rather than the root cause.

 

Users on more powerful TP-Link routers report similar performance issues. If CPU capacity were the primary cause, a stronger chip should handle it better.


Comparable hardware manage SMB signing without this level of degradation, which suggests the issue is in how TP-Link’s Samba implementation handles signing overhead. My guess would be that the tp link firmware is not efficiently leveraging the CPUs AES decryption capabilities.

 

Since Windows 11 now requires SMB signing by default, this will affect an increasing number of users. A firmware-level improvement would be the right fix, rather than asking users to weaken their Windows security settings.

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Re:[Bug] AX55 SLOW SMB throughput (3–4 MB/s) on Windows 11 unless SMB signing is disabled
Yesterday

  @Discokatt 

 

Hi,

 

As per my own testing, routers of any brand that are still using SMB version 2.x are taking a huge performance hit when SMB signing is enforced.
According to this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/file-server/smb-security#new-signing-algorithm article SMB 2 does not use an AES algorithm for the signing and thus the AES hardware acceleration of modern CPU's is useless for it.

 

TP-Link has only switched to SMB version 3.1.1 more recently. I don't know when the actual changeover was, but the Archer BE550 (released in early 2024) has 3.1.1, while my Archer AXE75 (released in mid 2022) still got version 2.0.2.

 

Unfortunately, manufacturers as well as "reviewers" never mention such fine technical details, so basically a potential customer can only find out by asking someone who already owns the router model.
 

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#4
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Re:[Bug] AX55 SLOW SMB throughput (3–4 MB/s) on Windows 11 unless SMB signing is disabled
17 hours ago

Nice find, @woozle — that matches what I’m seeing.
 

My AX55 is also still on SMB 2.0.2, which likely explains the major slowdown with SMB signing (no AES acceleration). Given that SMB 3.x has been available and standard for more than a decade, this feels outdated.


@Joseph-TP  — can you escalate a request to update to SMB 3.1.1 with AES-based signing support so that security and performance can be improved?


With Windows 11 requiring SMB signing by default, the current setup forces users to choose between security and performance, which shouldn’t be necessary.

Is this something already on the roadmap?

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