I'm running into a strange issue with SSH lag on my Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. Whenever I start clicking in the terminal, there's a noticeable delay of a few seconds before it begins responding. Once it responds, the interface works smoothly until I stop typing, at which point I have to click again and wait. I initially thought this was a performance issue with the original Pi Zero, but even with the Zero 2W, the lag persists. Has anyone else experienced this, and do you have any suggestions?
4 Answers
It sounds like the lag might be related to your Wi-Fi connection. I have a Zero 2W and noticed similar latency issues. You could try running a ping test from another local shell to see if that helps your SSH session respond faster. Just ping the Zero 2W with a delay to see if the latency decreases.
I’ve noticed similar lag issues on laptops due to their power-saving settings. You might want to check if that’s configured on your Pi as well. There’s a fix available that involves turning off power management for your network interface. Here’s a link with the details: [link to fix](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1230525/ubuntu-20-04-network-performance-extremely-slow). TL;DR: Run `sudo iwconfig INTERFACE_NAME power off`.
Just a thought, but is your keyboard wired or wireless? I’ve seen cases where people experience delays with wireless keyboards due to low battery issues. When the battery is low, the keyboard goes into power-saving mode, causing lag until you press a button to wake it up. This might not be directly related to the Pi, but it's something to check.
I'm using a wired keyboard, and it works fine with my PC, but SSH seems to be the issue.
Have you tried using mosh? It's designed to handle latency much better than standard SSH, so it might solve the issue you're experiencing.
Interesting suggestion! I’ll look into that.
That's a good idea! I usually run a ping alongside my SSH session to check responsiveness too.