How to speed up scp file transfer in a LAN

Question

Introduction

I am experimenting with transferring files over ssh by using the scp command from a terminal. The transfer rate I am achieving is poor and far below what I have seen around the internet. I would like some assistance in speeding things up.

Hardware

• Dell Latitude D830
• Dell XPS 15
• Experia Box V8 router

Software

• Chakra Linux (both)
• Linux kernel 3.12.6-1 (both)
• KDE 4.12.1 (XPS)
• KDE 4.12.0 (Latitude)
• OpenSSH_6.2p2 (both)
• OpenSSL 1.0.1e (both)

Network

• Laptops are connected to WiFi (no Ethernet connection)
• Laptops are 5 cm apart and 50 cm away from the router
• Laptops are in the same LAN

Test

I transfer the movie Mud (Mud.mp4 = 690 MB) from the Latitude to the XPS laptop using:

scp 192.168.2.3:~/Videos/Mud.mp4 ~/

transfer rate: ~1.6 MB/s

scp -c arcfour 192.168.2.3:~/Videos/Mud.mp4 ~/

transfer rate: ~1.6 MB/s

scp -C -c arcfour 192.168.2.3:~/Videos/Mud.mp4 ~/

transfer rate: starts at ~4.5 MB/s drops to ~1.6 MB/s in ~55 seconds

Results for blowfish are almost similar.

Question

Using torrents I normally have a download rate of ~3.5 MB/s. Of course, torrents use a totally different protocol and method than scp but I would think that a small local setup as I presented should perform better than downloading a file from who knows where. Furthermore I have seen results on the internet close to 10 MB/s using scp, even without the high-performance variant of ssh: hpn-ssh.

What can I do to speed up file transfer using scp?