NWA55AXE AC clients have very low throughput

holden

I'm working with many NWA APs managed through Nebula that work well with AX clients, but not AC or older. The AC clients will not connect, or if they do, have very low throughput, less than 1mbps (AX clients get 200+Mbps in comparison). Firmware is at the most current level on all of the APs. Is there any particular setting(s) that could affect this issue or be a high logical place to start? Thanks.

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @holden

The throughput issue is more related with the wireless link rate & test method.

• What's the wireless link rate of the AC clients?
• How you test the throughput?
  • Are the AC clients connecting to mesh repeater AP or wired uplink AP?
    • Mesh repeater AP:
      • How many hops does this repeater AP connect to the mesh root AP? Please note if the uplink hop is more than 2 hops, the connection quality will be poorer. You need to ensure the uplink hop is not over than 2 hops.
      • What's the link rate of the mesh uplink? Please note the link rate is related with the signal strength, which is recommended to be larger than -65 dBm. Higher signal strength will have better link rate.
    • Wired uplink AP:
      • Could you try to change an uplink cable? We have an user that experienced that bad Internet throughput which is caused by the uplink cable.
  • Which tool did you use to test throughput?

Please help to check the item above first. Thanks.

holden

The clients I'm testing with are 802.11n, which is spec'ed for 6-600Mbps, and 802.11AX which is specifies 4Mbps-9+Mbps. Tests are run on both the 2ghz & 5ghz radios. Best results are listed below.

I test the throughput on the local network using a server running iPerf. I also test online using Ookla. All clients connect to wired APs going into a Gbps switch. No Mesh. The server is wired to the same switch. Testing with iPerf with a client wired directly into the switch produces 700-800 Mbps to the server. Clients using wifi via the NWA55AXE are as follows.

1. A Windows 10 computer with an 802.11ac wifi interface, using an iperf client (local) and ookla online.

2. A raspberry pi 4 (802.11ac) using an iperf client (local) and ookla online.

3. A Windows laptop with an 802.11ax radio using an iperf client (local) and ookla online..

4. Android cell phone with 802.11ax radio using iperf client (local) and ookla online.

Both older clients (1&2) are slow to connect and get slow throughput, ~300kbs, and 100-200kbs online. They frequently get dropped from the connection. The 802.11ax clients (3&4)get over 300Mbps local, and +250Mbps online.

Wired uplink to all APs. We have multiple APs and they all behave the same way. Wiring is not the issue.

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @holden

Thanks for your update.

Could you share the link status of the clients?

Windows use command "netsh wlan show interfaces".

Raspberry can use command "iwconfig <interface name>" to check.

These information are helpful for this issue.

holden

On the laptop…

Name: Wireless Network Connection

Description: Intel® WiFi Link 1000 BGN

Physical Address:74:e5:0b:ce:of:5c

State: connected

SSID: mbyc

Network type: Infrastructure

Radio type: 802.11n

Authentication: WPA2-Personal

Cipher: CCMP

Mode: Profile

Channel: 7

Receive Rate: 10

Transmit rate: 10

Signal: 99%

Profile: mbyc

Hosted network status: Not available

I don't have access to the pi at the moment, but will forward info when I do.

Glenn

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @holden

From your result, it seems like the issue is on the client's WiFi NIC.

1. Your result shows you have good signal, but the link rate (Receive Rate & Transmit rate) is very low.
2. I use a 802.11n WiFi NIC and connect to NWA55AXE, my netsh wlan show interfaces result shows Receive rate (Mbps) : 173.3
   Transmit rate (Mbps) : 130
   Signal : 94%

Since 802.11n is a old protocol, please ensure your WiFi NIC has updated its driver and reset its setting to avoid wrong setting cause poor performance.