Disable QoS & WMM entirely

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi guys,

I have issue where my IoT devices are randomly disconnecting, especially my LIFX lights, they just disconnects from the Wi-Fi then not rejoining back.

The LIFX support has asked me to disable all WMM & QoS entirely on the Access Point, I saw WMM is enabled on the interface → wireless window, but seems can’t disable it.

Any clue on how can I disable those?

Cheers

2

Tell your manufacturer that the times they have changes.
Equipment that does not support WMM, QoS, WPA2, 802.11 k/r/v, etc etc should simply be declared end-of-useful-life and be binned.
When you have just bought them, return them as unfit for purpose.
Without that, nothing will ever change.

3

Any other ideas?

4

I guess there’s no way of disabling it? Time to switch to a new AP with different system.

5

Well, in my router I can disable it but that may be dependent on the router model and capabilities of the chipset it uses.
Really, devices that do not support current standards are going to run you in trouble all the time and it is better to bin them.

6

What did I miss ???

"WMM support " is by default disabled in the Mikrotik devices I have, for all the WLAN interfaces. (Wireless /Advanced mode)
And QoS is in the HT tab, AMPDU priorities. Default is zero only
Or what QoS is referred to here ?

7

Those question marks made me even more confuse.

8

Well in RouterOS for my device there is a setting for WMM disable/enable/required but that does not mean it is available for you as well, because the collection of options differs depending on the model of router due to the chipset it uses. It may well be that it is not possible to set it on your router.
FWIW, on the devices from Ubiquiti that I have it is also not possible to set this, WMM and QoS are always enabled.
So really you need to question your supplier why they ship equipment in 2020 that does not conform to standards written in 2005.

9

Thanks for your explanation.

Not the one I wanted to hear, but it’s what it is.

10

So why then is WMM disabled by default on every damn mikrotik device I have here? And why is QoS also not applied on every mikrotik device I have seen, by default both are not used with new out of the box mikrotik config.

11

2 years later … some more experience

  • AFAIK WMM is disabled in the default config. It can be enabled in the wireless config for each WLAN interface. Some client device (iphone) seem to want to see WMM enabled. CAPsMAN always turns on WMM (CAPsMAN limitation) for WLAN managed by CAPsMAN.
  • WMM does not do anything by default. It is about using different timings to get an opportunity to transmit. (Airtime contention process). Video and voice use smaller numbers for the contention window waits, and as such get priority for transmission. The various WMM timings are distributed in every AP beacon, and they are the 802.11 standard values.
  • But to be effective the packets must be marked as video or voice in their priority, and MT does not do this without specific priority IP firewall mangle rules or bridge filters.
  • MT is very conservative in using AMPDU aggregation for all prioriities except for priority zero (the default priority). So when setting WMM and setiing priority in mangle rules or bridge filters, don’t forget to consider using AMPDU in the HT tab for other priorities. Again CAPsMAN may not allow to set this.

Identifying traffic and giving it video or voice priority is the implementors responsibility. Mikrotik does not make that decision, and does not even use the DSCP-high-bits for that priority by default.

(Priority setting does not leave a router or AP, DSCP travels with the data packet)
(non-WMM traffic and the default “Best effort” WMM traffic (priority=0) use the same timing values.)

12

i always set

keepalive-frames=disabled

is enabled by default