hAP ac^2 Problems---Extremely Poor Performance found in 2.4G and 5G WiFi

RouterOS Wireless Networking
41

So, it is a LAN-WAN routing issue. Can I confirm with all on here who have posted data across the WAN interface:


  • only from either a default firewall, bridge filter and queues configuration or very minimal firewall configuration, i.e. less than 25 filter rules
  • if expecting maximum throughput performance you are using clients with the most advanced WiFi radios and strong CPUs, e.g. MacBook pros or PCIe adapters?

You should always state the clients you are using for testing and if you are doing a simultaneous/duplex transfer test. Duplex tests are much tougher on the router than single direction tests of upload and download.

42

All the testes carried out are for downloading only and use BTest.exe on MacBook Pro via WINE. If the downloading results are satisfactory, I shall continue to work with other tests on uploading side.

YH

43

My assumption stated in post #37 http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/hap-ac-2-problems-extremely-poor-performance-found-in-2-4g-and-5g-wifi/118063/1 is not as good as I expected.

Although the test for the internal btest server was good, as show in Figure 1, I was not able to obtain satisfied file download test as shown in Figure2 when I configured hAP ac^2 as an AP. I do believe cAP ac does have the same problems as I have in hAP ac^2.

Figure 3 shows the general test setup for most of results presents in this thread.

Figure 1: Internal btest server result

Figure 2: File download test

Figure 3: Test Setup for hAP ac^2

YH

44

Nope, pls check http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/hap-ac-lan-wifi-5ghz-performance-issue/118005/1

45

I meant WLAN<->WAN (not Ethernet LAN<->WAN). Thank you for the clarification.

46

I do not know what to complain about…
Mikrotik, the back Porting hero’s, everything runs fine and smooth or not?

they have not heard the bang here yet, because there are no ears around.

After 4 years of waiting for missing features in ac Hardware, there is no hope, they aren’t doing real business in WiFi anymore, only halfhearted. For low end market


the bigger problem is that they do not admit it…

If you have time wait for Ros 7, all problems get fixed, believe it or not

no further tests needed

47

I find the same poor performance in 5G on the hAP ac^2, I have 1Gbps WAN connection but the 5G connection on AC/80MHz at one metter from the router only throughputs at about 220Mbps download and 270Mbps upload. If I connect a similar priced Asus RT-AC1200G+, use same wireless settings as on the hAP ac^2, the download and upload speeds are almost double, ~500Mbps average on both download and upload.

Tests were done using a Intel 7260 2x2 card.

The connection to the Asus reports 860Mbps link speed on the card, but the connection to the hAP ac^2 jumps somewhere in the 400-700 range, at one metter from the router (direct line of sight).

Hope Mikrotik fixes these issues, I was expecting better performance.

ROS7 can’t wait that long…

48

I hope they do too but it’s always unsettling when customers report issues and Mikrotik is dead silent. To me it’s an indication that they are aware of the issue and are also aware they may not be able to fix it. When there are this many threads and this many people complaining and MT doesn’t even respond, even just to say that they’re’re working on it…that’s bad.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

49

I’ve send my two hab2 back to the dealer.

It was quite simplr to test. Equal if I configured the hap2 as ap or as router the Downloadspeed over wireless was 20 percent from the possible rate.(stable version and RC)

I’ve discontented the hab2 and connect a amplifi in bridgemode and have with the same download server over my laptop (Intel Wlan card) full speed.

I know that’s no btest or exactly science, but it is the thing I use for.

I’m very disappointed with the behaviour from Microtik, so that I sell my rb750 too and buy a edge router with two uac AP’s.

Andi



\

50

Mikrotik requested details, tests and supouts. I am going to provide them. You all should do the same if you would like to get it repaired…

51

jarda, thank you very much for relaying my concerns to MikroTik Support. I have also sent an e-mail to the Support at the same day as you did. My ticket number is [Ticket#2018041022002906]. However they have not asked for any details up to this moment except asking me for renewal my MikroTik Certificate.

Anyway they can easily replicate the problems that we have. In order to refresh the MikroTik’s big brain, I use the following diagrams to illustrate.

Figure 1 shows the basic setup for the tests carried out later. There is a file server (NAS) connected to one of LAN ports of CCR1009 router. Figure 2 shows the performance when the laptop computer was connected to hAP ac^2 router via LAN cable. I downloaded a large file of 10G size from the file server to my laptop computer (MacBook Pro Retinar). The readings shown on the chart are very good and I am happy with it. Figure 3 shows the 5G WiFi performance when I connected my laptop computer to the hAP ac^2 via 5G ac wireless link. As you can see the results are very choppy and NOT STABLE. It cannot keep at a rough stable state.

Please help us to resolve this issue.

Figure 1: Experiment Setup

Figure 2: LAN->WAN File Download Speed

Figure 3: WLAN->WAN File Download Speed

YH

52

yhfung,
Could you please also make LAN(eth) ↔ WLAN tests, as I did in another topic. Thanks!

53

As per your request, I have done a number of tests relating the issue “LAN(eth) <—> WLAN” that you concerned as follows:

Figure 1 shows the setup configuration for the subsequent tests including LAN-to-LAN, WLAN (2.4G) to LAN and finally WLAN (5G) to LAN.
Figure 2 shows the LAN-LAN speed.
Figure 3 shows the WLAN (2.4G) to LAN speed
Figure 4 shows the WLAN (5G) to LAN speed
Figure 5 shows iperf3 results of LAN-to-LAN connection
Figure 6 shows iperf3 results of WLAN (2.4G) to LAN connection
Figure 7 shows iperf3 results of WLAN (5G) to LAN connection

In general I would not carry out iperf3 test because it does not reflect the actual performance of the router. Instead we may use the actual file downloading test or MikroTik Bandwidth test.

Figure 1: Test setup for evaluation

Figure 2: LAN<—>LAN file download test

Figure 3: WLAN (2.4G)<—>LAN file download test

Figure 4: WLAN (5G)<—>LAN file download test





Figure 5: iperf3 test for LAN-LAN connection

./iperf3 -c 192.168.88.243
Connecting to host 192.168.88.243, port 5201
[  4] local 192.168.88.246 port 57346 connected to 192.168.88.243 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec   112 MBytes   943 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec   112 MBytes   936 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec   110 MBytes   920 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec                  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.09 GBytes   938 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.09 GBytes   938 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.



Figure 6: iperf3 test for WLAN (2.4G)<—>LAN connection

./iperf3 -c 192.168.88.243
Connecting to host 192.168.88.243, port 5201
[  4] local 192.168.88.245 port 57238 connected to 192.168.88.243 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  12.0 MBytes   100 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  7.81 MBytes  65.6 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  9.17 MBytes  76.7 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  6.86 MBytes  57.7 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  12.8 MBytes   107 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec  11.1 MBytes  93.0 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec  11.9 MBytes  99.5 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec  12.3 MBytes   103 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec  11.8 MBytes  99.4 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec  12.5 MBytes   105 Mbits/sec                  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   108 MBytes  90.8 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   108 MBytes  90.8 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.



Figure 7: iperf3 test for WLAN (5G)<—>LAN connection

./iperf3 -c 192.168.88.243
Connecting to host 192.168.88.243, port 5201
[  4] local 192.168.88.245 port 57291 connected to 192.168.88.243 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  35.0 MBytes   294 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  42.6 MBytes   358 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  47.2 MBytes   396 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  42.2 MBytes   354 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  43.9 MBytes   368 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec  44.5 MBytes   374 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec  40.7 MBytes   341 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec  29.1 MBytes   244 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec  1.77 MBytes  14.8 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec  53.2 MBytes   446 Mbits/sec                  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   380 MBytes   319 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   380 MBytes   319 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.

YH

54

yhfung,
Thank you. I’m facing the same: bad speed LAN → WLAN5 (download) and good speed WLAN5 → LAN (upload).

Keep in mind that iperf3 client is sending by default. If you run iperf3 in client mode on your laptop you have to specify -R option in order to measure download speed (server send).

55

nemoforum,

I did not realised the difference and misinterpreted the sender and receiver. I thought the client (laptop PC) acted both functions. Anyway after I have got your message, I re-ran the tests with the option -R and got the following results. Apart from the throughput rates, we need to observe the value of packet retry count (Retr). This is the most important figure, which determines how good of the transmission. As you can see the values of Retr in Listings 2 and 3 are very large. They indicate that the data link conditions were not good and unstable. When the wired connection is used, the value of Retr is zero. It indicates that the data link connection was pretty good and stable. I have a longer log and found several tries due to unknown reasons.

Is there any way to reduce the retry count? MikroTik Support, can you reduce them to zero value?

Listing 1: LAN-to-LAN

./iperf3 -c 192.168.88.243 -R
Connecting to host 192.168.88.243, port 5201
Reverse mode, remote host 192.168.88.243 is sending
[  4] local 192.168.88.246 port 60756 connected to 192.168.88.243 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec   112 MBytes   942 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec   112 MBytes   942 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec   112 MBytes   942 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec   112 MBytes   938 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec   112 MBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.10 GBytes   942 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.10 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.

Listing 2: LAN-to-WLAN (5G）

./iperf3 -c 192.168.88.243 -R
Connecting to host 192.168.88.243, port 5201
Reverse mode, remote host 192.168.88.243 is sending
[  4] local 192.168.88.242 port 60744 connected to 192.168.88.243 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  34.7 MBytes   291 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  40.9 MBytes   343 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  32.0 MBytes   268 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  34.7 MBytes   291 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  20.1 MBytes   168 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec  22.5 MBytes   190 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec  34.3 MBytes   288 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec  20.5 MBytes   172 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec  31.9 MBytes   268 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec  26.1 MBytes   218 Mbits/sec                  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   299 MBytes   251 Mbits/sec  272             sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   298 MBytes   250 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.

Listing 3: LAN-to-WLAN (2.4G)

./iperf3 -c 192.168.88.243 -R
Connecting to host 192.168.88.243, port 5201
Reverse mode, remote host 192.168.88.243 is sending
[  4] local 192.168.88.242 port 60747 connected to 192.168.88.243 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  5.36 MBytes  45.0 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  7.76 MBytes  65.1 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  7.62 MBytes  64.0 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  7.78 MBytes  65.2 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  6.12 MBytes  51.3 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   5.00-6.01   sec  1.21 MBytes  10.1 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   6.01-7.00   sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec                  
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec   351 KBytes  2.87 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec  5.65 MBytes  47.5 Mbits/sec                  
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec  7.58 MBytes  63.6 Mbits/sec                  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  51.0 MBytes  42.7 Mbits/sec  203             sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  49.8 MBytes  41.8 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.
56

Finally! The answer from support!
Screen Shot 2018-04-12 at 17.20.48.png

wireless engineer is working

Only one? :laughing:

57

After having inspired by nemoforum, I learned the way to determine the download speed (WAN->WLAN) using iperf3 with the option -R.

In the following results, we can measure how good/bad of the wired/wireless link using the 5-minute iperf3 download test.

Whenever you read the subsequent listings, please put your concentration on i) Bandwidth and ii) Retr value. In general RouterOS without WiFi works very well as seen in Retr value in Listings 1 and 9. Listing 5 shows the stock item of hAP ac^2’s 5G performance. The average download speed is only 16.2Mbps, which has been reported by many MikroTik users. However the packet retry count is 3541 over 5-minute period of time. It is extremely high and unacceptable. When we compare the results in Listing 5 (5G) and Listing 6 (2.4G), the 5G ac download speed is lower than that of 2.4G. Even though MikroTik provided an RC version of firmware v6.4rc56 (up to this moment of writing), the WiFi performance is still unacceptable. Also the packet retry rate for the 5G WiFi was almost doubled as shown in Figure 7. It is 7390 counts over 5 minutes of time. It indicates that over 20 retries over 1 second of time.

I do believe based on those values, any customers can return the unit(s) to the agents, dealers or distributors without any questions. I do believe MikroTik dealers, agents or distributors would not place any orders for this product until MikroTik resolves this WiFi issue.

I the following command to initiate the test

./iperf3 -c 192.168.55.203 -R -t 300

Listing 1: CCR1009 (Server->Bridge-LAN->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  32.9 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec    5             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  32.9 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Listing 2: hAP ac lite tower v6.40.6 5G (Server->Bridge->WLAN 5G->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  3.07 GBytes  87.8 Mbits/sec  158             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  3.06 GBytes  87.7 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Listing 3: hAP ac lite tower v6.40.6 2.4G (Server->Bridge->WLAN 2.4G->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  2.07 GBytes  59.3 Mbits/sec  657             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  2.07 GBytes  59.2 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Listing 4: hAP ac^2 v6.40.5 (stock firmware) (Server->WAN-LAN->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  32.9 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec  324             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  32.9 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Listing 5: hAP ac^2 v6.40.5 (stock firmware) 5G (Server->WAN->WLAN 5G->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec   580 MBytes  16.2 Mbits/sec  3541             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec   578 MBytes  16.2 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Listing 6: hAP ac^2 v6.40.5 (stock firmware) 2.4G (Server->WAN->WLAN 2.4G->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  1.46 GBytes  41.9 Mbits/sec  3628             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  1.46 GBytes  41.9 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Listing 7: hAP ac^2 v6.42rc56 5G (Server->WAN->WLAN 5G->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  4.64 GBytes   133 Mbits/sec  7390             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  4.64 GBytes   133 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Listing 8: hAP ac^2 v6.42rc56 2.4G (Server->WAN->WLAN 2.4G->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  1.42 GBytes  40.6 Mbits/sec  3025             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  1.42 GBytes  40.5 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Listing 9: hAP ac^2 v6.42rc56 (Server->WAN-LAN->Laptop PC)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  32.9 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  32.9 GBytes   941 Mbits/sec                  receiver
58

There are more results on other model of R951G-2HhD.

Our target is to get Retr to be zero and Bandwidth as high as possible. For LAN connection, it is unacceptable for such high Retr value, which is expected to be zero or close to zero.

R951G-2HhD v6.40.6 Wired, File->WAN->LAN->Laptop PC

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  32.4 GBytes   929 Mbits/sec  1358             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  32.4 GBytes   929 Mbits/sec                  receiver

R951G-2HhD v6.40.6 2.4G, File->WAN->WLAN->Laptop PC

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  2.67 GBytes  76.5 Mbits/sec  408             sender
[  4]   0.00-300.00 sec  2.67 GBytes  76.4 Mbits/sec                  receiver
59

Official statement from mikrotik:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/v6-40-7-bugfix-is-released/118159/30

60

jarda，

Thank you very much for following up this issue. However I have not received any response for my email sent to MirkroTik Support yet at the same day that you sent. I believe that they may send a reply to me later. I believe the reply would be very similar to the one that you presented.

Since the factory (stock) firmware is v6.40.5, which is supposed to meet all (or most) the specifications that MikroTik has advertised. How comes the performance of this product does not meet the product specification and released to the Market for sale?

Anyway, I cannot do anything for this issue and waiting for good news from MikroTik Engineering Team.

YH