hAP be³ Media 7.23.3: severe Wi-Fi latency/loss vs Archer C6

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi,

I’m testing a hAP be³ Media as a bridged AP on RouterOS/RouterBOOT/wifi-qcom-be 7.23.3. One SSID covers 2.4/5/6 GHz, with MLO disabled.

On 6 GHz, a stationary Mac mini sent 900 pings to the AP: p95 103.6 ms, max 1305 ms, 0.89% loss. Simultaneous wired pings to the same AP were p95 0.735 ms, max 2.143 ms, 0% loss. A MacBook Air on 5 GHz also reached approximately 92 ms p95. These spikes make Screen Sharing stutter.

The previous TP-Link Archer C6 reached the same upstream hEX gateway at p95 3.14 ms, max 5.99 ms, 0% loss. That was a shorter 30-ping test on a different day/client, so it is indicative rather than a strict A/B.

MLO on/off, isolated bands, channel/width/mode changes, and RouterOS 7.24rc4 did not provide a reliable fix.

Has anyone experienced similar latency or loss on the hAP be³ Media? Is there a known wifi-qcom-be workaround or another diagnostic I should try?

2

Check if you have ft-over-ds enabled; several users have reported speed and stability issues with Apple devices.

In the manual (https://manual.mikrotik.com/docs/wireless/wifi/) it says that by default it is configured to "no", but in all the routers I've seen, it was always active by default even after a reset.

3

That's ridiculously bad ping. Interference? Wrong channel?

This is also very bad.

Okay. 2 different channels, same bad pings. Please show your configuration export. Maybe something can be spotted. Thank you.

4

Thanks — we checked this specifically. Both security.ft=no and security.ft-over-ds=no were explicitly set and verified, including during a standalone 5 GHz AX test with MLO detached; 900-packet runs still averaged about 20 ms with 168–197 ms spikes. So in this case 802.11r/FT-over-DS does not appear to be the cause.