hAP Lite wireless questions

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Greetings and salutations,

I’ve got two questions about wireless behavior on a RB941-2nD running ROS v6.29.1.

[admin@MikroTik-0QN8HV] > /interface wireless print detail
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
 0  R name="wlan1" mtu=1500 mac-address=D4:CA:6D:C2:7D:3D arp=enabled
      interface-type=Atheros AR9300 mode=ap-bridge ssid="aidan"
      frequency=auto band=2ghz-b/g/n channel-width=20mhz scan-list=default
      wireless-protocol=802.11 vlan-mode=no-tag vlan-id=1 wds-mode=disabled
      wds-default-bridge=none wds-ignore-ssid=no bridge-mode=enabled
      default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=yes default-ap-tx-limit=0
      default-client-tx-limit=0 hide-ssid=no security-profile=default
      compression=no

First, the frequency=auto setting consistently chooses a less than optimal frequency of 2447. Why does it make this decision?

[admin@MikroTik-0QN8HV] > interface wireless monitor 0
                 status: running-ap
                channel: 2447/20/gn(30dBm)
      wireless-protocol: 802.11
            noise-floor: -107dBm

Based on a spectrum analysis we can see that 2447 may not necessarily be the best choice. And iperf returns an average of 11.2 Mbps.

But if we manually adjust frequency=2412 then performance improves to an average of 16.23 Mbps.

[admin@MikroTik-0QN8HV] > interface wireless monitor 0
                 status: running-ap
                channel: 2412/20/gn(30dBm)
      wireless-protocol: 802.11
            noise-floor: -109dBm

Second, enabling dual chain wireless doesn’t improve performance. The iperf results above only utilize the default Tx/Rx on on chain0. And when both chain0 and chain1 are enabled for Tx/Rx iperf drops from 16.23 to 14.77 Mbps! Is this normal behavior?

Thank you for your time.

Aidan

2

Any comments on this?

3

My speculation is that the hAP Lite performs poorly in congested environments. And I couldn’t say whether that applies to all Mikrotik wireless products. I ended up replacing it with a commercial product that works fine.

4

Auto channel is pretty much a fail on every wireless device out there.

As for the speed problems, are your devices dual chain?

On occasion I’ve seen some single chain devices lower the AP’s tx ccq as half of the transmission isn’t received properly, though usually that is at a few miles.

5

which wireless mode do you use? if you use regulatory domain, it will limit the channels available.
spectral-scan ignores country and DFS settings that the “auto” selection follows.