i got my hand at two of teh new MikroTik cAP - Ceiling Mount Accesspoints. From their price point and look and feel i really like them.
But i have some performance issues with them. It does not matter if i run them standalone or in conjunction with CAPsMAN.
I only get data-rates up to 10-20 Mbit/s at the client-side. I am also switching the clients - it does not matter at all. The Intel-WiFi at my notebook goes only up to 144 Mbit/s.
I also own several RB951s and RB751s - also in conjunction with the CAPsMAN i can get up to 100+ Mbit/s of throughput - which is just fine, which i dont expect more. The WiFi-card on the notebook goes up to 150 Mbit/s when the RB951/RB751 is in use.
So, at this point i don’t know what i am really doing wrong? Is the cAP just low-performance, maybe only single-chain? Or simply not capable of handling high throughput but lot’s of clients in an overcrowded office environment? What is the maximum brutto-data-rate for the cAP’s wifi-interface? Well, i don’t know…
Here are some of my WiFi settings in the CAPsMAN:
And the Channels:
In standalone-use i also recognized that there is only Chain0 available in the HT Chains.
Maybe the performance-issue is simply a configuration error?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions and information!
kind regards
Fabian
Did you run some tests, or just checked the info in Winbox? Data rate only rises when there is traffic on the device. So when you start downloading something, data rate will increase.
Hi and thanks for the quick reply.
Yes i did the test with some CIFS data transfer to a file server. I know that is not an accurate testing method - i can do some ipfers measurements too…
What keeps me wonderig is, that when i look at the Registration Table in the CAPsMAN menu, i see my client and i see the TX rate constantly dropping back to bit and then it begans to rise again. Then it beginns to drop again. Thats crazy. The RX Rate of the Client is constantly 100Mbit/s+.
This behaviour i can only see, when there is data traffic going on.
On the same configuration - with windows file cooy dialogue used - i can achieve a max. of 2.26MB/s(megabytes) when using the cAP. With the RB951G i am able to achieve up to 6.5MB/s.(megabytes)
When the cAP is only Single Chained - why can i only achieve a brutto date rate (on the client side, which is a Lenovo X230) of 144Mbit/s?
With the RB951 used i get a reading of 150Mbit/s.
Have you tried using a 40Mhz channel instead of only 20Mhz? That could easily double your performance and provide what you are used to.
The RB751 you used is dual-chain and could have given you 300Mbps maybe? Anyway, especially with one chain 20Mhz or 40Mhz can certainly make a difference.
Well, there are not a lot of options to configure in CAPsMAN at all. I am using CAPsMAN v2.
When i try to type in 40MHz it does accept it, but the CAP-Interface (i.e. the Accesspoint) gives me an “unsupported channel”.
Can someone please tell me which settings are the correct ones for RB951G, RB751G and cAP ?
I had to use 20MHz anyway, because 40MHz was throwring an error.
Still, using 20MHz Ce the TX-Rate keeps dropping all the time. even with only one or two 802.11n-capable clients logged into the network. It starts to climb up all the way up to over 100Mbit/s, then it massively drops. (i can see this in Winbox, how the TX-Rate to the clients drop…)
It seems like, that the transmitter starts to transmit, get into some trouble (electronically maybe?), and drops the TX-Rate. I don’t know.
I also tried standalone operation without CAPsMAN - i cant figure out the correct settings to get the full wireless bandwidth - the netto bandwidth. Every single time when i start to receive massive data loads on my notebook, it drops to about 25-30Mbit/s netto.
On the RB951G i can get the full two-chain 300Mbit/s working without any problems. Full speed also on the client side, no problems what so ever. I really lik to know what’s wrong with the cAP-Series of Accesspoints.
Could anyone confirm that? Do the other cAP-users experience that problem too? Would be glad to get some feedback.
Is this the correct place to post this sort of problem? Why is this man not getting any help or suggestions from Mikrotik? Surely you guys have one quick answer to solve this config problem? I was considering buy several hundred for large business parks I administrate but with this up in the air you can be sure I will not be using Mikrotik ceiling mounts and therefor probably not Mikrotik at all.
I am at the Mikrotik MUM in ZĂĽrich (Switzerland) right now and nailed the problem down to the support guy. He asked me kindly to email the support team with the problem, while referencing to this thread here, and sending them my config and a suppout-file.
I think that biew55 has exactly the same problem than me.
I will now get my hands on the cAP’s again, and see if we can figure the peoblem out together with the support team.
