I have a great problem.
My customers (MT in client wds mode) are connected to the Acess point (MT) with WDS.
If a customer connect at the AP now, because he had lost the connection to the AP or he turned the terminal equipment on, all other users get a very high ping and time out.
The problem is not SNR related. As has been mentioned, just having a client associate causes the problem. The more clients connected, the longer the timeout or high ping times. We are seeing up to 20 seconds and longer where the radios can’t be pings.
Another frustrating problem is that if you have multiple APs plugged into a simple switch, every AP connected to the switch will have this problem! We setup VLANs on one of our switches to fix this problem, but we’d like Mikrotik to get it fixed in the AP so it doesn’t happen at all.
I have 7 RB532a’s connected to one switch and when this happens it is only the single radio on a single 532 board that experience timeouts. Maybe because everything is routed!?
Please be sure to contact Mikrotik support about this and let them know it’s a problem. The responses we’ve received back about this from our trouble tickets indicate they seem to think this is normal behavior.
In working with Mikrotik support, I think I’ve narrowed down what may be the cause of the problem. Clients in station-wds mode are what are causing the problem. So, if you are using a CPE other than Mikrotik, you probably won’t see this issue.
The only solution I think might help is putting the CPE in pseudobridge mode using V3. I’ve noticed that this doesn’t add a WDS interface on the AP when the client associates. Actually testing this in the field has been an issue since we haven’t found a V3 Beta that would work on RB112, RB153, RB133s. We did install Beta 10 on a RB133 without a wireless card that is still running so I’ll test that and see if it helps.
How right I am. A customer with a -61dBm signal and SNR of 30 unplugs their radio and plugs it back in. EVERY radio on the AP cannot be pinged or has high latency for 20-30 seconds. How is SNR the problem?
Also, every other AP connected to the switch sees the same issue. SNR has nothing to do with radios connected to other APs!
Routed networks won’t see this, only networks using station-wds and Mikrotik as CPE experience this problem.