wireless download mostly very slow

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hello,
i’m using a Hap ac Mikrotik router in bridge mode.
Soince a couple of weeks the wireless download rate is very bad. But sometime it works as expected.
I have a 100MBit connection. (upload 40Mbit)
i played along with channel width and frequencies, but nothing helps
Download via LAN is as expected round about 100Mbit, upload via wireless connection as well-
Only the wireless download is slow. Download rate between 2Mbit and 50Mbit

Her is my wireless configuration:
/system routerboard print
routerboard: yes
board-name: hAP ac
model: RouterBOARD 962UiGS-5HacT2HnT
serial-number: 8A77099DB8C2
firmware-type: qca9550L
factory-firmware: 6.42.11
current-firmware: 6.47.4
upgrade-firmware: 6.47.7

/interface wireless print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
0 R name=“wlan1” mtu=1500 l2mtu=1600 mac-address=B8:69:F4:F8:E8:76 arp=enabled interface-type=Atheros AR9300 mode=ap-bridge ssid=“Agrafena-B8” frequency=auto band=2ghz-b/g/n channel-width=20/40mhz-eC secondary-channel=“”
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

1 R name=“wlan2” mtu=1500 l2mtu=1600 mac-address=B8:69:F4:F8:E8:75 arp=enabled interface-type=Atheros AR9888 mode=ap-bridge ssid=“Agrafena-A8” frequency=5220 band=5ghz-n/ac channel-width=20mhz secondary-channel=“” 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

/interface wireless info> hw-info wlan1
ranges: 2312-2732/5/b,g,gn20,gn40
2484-2484/5/b,g,gn20,gn40
tx-chains: 0,1,2
rx-chains: 0,1,2
extra-info: pciinfo:0x0, cid:0, gain:3

/interface wireless info> hw-info
interface: wlan2
ranges: 4920-6100/5/a,an20,an40,ac20,ac40,ac80
tx-chains: 0,1,2
rx-chains: 0,1,2
extra-info: pciinfo:0x0, cid:0, gain:2

Anyone an idea?
Thanks for your help.

2

Many ideas.

  1. What connection are you using ? Agrafena-B8 or Agrafena-A8 ?
  2. 20/40 MHz for 2.4 GHz is mostly impossible due to interference. With “auto” frequency you do not know what channel will be used. The “auto” freq selection is NOT smart!
  3. 20 MHz for 5 GHz band will not give high speeds. It’s normal to use 20/40 MHz, even 20/40/80 MHz if environment (other signals) allow for free channels. Fixed freq is indeed OK.

To DO’s:
a. Scan the environment for other wifi signals. Use “Scan”, “Freq Usage” and even “Snooper” on WLAN1 and WLAN2. (You can not be connected to the scanning WLAN.)
b. Select free channels on WLAN1 and WLAN2. Channels must be 4 apart (20 MHz) at least and may not overlap. So for 2.4 GHz it’s choosing between 1-6-11 or 1-5-9-13. (2712-2737-2762 …).
c. Also select for 5 GHz but go at least 40 MHz wide. Channel choices are already 4 apart. 36-40-44-48-52 … (5180-5200-5220-5240-5260-) , select Ce or eC (extra channel to the right/higher, or extra channel to the left/lower). If there is room later you can go for 20/40/80 MHz and Ceee or eeeC. Avoid XX and XXXX.
d. Test your connection by looking at the “Registration” under wireless. !!!

Some commands to help document your findings:

Your full config without passwords: “/export hide-sensitive file=yourfilename”. Download file and attach yourfilemane.rsc here. You might hide usernames and MAC addresses.
Check the wifi connection with client: “/interface wireless registration-table print stats”. TX and RX rate will be “xxxMbps-yyMHz/zS/SGI” (z is number of streams, yy bandwidth, xxx interface speed) Other values explain why you get this (low?) interface rate, copy output about your connection in your post.

Getting 100 Mbps bidirectional real data speed (400 Mbps interface rate with 2 streams and 40 MHz) on 5 GHz should be possible.
2.4 GHz interface rate will be 144 Mbps with 2 streams and 20MHz at best (25 Mbps real data rate bidirectional)

3

Hi,
thanks for the tips and information.
i did the tools “scan”, “Freq usage” and “Snooper” on both wireless intefaces. The results will be attached as images (png).
The other things /export and registration-table attached as text files.

I don’t change any thing right now. First want to have a detailed look at the results from the above tools.
But if you have a proposal i will be happy.

best,
chayton
freq_usage_wlan1.png
scan_wlan2.png
scan_wlan1.png
reg-tab_stats.txt (984 Bytes)
chayton_exp201115_001.rsc (4.59 KB)
snooper_wlan2_2.png
snooper_wlan2_1.png
snooper_wlan1_2.png
snooper_wlan1_1.png
freq_usage_wlan2.png

4

Thanks for all that information.
Interesting study case for wifi training, but not so easy to pick the best setting. A real life case.

First some general principles:

  • This one shot information is what “auto” uses to pick a channel. The one that picked channel 4 is just an example of this, not considering any interference it causes. Of course the selection should be made based on multiple observations, and maybe even on the worst case scenario.

  • There are a lot of competing wifi devices around. The modern chip-sets with a noise-floor of -108dBm make it worse than older chipsets. We will wait for everything above 6 dBm above the noise floor. And if there are slow connections, we will wait a lot. Freq usage indicates not too much traffic at that single moment of observation, but this can change rapidly.

  • It is well known that 2.4 GHz is often overcrowded. And that’s somewhat the case here. So 40 MHz (wait for 8 consecutive free channels) is not the way to set this up. 20 MHz should be the bandwidth.

  • 5GHz is cleaner. And if you can move there with your client device, that is the way to go. Even with 40 MHz bandwidth. 5680-5700 is actually free in 5 GHz. Not sure the client device can work with that freq.

  • Your client device only connected with 1 stream/path/chain, as indicated by 1S in the registration. Either the client device is single stream, or the signal interference reduces the possibility to use 2 chains. This halves the potential interface rate. 3 chains is the possibility for the hAP ac, but not many client devices can do this.

  • Missed channel 12 and 13 in the 2.4 GHz band. But you have “no-country-set”, so you follow the FCC regulation with channels 1 to 11. This “no-country-set” allowed also for the illegal “antennagain =0”. The real antenna gain for 2.4GHz is 3dBi, to be set (this will reduce the radio power with 3 dBm to make it legal in Europe), but it will also add channel 12 and 13. The AP transmission power is not the limiting factor. A client device has usually a weaker signal.


    Now, what to do in this case?

  • Registration learns a signal strength of -73dBm. The RX rate is well below its max 150Mbps, at MCS03 (http://mcsindex.com), what is introduced by the many retransmits (TX/RX frames=595/154 but sent/received hw-frames=1008/1107) due to interference. The TX CCQ 77% is the calculated average. This might also introduce the reduction to 1S, but that could be the client device limit also.

  • In this quite busy environment, I would use the advanced wireless option “Adaptive noise immunity”. This will raise the noise floor trigger, so that we will not wait for the weakest AP’s around. How strong this will act is unknown. It’s dynamic and is in the chip. It depends on the signal we capture strength and that is not too strong at -73dBm. So the dynamic is limited. I hope it will remove the -90dBm and even the upper halve of -80dBm devices around.

  • Of course the setting on 2.4 GHz should be “regulatory domain/ Germany/ antenna gain =3”. A fixed channel, no “auto”, and you might be lucky with channel 13/ 2472 , 20 MHz width, mode 2GHz-g/n (drop that old b mode)
    -5 GHz should be on a free channel en co channel , So 20/40MHz-Ce . Antenna gain here is 2 dBi. If you use any channel above 5240MHz you are in DFS channels, and the radio will be silent for a full long minute at every start or change !!! (10 minutes for 5600-5620 or 5640)

Now it’s time for trial and error.

EDIT: forgot about the LAN WAN interface list. As all wlan, sfp and ether interfaces are ports of the bridge, the membership of the bridge is what matters. So make interface bridge member of the LAN interface list. (That interface list is used in the firewall and other lines. Actually firewall itself is not used as all interfaces are bridged.)

/interface list member
add interface=bridge list=LAN

5

Thanks for the dailed answer.
i did the recommended task but it semms there are some problems.
for the 2.4GH wlan1 i got an error after changing the options. The message was count set this values antenna gain minimum is 3 for this country.
But i don’t know how can change the atenna gain.
At the 5Gh it wents better. I was able to do the settings, but the result was terrible.

5GH interface:
So 15. Nov 16:50:05 CET 2020
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration…
Retrieving speedtest.net server list…
Selecting best server based on ping…
Hosted by Leucom Stafag AG (Frauenfeld) [41.66 km]: 8.436 ms
Testing download speed…
Download: 5.46 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed…
Upload: 2.98 Mbit/s

2.4GH:

So 15. Nov 16:54:54 CET 2020
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration…
Retrieving speedtest.net server list…
Selecting best server based on ping…
Hosted by Leucom Stafag AG (Frauenfeld) [41.66 km]: 10.072 ms
Testing download speed…
Download: 4.28 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed…
Upload: 0.00 Mbit/s


/interface wireless> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
0 R name=“wlan1” mtu=1500 l2mtu=1600 mac-address=B8:69:F4:F8:E8:76 arp=enabled interface-type=Atheros AR9300 mode=ap-bridge ssid=“Agrafena-B8” frequency=auto band=2ghz-b/g/n
channel-width=20mhz secondary-channel=“” 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

1 name=“wlan2” mtu=1500 l2mtu=1600 mac-address=B8:69:F4:F8:E8:75 arp=enabled interface-type=Atheros AR9888 mode=ap-bridge ssid=“Agrafena-A8” frequency=5660 band=5ghz-n/ac
channel-width=20/40mhz-Ce secondary-channel=“” 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

It looks like that there are some high peaks during the speedtest, but ten it’s falling down to nearly 0 bps. I have the feeling it’s like a sine curve.

I have an old Mikrotik Router with only 2.4 Ghz wireless and there i got download rates of about 70 MBit
But i don’t want to go back to this router, because all my client are able to use 5 GHz.

Any way many thanks so far.
Maybe its a hardware problem.

6

i did the recommended task but it semms there are some problems.
for the 2.4GH wlan1 i got an error after changing the options. The message was count set this values antenna gain minimum is 3 for this country.
But i don’t know how can change the atenna gain.

This is something Mikrotik is to blame for. They removed the possibility to change the antenna gain in the GUI since 6.46 .
Anyone who upgrades from an older RouterOS and has a too low antenna gain is stuck.
The way to get out of this is to use the command line

 /interface wireless set antenna-gain=3 wlan1



At the 5Gh it went better. I was able to do the settings, but the result was terrible.

5GH interface:

Download: 5.46 Mbit/s
Upload: 2.98 Mbit/s

2.4GH:

Download: 4.28 Mbit/s
Upload: 0.00 Mbit/s

Good as overal ultimate test, but does not give us hints on the cause of this low rate. Wireless registration is the key information for wifi. What is the signal strength, interface rate and CCQ ?
5 GHz should give you 200Mbps for 1S, and 400 Mbps for 2S !

/interface wireless> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
0 R name=“wlan1” mtu=1500 l2mtu=1600 mac-address=B8:69:F4:F8:E8:76 arp=enabled interface-type=Atheros AR9300 mode=ap-bridge ssid=“Agrafena-B8” frequency=auto band=2ghz-b/g/n
channel-width=20mhz secondary-channel=“” 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

Still “auto” frequency, still b/g/n (not g/n, losing transmission time with 1Mbps beacons) In this interference jungle results with “auto” are just unpredictable.

It looks like that there are some high peaks during the speedtest, but ten it’s falling down to nearly 0 bps. I have the feeling it’s like a sine curve.

Your 5 GHz results are unbelievable bad. Let’s concentrate on wifi first (registration values) There is also a Mikrotik Bandwidth test software (https://mikrotik.com/download) to use against a Mikrotik router. Not ideal as test because the test server should be behind the Mikrotik wifi router, not in it. But at least it is local and excludes other factors.

I have an old Mikrotik Router with only 2.4 Ghz wireless and there i got download rates of about 70 MBit
But i don’t want to go back to this router, because all my client are able to use 5 GHz.

Ideal for doing Mikrotik bandwidth tests (connected to the ethernet line)


Any way many thanks so far.
Maybe its a hardware problem.

I think it’s rather some overlooked config or cable mismatch or major wifi interference. Lets take it step by step, to see where the bottleneck sits. It’s sometimes in an unexpected corner.
If you use the Mikrotik tool “Traceroute” to the same test server during that internet test, where does the largest timeout occur? (Some routers might not respond at all however.)
Simple test is traceroute to 8.8.8.8 …
Klembord-1.jpg
Please use export , not print. Missing too many parameters, like: “adaptive-noise-immunity=ap-and-client-mode”

/interface wireless export
/interface wireless
set [ find default-name=wlan1 ] adaptive-noise-immunity=ap-and-client-mode band=2ghz-onlyn country=XX disabled=no distance=indoors frequency=2437 mode=ap-bridge \
    radio-name=wAP security-profile=abra ssid=MikroTik-wAP station-roaming=enabled wireless-protocol=802.11 wmm-support=enabled wps-mode=disabled
7

Looking at your IP addresses, somewhat strange things here …

1 IP route default gateway for the hAP ac is 192.168.88.1
2. This hAP ac has IP address 192.168.88.21
3. IP gateway for the client devices is 192.168.88.21 (but hAP ac is not a router for them!). They should also go directly to the default gateway 192.168.88.1 (ether1 and the rest is bridged!)

/ip dhcp-server network
add address=192.168.88.0/24 comment=defconf gateway=192.168.88.1 netmask=24

4 Are there 2 separate DHCP servers in use ??? They would conflict !
5. 192.168.88.21, the DHCP servers IP address should not be part of the IP pool
6. IP address 192.168.88.21 should be given to the bridge (master) not to ether2 (slave)
7. There is also a DHCP-client on the bridge (yet another IP address on the bridge ???)

8

Hello,
interesting thoughts.
First of all thanks for your time and answer.
Today i’m at work and i will try to do the steps you are recommented.
I will tell you the results.
See you …

9

Hello,
tanks for your tips.
first i change the antenna gain and after that i was able to correct the 2.4GHz interface

/interface wireless
set [ find default-name=wlan1 ] adaptive-noise-immunity=ap-and-client-mode band=2ghz-g/n country=germany disabled=no distance=indoors frequency=2462 mode=ap-bridge skip-dfs-channels=all ssid=Agrafena-B8 station-roaming=enabled \
    wireless-protocol=802.11
set [ find default-name=wlan2 ] adaptive-noise-immunity=ap-and-client-mode band=5ghz-n/ac channel-width=20/40mhz-Ce country=germany disabled=no distance=indoors frequency=5660 installation=indoor mode=ap-bridge ssid=Agrafena-A8 \
    wireless-protocol=802.11

Only this two changes bring my wireless intefaces nearly to the expected download rate.
Additionally i removed the DHCP server on this device.
I did some speed tests and teh result was for 5 GHz interface between 93 an 106 MBit.
I’m really pleased with this result. Hope this is a stable result.
Many thanks for your time and help.