Wireless Router, *crap* performance?

RouterOS General
1

Lo all,

Something extremely weird is going on…

I am unable to get more than 280KBIT/s!!! though a wireless link. I’ve checked the obvious like signal and the like, but I highly doubt a bad signal can have THAT much affect on a 11mbit wireless link… It seems to be happening ONLY with this one link…

On the one side, we have a MT running a Prism2 card (Senaeo), and the AP where the MT connects to, is a Senaeo ODU.

Config snippets:

[user@router] > interface wireless registration-table print
 # INTERFACE    RADIO-NAME       MAC-ADDRESS       AP  SIGNAL... TX-RATE UPTIME
 1 ;;; Network Core Link
   Network Core                  00:02:6F:36:2D:72 yes -69       11Mbps  00:39:23

Now, that’s not so bad? Is it?

[user@router] > interface wireless print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
 1  R name="Network Core" mtu=1500 mac-address=00:02:6F:35:91:D1 arp=enabled disable-running-check=no interface-type=Prism prism-cardtype=200mW
      radio-name="00026F3591D1" mode=station ssid="WCORE-AP01" frequency=2412 band=2.4ghz-b scan-list=default-ism rate-set=configured
      supported-rates-b=1Mbps,2Mbps,5.5Mbps,11Mbps supported-rates-a/g="" basic-rates-b=1Mbps,2Mbps,5.5Mbps,11Mbps basic-rates-a/g=""
      max-station-count=2007 tx-power=default periodic-calibration=default fast-frames=no dfs-mode=none antenna-mode=ant-a wds-mode=disabled
      wds-default-bridge=none wds-ignore-ssid=no update-stats-interval=disabled default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=no hide-ssid=no
      802.1x-mode=none disconnect-timeout=3s on-fail-retry-time=100ms

Also, nothing to fancy / funny there, right?

[user@router] > /ip address print
Flags: X - disabled, I - invalid, D - dynamic
 #   ADDRESS            NETWORK         BROADCAST       INTERFACE
 0   198.19.0.13/29     198.19.0.8      198.19.0.15     Network Core

Again, nothing fancy… Straight stuff.

Now, I’ve been using MRTG / SNMP to monitor this traffic over a prelonged period (since last Sunday already). My PEAK bandwidth is a mere 280kbit/s. Speed-Tests also refuse to go higher than 1mbit/s and I only reach 1mbit/s on a speed test if I am REALLY lucky. Normally, speed tests will max out at arround 400kbit/s or so…

So now, my question would be, WHATS UP!!! LOL. I’m desperate… We need to get a absurdly high amount of bandwidth through this link, and MT is just barfing at me and grining and refusing to co-operate with me :slight_smile:

Any help appreciated. As always.

2

Have you checked the ccq values (/interface wireless monitor on the client)? Had problems like that, where a 802.11b link would only give throughput of 50-300 kBit/s with signal levels of -45 (!) dBm - but ccq was never above 3 or 4 (yuk).

Remember: Signal level isn’t the only important thing - take care of noise, interference, others using your channel etc.
In my case it turned out to be some 2.4 GHz video transmission equipment in the neighbours’ house :frowning: … So try changing frequencies etc.

There might also be problems in conjunction with the Senao AP (I seem to remember reading a post about that here, but not sure). But I’ve got no Senao equipment, so I don’t really know…

3 
[user@router] interface wireless> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
 0  R name="WSSW02" mtu=1492 mac-address=00:02:6F:35:91:D3 arp=enabled disable-running-check=no interface-type=Prism prism-cardtype=200mW
      radio-name="00026F3591D3" mode=ap-bridge ssid="SSID" frequency=2432 band=2.4ghz-b scan-list=default-ism rate-set=default
      supported-rates-b=1Mbps,2Mbps,5.5Mbps,11Mbps supported-rates-a/g="" basic-rates-b=1Mbps,2Mbps,5.5Mbps,11Mbps basic-rates-a/g=""
      max-station-count=2007 tx-power=default periodic-calibration=default fast-frames=no dfs-mode=none antenna-mode=ant-a wds-mode=disabled
      wds-default-bridge=none wds-ignore-ssid=no update-stats-interval=disabled default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=no hide-ssid=no
      802.1x-mode=none disconnect-timeout=3s on-fail-retry-time=100ms

 1  R name="Network Core" mtu=1500 mac-address=00:02:6F:35:91:D1 arp=enabled disable-running-check=no interface-type=Prism prism-cardtype=200mW
      radio-name="00026F3591D1" mode=station ssid="WCORE-AP01" frequency=2412 band=2.4ghz-b scan-list=default-ism rate-set=configured
      supported-rates-b=1Mbps,2Mbps,5.5Mbps,11Mbps supported-rates-a/g="" basic-rates-b=1Mbps,2Mbps,5.5Mbps,11Mbps basic-rates-a/g=""
      max-station-count=2007 tx-power=default periodic-calibration=default fast-frames=no dfs-mode=none antenna-mode=ant-a wds-mode=disabled
      wds-default-bridge=none wds-ignore-ssid=no update-stats-interval=disabled default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=no hide-ssid=no
      802.1x-mode=none disconnect-timeout=3s on-fail-retry-time=100ms
[user@router] interface wireless> monitor 1
             status: connected-to-ess
               band: 2.4ghz-b
          frequency: 2432
            tx-rate: 11Mbps
            rx-rate: 11Mbps
               ssid: WCORE-AP01
              bssid: 00:02:6F:36:2D:72
    signal-strength: -71
       framing-mode: none
            last-ip: 81.21.65.147
-- [Q quit|D dump|C-z pause]

I dont see anything relating to ccq??? We did hve some problems last night specifically with someone spoofing our SSID, but that has also since stoped. Changed the channel from 5 to 1 - no change. It’s like there is a simple queue on the wireless interface limiting it to 70kbit (no, there isn’t really), but the graph is literally pulling a flat line at 70kb/s…

We will move the ODU (AP) from the ODU off to a Mikrotik and see whether that makes any change.

Upgrading the link to 802.11g won’t do much if it is actually interference somewhere, right?? :frowning: I’m just wondering what the solution will be here… This is becoming rather critical for us.

4

Hmmm, might be that you have an older RouterOS version? And I’m not sure if those values only are available when connected to an MikroTik AP…

Switching to 802.11g won’t help if it’s interference. In my experience 802.11g is more sensitive to this than 802.11b…

5

Yea. It makes sense that 11g will be more sensitive (higher bandwidth).

We will be replacing the Senao ODU (which is the AP), with a Prim2 card in a MT tonight. If that doesn’t solve anything, the only thing left will be interference - which might be a little bit harder to resolve.

What is also a bit puzzling, is that a ping-speed indicates a avarage throughput of 1mbit/s… However, monitoring the traffic on the MT interface at the same time, or looking at the SNMP graphs, this speed is not reflected ANYWHERE. Again, I suspect that this can be though because the Senao ODU (AP) is dropping the packets on the wireless side (but even then, ping-speed should reflect this and report slower speeds!!!). I did make a screen capture, will get it online sometime for the forces to be to look at… Will see tonight what we can resolve and what we can’t. Chances are pretty good I’ll be back here… lol Yes yes, I know, I should have more faith …

All our MTs are running 8.21 and 8.24. The one in question is a 8.24 box. The more I think about this (from what I am seeing based on traffic flows), the more I am thinking that the problem here is the ODU. So perhaps tonight there will be hope.

6

I wouldn’t trust the results of ping-speed very much… Those are rough estimates, which have more often than not been waaaaay off compared to real throughput measurements.

7

Try changing the frequency. We had similar situations, but moving from channel to channel problem dissaspeared…
Cheers…

8

I have already been running on virtually all the frequencies available. They all do the same. We had a hickup last night with power, so we will be removing the ODU tonight (in a couple of hours), and then hopefully this will be resolved.

9

cmit… Just to make you learn something as well :slight_smile:

I had a look at some of our other MTs… CCQ seems to only be available if the AP is on a MT. In our case, the MT is the station, and thus no CCQ.

10

Ok well good news :slight_smile:

We FINALLY managed to get all these ODUs on miniPCI cards on the RouterBoards. Whilst I must admit we saw some very strange things… I am happy to say that I am now seeing throughput in the region of 500kb to 1mb (in extreme circumstances). The links are a tad weak now (-78db), so I think that the throughput is understandable, and allot better than what it was. So all in all, the problem can safely be blamed on the Senaeo ODUs. We will be upgrading the antennaes as well in a week or two, and should get even better performance then.

Thanks allot for all the suggestions and all :slight_smile: