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asciid
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Slow internet speed

Fri Mar 20, 2020 11:51 pm

So I just bought a hAP ac2, and I managed to set it up and so far I really like it. I have a TP Link Deco E4 connected to the hAP (through Ethernet). The Deco is running in access point mode, so the hAP is the "main router" and the Deco is just an access point. The reason why I have the Deco is that it has an excellent WiFi coverage (at least in my home). But I noticed that clients that are connected to the Deco's WiFi network have a very slow internet speed. I ran a speed test using fast.com and I always got less than 1Mbps. If I connect to the hAP's WiFi network and run the test again, I got about 10 Mbps. But still, for example YouTube videos at 1080p60 are a pain to watch (buffering is quite slow), with my previous router (before I had the hAP ac2) this was no problem.
 
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:49 pm

What wireless channels are being used on each device?

What speed do you get if you cable in to the Deco?
 
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sat Mar 21, 2020 9:00 pm

What wireless channels are being used on each device?

What speed do you get if you cable in to the Deco?
I'm not sure what channel the Deco is set to, as it doesn't allow manually setting the wireless channel, it's just set to auto. The hAP is also set to auto.
I was also thinking that maybe because the Deco and the hAP are too close to each other, I should disable wireless on the hAP and keep it enabled only on the Deco. I'm anyway planning to only use the Deco (because like I said, the hAP is too weak to cover the whole house). But this did not fix the issue. I'm just a beginner, so I might be wrong about this, but I think that the hAP is not distributing the total bandwidth across my devices correctly. For exmaple if a family member starts to watch YouTube, then that computer takes all the bandwidth. Previously when I didn't have the hAP, I was using an ASUS RT-AC750 and I didn't have any speed issues. Even if everyone in the house was watching YouTube we never had any issues, but now, if a single device is streaming or downloading something, the other devices slow down so much that you can barely browse the web.
 
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:34 pm

If you leave things in "auto", then slow wifi will be what you get in most cases.
Take control!!!The Mikrotik can set the channels in 2.4 and 5 GHz. The Mikrotik can SEE the channels used by the Deco.
You probably have the DECO TP link E4 set up as a mesh network, if you have more than one AP in the kit.
For sure you have some wifi conficts in the setup. (co channel interference, adjacent channel interference, large bandwidths, power unbalance between AP and client, etc etc etc)
E.G.: If you use the DECO E4 on its 30 dBm power (FCC allowed, illegal in Europe anayway) for 2.4GHz then you will have good signal (5 bars) and good coverage, but no throughput.

And that's all because you just use "auto", and for the rest makes classical beginners intuitive assumptions about wifi.
But:
"Wifi on auto will slow down until it works."
"Wifi is bidirectional. The weakest radio will define the connection. High power AP's are misleading to the receiver and to the user"
 
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sun Mar 22, 2020 9:13 am

If you leave things in "auto", then slow wifi will be what you get in most cases.
Take control!!!The Mikrotik can set the channels in 2.4 and 5 GHz. The Mikrotik can SEE the channels used by the Deco.
You probably have the DECO TP link E4 set up as a mesh network, if you have more than one AP in the kit.
For sure you have some wifi conficts in the setup. (co channel interference, adjacent channel interference, large bandwidths, power unbalance between AP and client, etc etc etc)
E.G.: If you use the DECO E4 on its 30 dBm power (FCC allowed, illegal in Europe anayway) for 2.4GHz then you will have good signal (5 bars) and good coverage, but no throughput.

And that's all because you just use "auto", and for the rest makes classical beginners intuitive assumptions about wifi.
But:
"Wifi on auto will slow down until it works."
"Wifi is bidirectional. The weakest radio will define the connection. High power AP's are misleading to the receiver and to the user"
Yes, the Deco is a mesh router/AP. It's still interesting that this issue only started happening after I replaced my Asus router with the hAP. And I had wireless disabled on both.
I tried to just unplug the Deco, enable wireless on the hAP, set it to a fixed channel (that wasn't used - I checked it with the wireless scanner) and this still didn't solve the issue.
 
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sun Mar 22, 2020 11:04 am

UPDATE:
So I wanted to check if the same issue happens over wired Ethernet connection.
I've tried the following:
1. I unplugged the Deco
2.I made sure that wireless was disabled on the hAP.
3.I disconnected everything from the hAP except the WAN cable
4.I connected 2 laptops to the hAP using Ethernet cables (both computers have a 100Mbit Ethernet port and also both cables are 100Mbit)
5.I started downloading a large file on both laptops (the file was exactly the same on both)
One of the laptops was downloading at approximately 950KBytes/s (which is very close to our actual speed - ~1.5MB/s) and the other laptop was downloading at around 20~30KBytes/s.

Then I did the same exact test, same setup except I changed the router to my old Asus one.
Now one laptop was downloading at ~510KB/s and the other one at 540KB/s. So the bandwidth was much more "balanced".
I couldn't test the Deco as it has only 2 Ethernet ports and one of them is used as the WAN port.
 
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sun Mar 22, 2020 11:47 am

This video might be of some interest to you ... measuring by looking to the traffic is excellent for a first check. (And now you already know that yous ISP uplink is OK).
But then you have to look at the counters in the devices to pinpoint where the wifi bottleneck comes from. And starting or changing one AP influences all other AP's!
How and what causes this cannot be learned from simple on/off tests, there are just too many combinations. You have to understand why to be able to narrow down.

For the hAP config, people on this forum will help, if you publish the "/export hide-sensitive" terminal output.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7D2E0ah5e8
 
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:00 pm

UPDATE:
So I wanted to check if the same issue happens over wired Ethernet connection.
I've tried the following:
1. I unplugged the Deco
2.I made sure that wireless was disabled on the hAP.
3.I disconnected everything from the hAP except the WAN cable
4.I connected 2 laptops to the hAP using Ethernet cables (both computers have a 100Mbit Ethernet port and also both cables are 100Mbit)
5.I started downloading a large file on both laptops (the file was exactly the same on both)
One of the laptops was downloading at approximately 950KBytes/s (which is very close to our actual speed - ~1.5MB/s) and the other laptop was downloading at around 20~30KBytes/s.

Then I did the same exact test, same setup except I changed the router to my old Asus one.
Now one laptop was downloading at ~510KB/s and the other one at 540KB/s. So the bandwidth was much more "balanced".
I couldn't test the Deco as it has only 2 Ethernet ports and one of them is used as the WAN port.
So no wifi involved here. If the ethernet ports don't do what is expected. This must be cleared first. Can you use "speedtest.net" to eliminate the file download server? Those download test sites are a bid more stable in performance than is the case in downloading a file. If the problem persists, then the interface status and counters and the log in the Mikrotik will also be of great interest.
 
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sun Mar 22, 2020 6:08 pm

So no wifi involved here. If the ethernet ports don't do what is expected. This must be cleared first. Can you use "speedtest.net" to eliminate the file download server? Those download test sites are a bid more stable in performance than is the case in downloading a file. If the problem persists, then the interface status and counters and the log in the Mikrotik will also be of great interest.
Here are the test results:
1st Test: (only my laptop was connected to the network while testing on 5GHz)
Image
2nd test: (only my phone was on the network (5GHz again because my other laptop only supports 2.4GHz)
Image
3rd test: (test running on both devices at the same time - screenshot from my phone)
Image
4th test: same as 3rd but this is a screenshot from my laptop
Image

Here's /export:
/interface ethernet
set [ find default-name=ether2 ] advertise=10M-half,10M-full,100M-half,100M-full
/interface bridge
add name=bridge1
/interface list
add name=WAN
add name=LAN
/ip pool
add name=dhcp ranges=192.168.0.2-192.168.0.254
add name=vpn ranges=192.168.89.2-192.168.89.255
add name=hs-pool-9 ranges=192.168.1.2-192.168.1.254
/ip dhcp-server
add address-pool=dhcp disabled=no interface=bridge1 name=dhcp1
/queue type
add kind=pcq name=pcq-downstream pcq-classifier=dst-address pcq-dst-address6-mask=64 pcq-src-address6-mask=64
add kind=pcq name=pcq-upstream pcq-classifier=src-address pcq-dst-address6-mask=64 pcq-src-address6-mask=64
/queue tree
add name=queue-down packet-mark=varga-pm parent=ether1 queue=pcq-downstream
add name=queue-up packet-mark=varga-pm parent=bridge1 queue=pcq-upstream
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether2
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether3
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether4
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether5
add bridge=bridge1 interface=*9
add bridge=bridge1 interface=*A
/interface list member
add interface=ether1 list=WAN
add list=LAN
add interface=bridge1 list=LAN
/ip address
add address=192.168.0.1/24 interface=ether2 network=192.168.0.0
/ip cloud
set ddns-enabled=yes
/ip dhcp-client
add disabled=no interface=ether1
/ip dhcp-server lease
add address=192.168.0.2 client-id=1:74:da:88:7c:6e:70 mac-address=74:DA:88:7C:6E:70 server=dhcp1
add address=192.168.0.113 client-id=1:ac:2b:6e:f9:3f:e4 mac-address=AC:2B:6E:F9:3F:E4 server=dhcp1
add address=192.168.0.3 mac-address=EC:B5:FA:06:11:9A server=dhcp1
add address=192.168.0.6 mac-address=F4:F5:E8:36:0B:5C server=dhcp1
/ip dhcp-server network
add address=192.168.0.0/24 dns-server=192.168.0.1 gateway=192.168.0.1 netmask=24
add address=192.168.1.0/24 comment="hotspot network" gateway=192.168.1.1
/ip dns
set allow-remote-requests=yes servers=192.168.0.1,1.1.1.1,1.0.0.1
/ip firewall filter
add action=fasttrack-connection chain=forward dst-port=53 protocol=tcp
add action=fasttrack-connection chain=forward dst-port=53 protocol=udp
add chain=forward comment=Established connection-state=established
add chain=input comment=Established connection-state=established
/ip firewall nat
add action=passthrough chain=unused-hs-chain comment="place hotspot rules here" disabled=yes
add action=masquerade chain=srcnat comment="masq. vpn traffic" src-address=192.168.89.0/24
add action=masquerade chain=srcnat
add action=masquerade chain=srcnat comment="masquerade hotspot network" src-address=192.168.1.0/24
/ip smb
set allow-guests=no domain=WORKGROUP
/ip smb shares
add directory=/flash/ max-sessions=4 name=flash
/ip smb users
add name=admin read-only=no
/ip upnp
set enabled=yes
/ip upnp interfaces
add interface=bridge1 type=internal
add interface=ether1 type=external
/radius incoming
set accept=yes
/system clock
set time-zone-name=Europe/Bratislava
I should also mention that I've read about something called PCQ, which is supposed to distribute the bandwidth across devices and it seems like it is helping, but it still isn't as good. Maybe I didn't set it up correctly.
 
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bpwl
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Re: Slow internet speed

Sun Mar 22, 2020 8:23 pm

Please be systematic and consistent ...

1. Laptop 5 GHz : 13ms ping / 9.9 Mbps down / 0.64 Mbps up
2. GSM 5 GHz : 7ms ping / 1.32 MBps = 10.56 Mbps down / 0.09 MBps = 0.72 Mbps up
3 Laptop+GSM unfortunately results of two events. But both devices active
GSM: 8 ms / 8.4 Mbps down / 0.69 Mbps up
Laptop: 16 ms / 3.7 Mbps down / 0.12 Mbps up

The variation is not very significant. OK laptop is slower than the phone, but not sure if this is persistent. Cause of the difference cannot be identified.

Then the config file ... not consistent with the test, because no wifi configured.
Cannot help much with the PCQ setting (no experience) but many things do not correspond with what's in the wiki. https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Q ... Q_Examples
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Queues_-_PCQ
- no mangle rules? I don't think the PCQ is active
- cannot explain what the effects are of this: "pcq-dst-address6-mask=64 pcq-src-address6-mask=64" , it's for IPv6
- IP address must be on the bridge , not on ether2 !
/ip address
add address=192.168.0.1/24 interface=bridge1 network=192.168.0.0
- Why limit the ether2 settings??? It will detect 1Gbps or 100 Mbps automatically.
/interface ethernet
set [ find default-name=ether2 ] advertise=10M-half,10M-full,100M-half,100M-full
- very strange set of firewall filter rules
- redundant set of firewall NAT rules
 
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Re: Slow internet speed  [SOLVED]

Mon Mar 23, 2020 1:20 pm

You were right, the PCQ wasn't correctly configured :? I looked for some tutorials on YouTube about PCQ and I actually managed to set it up correctly. It's working now.
I ran a speed test on both my laptop and phone and the result on both was almost the same speed. I also did another download test with 2 laptops and both were downloading at almost the same speed (the difference was very small), I even added a third PC and they were all downloading at about 320kB/s. Which is correct because 3 x 320 = 960 kB/s which is very close to our maximum.

As for the mangle rules, I think you only need them if you want to apply PCQ for a certain type of traffic or connection, I want to apply it for all traffic and connections.

Thanks for the help! :D

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