Wireless Access

Has anyone installed many of the new IAP-103's?  If so, how is the speed?  I'm getting really bad speeds with mine.

I tried installing 5 IAP-103's, but I couldn't get it to work properly using Instant so I converted it to campus AP's. Once that was done everything was stable. I didn't notice any speed issues? What types of devices are you testing with & how are you testing speed?

It is hard to answer your question without knowing at least an approximate network set up. What type of location, what type of traffic prevalent, is there firewall, are the APs in mesh, etc?  

Yea, I was just wondering in general if anyone had been having any issues?   I have two IAP-103's installed.  Each are hardwired (gig) and I have about 6 clients per AP.  I've used internet speed tests and IPerf and am getting around 20mbps to my wireless clients.  That's even when I'm standing under the access point.

I assume you do not have any bandwidth limits set up. What is the actual spped of the circuit? Additionnaly, try to play with interference immunity level in radio configs, using the follwoing gradation: 

  - Level 0— no ANI adaptation. 

  - Level 1— Noise immunity only. This level enables power-based packet detection
by controlling the amount of power increase that makes a radio aware that it has
received a packet.
  - Level 2— Noise and spur immunity. This level also controls the detection of
OFDM packets, and is the default setting for the Noise Immunity feature.
  - Level 3— Level 2 settings and weak OFDM immunity. This level minimizes false
detects on the radio due to interference, but may also reduce radio sensitivity.
This level is recommended for environments with a high-level of interference
related to 2.4 GHz appliances such as cordless phones.
  - Level 4— Level 3 settings, and FIR immunity. At this level, the AP adjusts its
sensitivity to in-band power, which can improve performance in environments
with high and constant levels of noise interference.
  - Level 5— The AP completely disables PHY error reporting, improving
performance by eliminating the time the IAP would spend on PHY processing.

 

Keep in mind that this is used mostly for high-interference environments 

 

Maybe there is something you can do with your ARM configs. 

 

Anyway, hope that you will manage to increase the speed. 

 

Vlad Tsapko | Solution Delivery Advisor 

 

[If you found my post helpful, please give kudos!]

 

What control's which AP the clients roam to?  I noticed yesterday that one of the laptops was connected to the AP on the other side of the building when there was another AP just a few feet away.  The connection speed was good, but the device was showing a lot of retries.  The laptop stayed associated to the further AP until I rebooted it.

The client decides what AP it connects to. You can use ClientMatch to help sway that decision. Do you have it enabled?

The tech I was working with told me to disable it. He said it had problems with Apple devices.

I would first check the basics

 

1-To what band are the devices  connecting? 2.4ghz? 5ghz?

2-What type of antenna does your devices has? 1x1? 2x2??

3-Do you see a lot of noise on 2.4ghz? do you see your clients connecting to it?

4-If you do a ping  for example to the default gateway, do you see a lot of packet drops?  in a good connection you will not see any packet drop.

 

There are soo many things that can make that outcome happen.

 

We have clients with instant AP 103 and they are all good.

 

Just to give you an example

We had   a client in which had performance issue with an ap 105(note that is was NOT the ap fault)

in this scenario the  client was connected to 2.4ghz(buecase the antenna of the devices was bgn 1x1)

He had a lot of noise in the 2.4ghz and of course he had performance issues on it plus he was asking me why the max speed was 65mbs when he bough an AP which it suppose to go up to 300Mbps... and i had to explain him about the antenas and that with 1x1 just can go up to 65Mbps and it has nothing to do with the AP.  

 

So check the basics first before going some indeep troubleshooting...

 

Bealive me a good design with aruba actually you rarely will need to troubleshoot :)  aruba just works...

 

Cheers

Carlos

In one of my recent installs I was noticing that a WIndows 8 laptop was performing significantly better than an iPhone using internet speed tests. Consistently I was getting 25Mb Up & Down with my laptop, but only 5-10 on an iPhone 5. Both right next to the AP. Like others have mentioned this is going to depend on the antennas in the client itself. Although, I have seen my iPhone 5 get much higher performance in other wireless networks.

What setting would I enable to help my clients connect to a closer AP? Should I enable more aggressive roaming on the client side? I don't understand why the client would associate with a further AP that is showing transmission retries as appose to an AP that's directly above it.

I would try changing the "Local Probe Request Threshold" in the SSID profile to something like 20 or 25. This setting will make the AP deny client connections if they fall under that signal threshold. This should help the client associate to the better/closer AP.

Does this only work if the SSID is hidden?

No, not that I'm aware of. Straight from the 6.3 User Guide:

 

"Enter the SNR threshold below which incoming probe requests will get ignored. The
supported range of values is 0-100 dB. A value of 0 disables this feature."

Hello Guys, First of all I am new to this community so excuse me if I am posting in the wrong thread. 

 

I have a setup of a router - 2 * alctael 6450switch - and 38 IAP-103 (Alcatel re-branded ones) configured as instant APs

.

I have a 60mpbs connection by the provider on the router side and I can get this full on a wired connection to the switches. 

 

Using my 802.11n laptop, connected to the IAP SSID and sitting just under the AP I can get a maximum of only 35Mpbs. Is this Normal? Does the Instant configuration have an impact on bandwidth?

 

My device is being connected using dual band.

I can see that I have a very minimal amount of interferance caused by a neighbour AP in another building. 

 

What speeds shoul I expect from the Aps in an instant network?

 

Thnaks in advance.

Wireless is half duplex, so in general you cannot expect the same throughput as wired. You can enable broadcast filter all on that ssid and see if it helps.

But will enable broadcast filtering disable arp requests in the network? the network is being used mostly by Apples devices, which uses Bonjour so if I am not mistaken this should not be a problem. I will change this parameter and let you know how the speed is affacted.

 

Thanks

Arp and dhcp will be permitted

Hello Warren

this is not normal

What kind of Device are you using?

is the network card is 1x1?

are you sure you are connected to the AP you are thinking you are?

Many times our clients thinks that, but im here down the AP and im getting low signal(3 bars or 4 bars) why im not getting all the bars if im sitting down the AP, or why im getting less speed(in your case)

Well sometimes they are just connected to an AP near which doesnt have a bad signal and has not roamed to the AP that you are looking up to you.   Now if you are in another room of the AP you are connected this can affect the speed you are looking at. 

 

To check if you are really connected to the AP you are thinking you are, go to the webconle of your Instant AP and click on the word clients here 

 And check this

To which AP are you connected(check if you really connected to the AP you are thinking you are connected)

Check also the type, check if its AN or GN (this would affec the speed as well) GN will have less speed as AN is the one that will use wider channels

Also check again that you re getting the low speed when looking at all this... 

Anyways check that for now... if you are connected to another AP near you then we might need to change some things ont the configuration to help to roam for example the output power to put it at max of 18dBm if you leave it by default it will go up to 21 dBm which is not recommended for many devices that does not have that output power.

 

Cheers

Carlos

Thanks a lot for your input Carlos. I can confirm that was connected to the closet AP, however I will make some more tests just to be 100%. Can you kindly specify from where can I change AP mode between AN or GN please? Thanks

Well you can put that the AP just accept AN connetion but that wont be recommended because there are some devices which does not support AN( 5ghz),  all the devices support GN( 2.4ghz)

 

What kind of devices are you connecting? it is a windows laptop??? it is a smartphone? what is it?

Does this happen with ALL the devices or it just happen with one in particular?

 

If your device support AN then The ap will try to invite him to connect to AN, but thats if your client support it.

You need to check the wireless card model(sometimes when you look on the propierties it will tell you if its a/b/g/n if it doenst tell you, you will have to check with the model of the wireless card(thats on windows) if its a smartphone you can look on internet which wireless card does your smartphone has.

 

 

 

Cheers

Carlos

HI, So I Enabled broadcast filter all and setted the Local Probe Request Threshold to 25 as during mobility the device was still being connected to an AP that is far away and not associating to a new one. The speed increased to 40-45mbps. The device is a windows hp laptop with 1*1 network card. I guess that this speed is quite good in this scenario. Thanks for all your help.

 

 

if you got a 1x1 your speed should be 60 or 65 Mbps or at least 54Mbps if the ap  is next to you and the AP has line of sigh to you(i tell you this of line of sigh because i have seen clients installing the APS above the suspended ceiling for aesthetic reasons which casue sometimes a lot of reflections and this things can happen.

Also could you upgrade the firmware of the wireless card of the laptop?

 

Cheers

Carlos