Controllerless Networks

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Radio0 Utilization is pretty high? Any security cameras on the wireless network?

If you have checked the wired side of things, and eliminated any interference, I would probably reach out to TAC at this point.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Hi Wilfried,

Understand that the data rate the WLAN information shows you (278Mbps) is the WiFi modulation rate. WiFi (IEEE 802.11) is the medium to transport Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) packages. WiFi frames have a lot of overhead that exist of management and control frames that are needed for create the connectivity between client and access point. WiFi is also a half-medium traffic like a walkie-talkie and and some retry frames (say under 10%) are pretty normal. WiFi has a lot of overhead and a small payload (the ethernet frames). The data rates shows in the WLAN information are also called "modulation rate", this is based on your AP and Client capabilities, antennas streams, channel width settings, RSSI signal strength and SNR (Signal Noise Ratio). This all comes together in the MCS INDEX table, were we talk you about this, look again and you will understand the table better now ;). https://netbeez.net/blog/what-is-mcs-index/

In sort terms you can say that your max. real throughput is around 50% of this modulation rate. Based on 278Mbps modulation rate will give you around 139Mbps (Megabit/per second) when there is a clean air without interference or lot of airtime is occupied due high utilization from other wifi or non-wifi transmitters.

You say your real download is 15MegaByte/sec = 15x8bits = 120Mbps, you see this come close to the 50% calculation above. Why this is some lower than expect is due the high channel utilization, try use another channel or perform a spectrum analyze.

To get your wifi speed beter you could do some things;
1. Use better wifi card with more spatial streams
2. Keep your WLAN client drivers up-to-date!
3. Higher signalstrength/SNR , aka client closer to the access point.
4. Use another channel without interference of high utilization.
5. Use a wider 5GHz channelwidth 20MhZ/40Mhz/80Mhz but be sure of clean air and avoid
channel overlap

Note: smaller channels are more stable in busy areas , wider channels have higher throughput but you need clean air to make this possible.

As Dustin mentioned to, start with take away the high channel utilization away. Also disable 802.1ax (HE) because this can be a issue to older client drivers. But if your drivers are up-to-date enabling HE should be fine those days. Use it as troubleshooting step to see it make sence.

Hope this is some informative for you.

------------------------------
Marcel Koedijk | MVP Guru 2021 | ACEP | ACMP | ACCP | ACDP | Ekahau ECSE | Not an HPE Employee | Opinions are my own
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:30 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Radio0 Utilization is pretty high? Any security cameras on the wireless network?

If you have checked the wired side of things, and eliminated any interference, I would probably reach out to TAC at this point.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Are you talking Mbps or MB/s? First is megabit per second, and 15 Mbps is poor performance; the AP and link speed you see in the client are typically in Mbps; second is megabytes per second, which is 8 times as much, and 15 MBps is acceptable performance in many cases and is the equivalent of 120Mbps which is not exceptionally bad with a link speed of 287 Mbps. You will see roughly half of your link speed as actual throughput for a file transfer under normal conditions.

For a modern client, with multiple streams, to an 11ac/11ax AP, a link speed of 287 Mbps is quite low. With an SNR of 40 (from the screenshot), you should see more, unless you have an issue with your client. Do you see the same with all clients? The 100% utilization worries me a bit, unless that is the period where your are connected at 287 Mbps and pushing 15 MBps through the system.

If you have an AP-504, what antennas are connected to it? Do you have all antenna connectors connected? Have you checked the connectors are properly attached?

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Hi,

first thanks for all the feedback.

i think i'll break it more down to my test-enviroment than the overall situation.

let me describe you my test-setup:

Notebook:
HP EliteBook 830G8 with Intel® AX201 Wi-Fi 6 (2x2)
Runs with W10, all Updates and drivers up to date (using the HP support assistant)

AccessPoint:
Aruba IAP-504 wiht Aruba AP-ANT-1b (Firmware: 8.8.0.1_80393)
The AP is about 4 meters away from the notebook.
There are other SSIDs configured on the AP but no other clients connected.
The AP is connected to an aruba 2530-48G-PoE+ and the uplink-port is running with 1GB FDx.

Enviroment:
AP/SSID uses the following stats
2,4GHz Channel 6, transmit power 9 dBm
5 GHz channel 56, transmit power 18 dBm
Antenna gain 3dBi and 5dBi (as documentation describes) in co-polarization
transmission rates 2,4GHz 1/54, 5GHz 6/54 (min/max values)
high throughput and very high throughput are activated
RF setting has the ARM option "80MHz support" deactivated
SSID is limited to only 5GHz and all 5GHz radios are allowed

in the IDS the AP has no other 5GHz SSID/AP in range, just 3 intefering 2,4GHz SSID/AP with a signal strengh around 6 (neighbour other side of the street)

Test run:
with this setup i did try to copy a large ISO (5GB) and the notebook didn't get over 15MBs.


Conclusion:
i'm no pro in WiFi but this realy seems strange to me.
in such a "clean" enviroment i would expect a much better result.

i did read the explanation page about the mcs-index and i'm a bit more informed but still don't fully understand it, sorry :)
with the new info i checked the properties of the WiFi on the notebook and the receiving/sending speed is 173/173 Mbps.
so my filecopy is utilizing the bandwith that was negotiated.

if i understand the mcs-index correct, my conclusion is that AP and Clients are using 2 Spatial Steams, 20MHz, with SNR over 30 and therefore getting a 173Mbps connection.
question is, why doesn't it get higher? i mean all hardware used can support better connection.
is it possible that i made a configuration limiting the radios to 20MHz?


------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 03:20 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Are you talking Mbps or MB/s? First is megabit per second, and 15 Mbps is poor performance; the AP and link speed you see in the client are typically in Mbps; second is megabytes per second, which is 8 times as much, and 15 MBps is acceptable performance in many cases and is the equivalent of 120Mbps which is not exceptionally bad with a link speed of 287 Mbps. You will see roughly half of your link speed as actual throughput for a file transfer under normal conditions.

For a modern client, with multiple streams, to an 11ac/11ax AP, a link speed of 287 Mbps is quite low. With an SNR of 40 (from the screenshot), you should see more, unless you have an issue with your client. Do you see the same with all clients? The 100% utilization worries me a bit, unless that is the period where your are connected at 287 Mbps and pushing 15 MBps through the system.

If you have an AP-504, what antennas are connected to it? Do you have all antenna connectors connected? Have you checked the connectors are properly attached?

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Hi Wilfired,

Some basic notes:

• Yes try to change 20MHZ channels to 40MHz channel so you can support higher modulation.
• Don't use the wifi drivers in de HP support assistant, the are not up-to-date enough. Download them here by intel, link.
• You use ArubaOS 8.8.0.1 which isn't the conservative version, try ArubaOS 8.6.0.15 which is the latest conservative release.

You read the MCS index correctly, nice job!

You say you use 5GHz on 20MHz width channels, try 40Mhz width channels to get a higher modulation rate.

Again note that real throughput is always aprox. around 50% of the wifi modulation rate due overhead and (normal) retry frames.

Hope its clear to you that MB/sec (Megabyte) is not the same as Mbps (Megabit). There are 8 bits in a byte.
15MB/sec x8bits = 120Mbps which is very good for a 2 spatial stream connection at 20MHz width channels with a modulation rate of 173Mpbs.

When change to 40MHz wide channels you can get 400Mbps modulation which result in 200Mbps download speed, which is 25MB/sec in Bytes.

When you want more and more, note that wider channels must be supported on both client and accesspoint, 160MHZ is not very common because a lot of clients don't support (not sure about the AX201, the AP-504 can do max 80MHz) but also because you need a really really clear spectrum and no neighbours or other access points around you. At home you can use 80MHZ channels when you have "friendly neighbours". At office i recommend to stat at max 40MHz because you have here a lot of access points that can interference with eachother.

Another important question is why you need high speed, because you wanted it to see or because the application require this? Big filetransfers could better be done on a wired connection. "If you CAN wired it, WIRE it!" is key here.

Hope you better understand it now, if you have question please let us known! It's a pleasure to help you with the basics.

------------------------------
Marcel Koedijk | MVP Expert 2022 | ACEP | ACMP | ACCP | ACDP | Ekahau ECSE | Not an HPE Employee | Opinions are my own
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 04:31 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

first thanks for all the feedback.

i think i'll break it more down to my test-enviroment than the overall situation.

let me describe you my test-setup:

Notebook:
HP EliteBook 830G8 with Intel® AX201 Wi-Fi 6 (2x2)
Runs with W10, all Updates and drivers up to date (using the HP support assistant)

AccessPoint:
Aruba IAP-504 wiht Aruba AP-ANT-1b (Firmware: 8.8.0.1_80393)
The AP is about 4 meters away from the notebook.
There are other SSIDs configured on the AP but no other clients connected.
The AP is connected to an aruba 2530-48G-PoE+ and the uplink-port is running with 1GB FDx.

Enviroment:
AP/SSID uses the following stats
2,4GHz Channel 6, transmit power 9 dBm
5 GHz channel 56, transmit power 18 dBm
Antenna gain 3dBi and 5dBi (as documentation describes) in co-polarization
transmission rates 2,4GHz 1/54, 5GHz 6/54 (min/max values)
high throughput and very high throughput are activated
RF setting has the ARM option "80MHz support" deactivated
SSID is limited to only 5GHz and all 5GHz radios are allowed

in the IDS the AP has no other 5GHz SSID/AP in range, just 3 intefering 2,4GHz SSID/AP with a signal strengh around 6 (neighbour other side of the street)

Test run:
with this setup i did try to copy a large ISO (5GB) and the notebook didn't get over 15MBs.


Conclusion:
i'm no pro in WiFi but this realy seems strange to me.
in such a "clean" enviroment i would expect a much better result.

i did read the explanation page about the mcs-index and i'm a bit more informed but still don't fully understand it, sorry :)
with the new info i checked the properties of the WiFi on the notebook and the receiving/sending speed is 173/173 Mbps.
so my filecopy is utilizing the bandwith that was negotiated.

if i understand the mcs-index correct, my conclusion is that AP and Clients are using 2 Spatial Steams, 20MHz, with SNR over 30 and therefore getting a 173Mbps connection.
question is, why doesn't it get higher? i mean all hardware used can support better connection.
is it possible that i made a configuration limiting the radios to 20MHz?


------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 03:20 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Are you talking Mbps or MB/s? First is megabit per second, and 15 Mbps is poor performance; the AP and link speed you see in the client are typically in Mbps; second is megabytes per second, which is 8 times as much, and 15 MBps is acceptable performance in many cases and is the equivalent of 120Mbps which is not exceptionally bad with a link speed of 287 Mbps. You will see roughly half of your link speed as actual throughput for a file transfer under normal conditions.

For a modern client, with multiple streams, to an 11ac/11ax AP, a link speed of 287 Mbps is quite low. With an SNR of 40 (from the screenshot), you should see more, unless you have an issue with your client. Do you see the same with all clients? The 100% utilization worries me a bit, unless that is the period where your are connected at 287 Mbps and pushing 15 MBps through the system.

If you have an AP-504, what antennas are connected to it? Do you have all antenna connectors connected? Have you checked the connectors are properly attached?

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

ok, over the weekend i downgraded the firmware to 8.6.0.15 and on my test-notebook i installed the actual driver from the intel-website.
all stayed the same.

so i would guess that my math with the mcs-index is somewhat correct and my problem is the limitation to 20MHz.

can someone explain how i force the 40MHz to be used?
i thought it was with the HT and VHT switches.
for 80MHz there is a switch under the RF settings, but can't find a dedicated switch for 40MHz.

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 05:30 AM
From: marcel koedijk
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Wilfired,

Some basic notes:

• Yes try to change 20MHZ channels to 40MHz channel so you can support higher modulation.
• Don't use the wifi drivers in de HP support assistant, the are not up-to-date enough. Download them here by intel, link.
• You use ArubaOS 8.8.0.1 which isn't the conservative version, try ArubaOS 8.6.0.15 which is the latest conservative release.

You read the MCS index correctly, nice job!

You say you use 5GHz on 20MHz width channels, try 40Mhz width channels to get a higher modulation rate.

Again note that real throughput is always aprox. around 50% of the wifi modulation rate due overhead and (normal) retry frames.

Hope its clear to you that MB/sec (Megabyte) is not the same as Mbps (Megabit). There are 8 bits in a byte.
15MB/sec x8bits = 120Mbps which is very good for a 2 spatial stream connection at 20MHz width channels with a modulation rate of 173Mpbs.

When change to 40MHz wide channels you can get 400Mbps modulation which result in 200Mbps download speed, which is 25MB/sec in Bytes.

When you want more and more, note that wider channels must be supported on both client and accesspoint, 160MHZ is not very common because a lot of clients don't support (not sure about the AX201, the AP-504 can do max 80MHz) but also because you need a really really clear spectrum and no neighbours or other access points around you. At home you can use 80MHZ channels when you have "friendly neighbours". At office i recommend to stat at max 40MHz because you have here a lot of access points that can interference with eachother.

Another important question is why you need high speed, because you wanted it to see or because the application require this? Big filetransfers could better be done on a wired connection. "If you CAN wired it, WIRE it!" is key here.

Hope you better understand it now, if you have question please let us known! It's a pleasure to help you with the basics.

------------------------------
Marcel Koedijk | MVP Expert 2022 | ACEP | ACMP | ACCP | ACDP | Ekahau ECSE | Not an HPE Employee | Opinions are my own

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 04:31 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

first thanks for all the feedback.

i think i'll break it more down to my test-enviroment than the overall situation.

let me describe you my test-setup:

Notebook:
HP EliteBook 830G8 with Intel® AX201 Wi-Fi 6 (2x2)
Runs with W10, all Updates and drivers up to date (using the HP support assistant)

AccessPoint:
Aruba IAP-504 wiht Aruba AP-ANT-1b (Firmware: 8.8.0.1_80393)
The AP is about 4 meters away from the notebook.
There are other SSIDs configured on the AP but no other clients connected.
The AP is connected to an aruba 2530-48G-PoE+ and the uplink-port is running with 1GB FDx.

Enviroment:
AP/SSID uses the following stats
2,4GHz Channel 6, transmit power 9 dBm
5 GHz channel 56, transmit power 18 dBm
Antenna gain 3dBi and 5dBi (as documentation describes) in co-polarization
transmission rates 2,4GHz 1/54, 5GHz 6/54 (min/max values)
high throughput and very high throughput are activated
RF setting has the ARM option "80MHz support" deactivated
SSID is limited to only 5GHz and all 5GHz radios are allowed

in the IDS the AP has no other 5GHz SSID/AP in range, just 3 intefering 2,4GHz SSID/AP with a signal strengh around 6 (neighbour other side of the street)

Test run:
with this setup i did try to copy a large ISO (5GB) and the notebook didn't get over 15MBs.


Conclusion:
i'm no pro in WiFi but this realy seems strange to me.
in such a "clean" enviroment i would expect a much better result.

i did read the explanation page about the mcs-index and i'm a bit more informed but still don't fully understand it, sorry :)
with the new info i checked the properties of the WiFi on the notebook and the receiving/sending speed is 173/173 Mbps.
so my filecopy is utilizing the bandwith that was negotiated.

if i understand the mcs-index correct, my conclusion is that AP and Clients are using 2 Spatial Steams, 20MHz, with SNR over 30 and therefore getting a 173Mbps connection.
question is, why doesn't it get higher? i mean all hardware used can support better connection.
is it possible that i made a configuration limiting the radios to 20MHz?


------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 03:20 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Are you talking Mbps or MB/s? First is megabit per second, and 15 Mbps is poor performance; the AP and link speed you see in the client are typically in Mbps; second is megabytes per second, which is 8 times as much, and 15 MBps is acceptable performance in many cases and is the equivalent of 120Mbps which is not exceptionally bad with a link speed of 287 Mbps. You will see roughly half of your link speed as actual throughput for a file transfer under normal conditions.

For a modern client, with multiple streams, to an 11ac/11ax AP, a link speed of 287 Mbps is quite low. With an SNR of 40 (from the screenshot), you should see more, unless you have an issue with your client. Do you see the same with all clients? The 100% utilization worries me a bit, unless that is the period where your are connected at 287 Mbps and pushing 15 MBps through the system.

If you have an AP-504, what antennas are connected to it? Do you have all antenna connectors connected? Have you checked the connectors are properly attached?

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

You can do that either with static channel assignment or through ARM.

ARM: Go to Configuration -> RF -> Advanced Settings. Then check that under the Valid 5GHz channels, the values with + are present. Just number (36) = 20MHz; 36+ = 40MHz; 36E = 80 MHz; 36S= 160MHz. 80 and 160 are not recommended in busy places with multiple APs. Also make sure that Wide Channel bands has the 5GHz ticked: and 80MHz is unticked unless you want 80MHz channels:



If you select an administrator assigned channel, you can really enforce it:
In most cases ARM assigned is preferred as it will take the best channel from the available ones.

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 02:14 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

ok, over the weekend i downgraded the firmware to 8.6.0.15 and on my test-notebook i installed the actual driver from the intel-website.
all stayed the same.

so i would guess that my math with the mcs-index is somewhat correct and my problem is the limitation to 20MHz.

can someone explain how i force the 40MHz to be used?
i thought it was with the HT and VHT switches.
for 80MHz there is a switch under the RF settings, but can't find a dedicated switch for 40MHz.

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 05:30 AM
From: marcel koedijk
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Wilfired,

Some basic notes:

• Yes try to change 20MHZ channels to 40MHz channel so you can support higher modulation.
• Don't use the wifi drivers in de HP support assistant, the are not up-to-date enough. Download them here by intel, link.
• You use ArubaOS 8.8.0.1 which isn't the conservative version, try ArubaOS 8.6.0.15 which is the latest conservative release.

You read the MCS index correctly, nice job!

You say you use 5GHz on 20MHz width channels, try 40Mhz width channels to get a higher modulation rate.

Again note that real throughput is always aprox. around 50% of the wifi modulation rate due overhead and (normal) retry frames.

Hope its clear to you that MB/sec (Megabyte) is not the same as Mbps (Megabit). There are 8 bits in a byte.
15MB/sec x8bits = 120Mbps which is very good for a 2 spatial stream connection at 20MHz width channels with a modulation rate of 173Mpbs.

When change to 40MHz wide channels you can get 400Mbps modulation which result in 200Mbps download speed, which is 25MB/sec in Bytes.

When you want more and more, note that wider channels must be supported on both client and accesspoint, 160MHZ is not very common because a lot of clients don't support (not sure about the AX201, the AP-504 can do max 80MHz) but also because you need a really really clear spectrum and no neighbours or other access points around you. At home you can use 80MHZ channels when you have "friendly neighbours". At office i recommend to stat at max 40MHz because you have here a lot of access points that can interference with eachother.

Another important question is why you need high speed, because you wanted it to see or because the application require this? Big filetransfers could better be done on a wired connection. "If you CAN wired it, WIRE it!" is key here.

Hope you better understand it now, if you have question please let us known! It's a pleasure to help you with the basics.

------------------------------
Marcel Koedijk | MVP Expert 2022 | ACEP | ACMP | ACCP | ACDP | Ekahau ECSE | Not an HPE Employee | Opinions are my own

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 04:31 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

first thanks for all the feedback.

i think i'll break it more down to my test-enviroment than the overall situation.

let me describe you my test-setup:

Notebook:
HP EliteBook 830G8 with Intel® AX201 Wi-Fi 6 (2x2)
Runs with W10, all Updates and drivers up to date (using the HP support assistant)

AccessPoint:
Aruba IAP-504 wiht Aruba AP-ANT-1b (Firmware: 8.8.0.1_80393)
The AP is about 4 meters away from the notebook.
There are other SSIDs configured on the AP but no other clients connected.
The AP is connected to an aruba 2530-48G-PoE+ and the uplink-port is running with 1GB FDx.

Enviroment:
AP/SSID uses the following stats
2,4GHz Channel 6, transmit power 9 dBm
5 GHz channel 56, transmit power 18 dBm
Antenna gain 3dBi and 5dBi (as documentation describes) in co-polarization
transmission rates 2,4GHz 1/54, 5GHz 6/54 (min/max values)
high throughput and very high throughput are activated
RF setting has the ARM option "80MHz support" deactivated
SSID is limited to only 5GHz and all 5GHz radios are allowed

in the IDS the AP has no other 5GHz SSID/AP in range, just 3 intefering 2,4GHz SSID/AP with a signal strengh around 6 (neighbour other side of the street)

Test run:
with this setup i did try to copy a large ISO (5GB) and the notebook didn't get over 15MBs.


Conclusion:
i'm no pro in WiFi but this realy seems strange to me.
in such a "clean" enviroment i would expect a much better result.

i did read the explanation page about the mcs-index and i'm a bit more informed but still don't fully understand it, sorry :)
with the new info i checked the properties of the WiFi on the notebook and the receiving/sending speed is 173/173 Mbps.
so my filecopy is utilizing the bandwith that was negotiated.

if i understand the mcs-index correct, my conclusion is that AP and Clients are using 2 Spatial Steams, 20MHz, with SNR over 30 and therefore getting a 173Mbps connection.
question is, why doesn't it get higher? i mean all hardware used can support better connection.
is it possible that i made a configuration limiting the radios to 20MHz?


------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 03:20 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Are you talking Mbps or MB/s? First is megabit per second, and 15 Mbps is poor performance; the AP and link speed you see in the client are typically in Mbps; second is megabytes per second, which is 8 times as much, and 15 MBps is acceptable performance in many cases and is the equivalent of 120Mbps which is not exceptionally bad with a link speed of 287 Mbps. You will see roughly half of your link speed as actual throughput for a file transfer under normal conditions.

For a modern client, with multiple streams, to an 11ac/11ax AP, a link speed of 287 Mbps is quite low. With an SNR of 40 (from the screenshot), you should see more, unless you have an issue with your client. Do you see the same with all clients? The 100% utilization worries me a bit, unless that is the period where your are connected at 287 Mbps and pushing 15 MBps through the system.

If you have an AP-504, what antennas are connected to it? Do you have all antenna connectors connected? Have you checked the connectors are properly attached?

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

thanks for the excellent explanation Herman, i feel somewhat stupid right now.

i'm a fan of controlling all channels so i made a plan and configured everwhere the standard 20MHz channels.
i now understand my bad configuration and made first changes and it was much better right away.

i'll test a bit with the 80MHz for some APs where i may need more bandwith, but with the 40MHz it's all fine now.

also thanks to all the others for their continued feedback and help!

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 09:23 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You can do that either with static channel assignment or through ARM.

ARM: Go to Configuration -> RF -> Advanced Settings. Then check that under the Valid 5GHz channels, the values with + are present. Just number (36) = 20MHz; 36+ = 40MHz; 36E = 80 MHz; 36S= 160MHz. 80 and 160 are not recommended in busy places with multiple APs. Also make sure that Wide Channel bands has the 5GHz ticked: and 80MHz is unticked unless you want 80MHz channels:



If you select an administrator assigned channel, you can really enforce it:
In most cases ARM assigned is preferred as it will take the best channel from the available ones.

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 02:14 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

ok, over the weekend i downgraded the firmware to 8.6.0.15 and on my test-notebook i installed the actual driver from the intel-website.
all stayed the same.

so i would guess that my math with the mcs-index is somewhat correct and my problem is the limitation to 20MHz.

can someone explain how i force the 40MHz to be used?
i thought it was with the HT and VHT switches.
for 80MHz there is a switch under the RF settings, but can't find a dedicated switch for 40MHz.

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 05:30 AM
From: marcel koedijk
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Wilfired,

Some basic notes:

• Yes try to change 20MHZ channels to 40MHz channel so you can support higher modulation.
• Don't use the wifi drivers in de HP support assistant, the are not up-to-date enough. Download them here by intel, link.
• You use ArubaOS 8.8.0.1 which isn't the conservative version, try ArubaOS 8.6.0.15 which is the latest conservative release.

You read the MCS index correctly, nice job!

You say you use 5GHz on 20MHz width channels, try 40Mhz width channels to get a higher modulation rate.

Again note that real throughput is always aprox. around 50% of the wifi modulation rate due overhead and (normal) retry frames.

Hope its clear to you that MB/sec (Megabyte) is not the same as Mbps (Megabit). There are 8 bits in a byte.
15MB/sec x8bits = 120Mbps which is very good for a 2 spatial stream connection at 20MHz width channels with a modulation rate of 173Mpbs.

When change to 40MHz wide channels you can get 400Mbps modulation which result in 200Mbps download speed, which is 25MB/sec in Bytes.

When you want more and more, note that wider channels must be supported on both client and accesspoint, 160MHZ is not very common because a lot of clients don't support (not sure about the AX201, the AP-504 can do max 80MHz) but also because you need a really really clear spectrum and no neighbours or other access points around you. At home you can use 80MHZ channels when you have "friendly neighbours". At office i recommend to stat at max 40MHz because you have here a lot of access points that can interference with eachother.

Another important question is why you need high speed, because you wanted it to see or because the application require this? Big filetransfers could better be done on a wired connection. "If you CAN wired it, WIRE it!" is key here.

Hope you better understand it now, if you have question please let us known! It's a pleasure to help you with the basics.

------------------------------
Marcel Koedijk | MVP Expert 2022 | ACEP | ACMP | ACCP | ACDP | Ekahau ECSE | Not an HPE Employee | Opinions are my own

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 04:31 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

first thanks for all the feedback.

i think i'll break it more down to my test-enviroment than the overall situation.

let me describe you my test-setup:

Notebook:
HP EliteBook 830G8 with Intel® AX201 Wi-Fi 6 (2x2)
Runs with W10, all Updates and drivers up to date (using the HP support assistant)

AccessPoint:
Aruba IAP-504 wiht Aruba AP-ANT-1b (Firmware: 8.8.0.1_80393)
The AP is about 4 meters away from the notebook.
There are other SSIDs configured on the AP but no other clients connected.
The AP is connected to an aruba 2530-48G-PoE+ and the uplink-port is running with 1GB FDx.

Enviroment:
AP/SSID uses the following stats
2,4GHz Channel 6, transmit power 9 dBm
5 GHz channel 56, transmit power 18 dBm
Antenna gain 3dBi and 5dBi (as documentation describes) in co-polarization
transmission rates 2,4GHz 1/54, 5GHz 6/54 (min/max values)
high throughput and very high throughput are activated
RF setting has the ARM option "80MHz support" deactivated
SSID is limited to only 5GHz and all 5GHz radios are allowed

in the IDS the AP has no other 5GHz SSID/AP in range, just 3 intefering 2,4GHz SSID/AP with a signal strengh around 6 (neighbour other side of the street)

Test run:
with this setup i did try to copy a large ISO (5GB) and the notebook didn't get over 15MBs.


Conclusion:
i'm no pro in WiFi but this realy seems strange to me.
in such a "clean" enviroment i would expect a much better result.

i did read the explanation page about the mcs-index and i'm a bit more informed but still don't fully understand it, sorry :)
with the new info i checked the properties of the WiFi on the notebook and the receiving/sending speed is 173/173 Mbps.
so my filecopy is utilizing the bandwith that was negotiated.

if i understand the mcs-index correct, my conclusion is that AP and Clients are using 2 Spatial Steams, 20MHz, with SNR over 30 and therefore getting a 173Mbps connection.
question is, why doesn't it get higher? i mean all hardware used can support better connection.
is it possible that i made a configuration limiting the radios to 20MHz?


------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 03:20 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Are you talking Mbps or MB/s? First is megabit per second, and 15 Mbps is poor performance; the AP and link speed you see in the client are typically in Mbps; second is megabytes per second, which is 8 times as much, and 15 MBps is acceptable performance in many cases and is the equivalent of 120Mbps which is not exceptionally bad with a link speed of 287 Mbps. You will see roughly half of your link speed as actual throughput for a file transfer under normal conditions.

For a modern client, with multiple streams, to an 11ac/11ax AP, a link speed of 287 Mbps is quite low. With an SNR of 40 (from the screenshot), you should see more, unless you have an issue with your client. Do you see the same with all clients? The 100% utilization worries me a bit, unless that is the period where your are connected at 287 Mbps and pushing 15 MBps through the system.

If you have an AP-504, what antennas are connected to it? Do you have all antenna connectors connected? Have you checked the connectors are properly attached?

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Please be advised that static channel/power assignment is not recommended (with a very few exceptions like in extremely high density stadium deployments) and mixing channel width in the same deployment should be avoided as some clients will attempt to stick to the wider channels whenever they can, thus breaking your roaming and client-distribution over the APs.

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 10:18 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

thanks for the excellent explanation Herman, i feel somewhat stupid right now.

i'm a fan of controlling all channels so i made a plan and configured everwhere the standard 20MHz channels.
i now understand my bad configuration and made first changes and it was much better right away.

i'll test a bit with the 80MHz for some APs where i may need more bandwith, but with the 40MHz it's all fine now.

also thanks to all the others for their continued feedback and help!

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 09:23 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You can do that either with static channel assignment or through ARM.

ARM: Go to Configuration -> RF -> Advanced Settings. Then check that under the Valid 5GHz channels, the values with + are present. Just number (36) = 20MHz; 36+ = 40MHz; 36E = 80 MHz; 36S= 160MHz. 80 and 160 are not recommended in busy places with multiple APs. Also make sure that Wide Channel bands has the 5GHz ticked: and 80MHz is unticked unless you want 80MHz channels:



If you select an administrator assigned channel, you can really enforce it:
In most cases ARM assigned is preferred as it will take the best channel from the available ones.

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 02:14 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

ok, over the weekend i downgraded the firmware to 8.6.0.15 and on my test-notebook i installed the actual driver from the intel-website.
all stayed the same.

so i would guess that my math with the mcs-index is somewhat correct and my problem is the limitation to 20MHz.

can someone explain how i force the 40MHz to be used?
i thought it was with the HT and VHT switches.
for 80MHz there is a switch under the RF settings, but can't find a dedicated switch for 40MHz.

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 05:30 AM
From: marcel koedijk
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Wilfired,

Some basic notes:

• Yes try to change 20MHZ channels to 40MHz channel so you can support higher modulation.
• Don't use the wifi drivers in de HP support assistant, the are not up-to-date enough. Download them here by intel, link.
• You use ArubaOS 8.8.0.1 which isn't the conservative version, try ArubaOS 8.6.0.15 which is the latest conservative release.

You read the MCS index correctly, nice job!

You say you use 5GHz on 20MHz width channels, try 40Mhz width channels to get a higher modulation rate.

Again note that real throughput is always aprox. around 50% of the wifi modulation rate due overhead and (normal) retry frames.

Hope its clear to you that MB/sec (Megabyte) is not the same as Mbps (Megabit). There are 8 bits in a byte.
15MB/sec x8bits = 120Mbps which is very good for a 2 spatial stream connection at 20MHz width channels with a modulation rate of 173Mpbs.

When change to 40MHz wide channels you can get 400Mbps modulation which result in 200Mbps download speed, which is 25MB/sec in Bytes.

When you want more and more, note that wider channels must be supported on both client and accesspoint, 160MHZ is not very common because a lot of clients don't support (not sure about the AX201, the AP-504 can do max 80MHz) but also because you need a really really clear spectrum and no neighbours or other access points around you. At home you can use 80MHZ channels when you have "friendly neighbours". At office i recommend to stat at max 40MHz because you have here a lot of access points that can interference with eachother.

Another important question is why you need high speed, because you wanted it to see or because the application require this? Big filetransfers could better be done on a wired connection. "If you CAN wired it, WIRE it!" is key here.

Hope you better understand it now, if you have question please let us known! It's a pleasure to help you with the basics.

------------------------------
Marcel Koedijk | MVP Expert 2022 | ACEP | ACMP | ACCP | ACDP | Ekahau ECSE | Not an HPE Employee | Opinions are my own

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 04:31 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

first thanks for all the feedback.

i think i'll break it more down to my test-enviroment than the overall situation.

let me describe you my test-setup:

Notebook:
HP EliteBook 830G8 with Intel® AX201 Wi-Fi 6 (2x2)
Runs with W10, all Updates and drivers up to date (using the HP support assistant)

AccessPoint:
Aruba IAP-504 wiht Aruba AP-ANT-1b (Firmware: 8.8.0.1_80393)
The AP is about 4 meters away from the notebook.
There are other SSIDs configured on the AP but no other clients connected.
The AP is connected to an aruba 2530-48G-PoE+ and the uplink-port is running with 1GB FDx.

Enviroment:
AP/SSID uses the following stats
2,4GHz Channel 6, transmit power 9 dBm
5 GHz channel 56, transmit power 18 dBm
Antenna gain 3dBi and 5dBi (as documentation describes) in co-polarization
transmission rates 2,4GHz 1/54, 5GHz 6/54 (min/max values)
high throughput and very high throughput are activated
RF setting has the ARM option "80MHz support" deactivated
SSID is limited to only 5GHz and all 5GHz radios are allowed

in the IDS the AP has no other 5GHz SSID/AP in range, just 3 intefering 2,4GHz SSID/AP with a signal strengh around 6 (neighbour other side of the street)

Test run:
with this setup i did try to copy a large ISO (5GB) and the notebook didn't get over 15MBs.


Conclusion:
i'm no pro in WiFi but this realy seems strange to me.
in such a "clean" enviroment i would expect a much better result.

i did read the explanation page about the mcs-index and i'm a bit more informed but still don't fully understand it, sorry :)
with the new info i checked the properties of the WiFi on the notebook and the receiving/sending speed is 173/173 Mbps.
so my filecopy is utilizing the bandwith that was negotiated.

if i understand the mcs-index correct, my conclusion is that AP and Clients are using 2 Spatial Steams, 20MHz, with SNR over 30 and therefore getting a 173Mbps connection.
question is, why doesn't it get higher? i mean all hardware used can support better connection.
is it possible that i made a configuration limiting the radios to 20MHz?


------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 03:20 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Are you talking Mbps or MB/s? First is megabit per second, and 15 Mbps is poor performance; the AP and link speed you see in the client are typically in Mbps; second is megabytes per second, which is 8 times as much, and 15 MBps is acceptable performance in many cases and is the equivalent of 120Mbps which is not exceptionally bad with a link speed of 287 Mbps. You will see roughly half of your link speed as actual throughput for a file transfer under normal conditions.

For a modern client, with multiple streams, to an 11ac/11ax AP, a link speed of 287 Mbps is quite low. With an SNR of 40 (from the screenshot), you should see more, unless you have an issue with your client. Do you see the same with all clients? The 100% utilization worries me a bit, unless that is the period where your are connected at 287 Mbps and pushing 15 MBps through the system.

If you have an AP-504, what antennas are connected to it? Do you have all antenna connectors connected? Have you checked the connectors are properly attached?

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

thanks for the advice Herman,

i use wide channels in the office building now and and the 20MHz channels in the warehouse.

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 25, 2022 04:42 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Please be advised that static channel/power assignment is not recommended (with a very few exceptions like in extremely high density stadium deployments) and mixing channel width in the same deployment should be avoided as some clients will attempt to stick to the wider channels whenever they can, thus breaking your roaming and client-distribution over the APs.

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 10:18 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

thanks for the excellent explanation Herman, i feel somewhat stupid right now.

i'm a fan of controlling all channels so i made a plan and configured everwhere the standard 20MHz channels.
i now understand my bad configuration and made first changes and it was much better right away.

i'll test a bit with the 80MHz for some APs where i may need more bandwith, but with the 40MHz it's all fine now.

also thanks to all the others for their continued feedback and help!

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 09:23 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You can do that either with static channel assignment or through ARM.

ARM: Go to Configuration -> RF -> Advanced Settings. Then check that under the Valid 5GHz channels, the values with + are present. Just number (36) = 20MHz; 36+ = 40MHz; 36E = 80 MHz; 36S= 160MHz. 80 and 160 are not recommended in busy places with multiple APs. Also make sure that Wide Channel bands has the 5GHz ticked: and 80MHz is unticked unless you want 80MHz channels:



If you select an administrator assigned channel, you can really enforce it:
In most cases ARM assigned is preferred as it will take the best channel from the available ones.

------------------------------
Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2022 02:14 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

ok, over the weekend i downgraded the firmware to 8.6.0.15 and on my test-notebook i installed the actual driver from the intel-website.
all stayed the same.

so i would guess that my math with the mcs-index is somewhat correct and my problem is the limitation to 20MHz.

can someone explain how i force the 40MHz to be used?
i thought it was with the HT and VHT switches.
for 80MHz there is a switch under the RF settings, but can't find a dedicated switch for 40MHz.

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 05:30 AM
From: marcel koedijk
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Wilfired,

Some basic notes:

• Yes try to change 20MHZ channels to 40MHz channel so you can support higher modulation.
• Don't use the wifi drivers in de HP support assistant, the are not up-to-date enough. Download them here by intel, link.
• You use ArubaOS 8.8.0.1 which isn't the conservative version, try ArubaOS 8.6.0.15 which is the latest conservative release.

You read the MCS index correctly, nice job!

You say you use 5GHz on 20MHz width channels, try 40Mhz width channels to get a higher modulation rate.

Again note that real throughput is always aprox. around 50% of the wifi modulation rate due overhead and (normal) retry frames.

Hope its clear to you that MB/sec (Megabyte) is not the same as Mbps (Megabit). There are 8 bits in a byte.
15MB/sec x8bits = 120Mbps which is very good for a 2 spatial stream connection at 20MHz width channels with a modulation rate of 173Mpbs.

When change to 40MHz wide channels you can get 400Mbps modulation which result in 200Mbps download speed, which is 25MB/sec in Bytes.

When you want more and more, note that wider channels must be supported on both client and accesspoint, 160MHZ is not very common because a lot of clients don't support (not sure about the AX201, the AP-504 can do max 80MHz) but also because you need a really really clear spectrum and no neighbours or other access points around you. At home you can use 80MHZ channels when you have "friendly neighbours". At office i recommend to stat at max 40MHz because you have here a lot of access points that can interference with eachother.

Another important question is why you need high speed, because you wanted it to see or because the application require this? Big filetransfers could better be done on a wired connection. "If you CAN wired it, WIRE it!" is key here.

Hope you better understand it now, if you have question please let us known! It's a pleasure to help you with the basics.

------------------------------
Marcel Koedijk | MVP Expert 2022 | ACEP | ACMP | ACCP | ACDP | Ekahau ECSE | Not an HPE Employee | Opinions are my own

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 04:31 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

first thanks for all the feedback.

i think i'll break it more down to my test-enviroment than the overall situation.

let me describe you my test-setup:

Notebook:
HP EliteBook 830G8 with Intel® AX201 Wi-Fi 6 (2x2)
Runs with W10, all Updates and drivers up to date (using the HP support assistant)

AccessPoint:
Aruba IAP-504 wiht Aruba AP-ANT-1b (Firmware: 8.8.0.1_80393)
The AP is about 4 meters away from the notebook.
There are other SSIDs configured on the AP but no other clients connected.
The AP is connected to an aruba 2530-48G-PoE+ and the uplink-port is running with 1GB FDx.

Enviroment:
AP/SSID uses the following stats
2,4GHz Channel 6, transmit power 9 dBm
5 GHz channel 56, transmit power 18 dBm
Antenna gain 3dBi and 5dBi (as documentation describes) in co-polarization
transmission rates 2,4GHz 1/54, 5GHz 6/54 (min/max values)
high throughput and very high throughput are activated
RF setting has the ARM option "80MHz support" deactivated
SSID is limited to only 5GHz and all 5GHz radios are allowed

in the IDS the AP has no other 5GHz SSID/AP in range, just 3 intefering 2,4GHz SSID/AP with a signal strengh around 6 (neighbour other side of the street)

Test run:
with this setup i did try to copy a large ISO (5GB) and the notebook didn't get over 15MBs.


Conclusion:
i'm no pro in WiFi but this realy seems strange to me.
in such a "clean" enviroment i would expect a much better result.

i did read the explanation page about the mcs-index and i'm a bit more informed but still don't fully understand it, sorry :)
with the new info i checked the properties of the WiFi on the notebook and the receiving/sending speed is 173/173 Mbps.
so my filecopy is utilizing the bandwith that was negotiated.

if i understand the mcs-index correct, my conclusion is that AP and Clients are using 2 Spatial Steams, 20MHz, with SNR over 30 and therefore getting a 173Mbps connection.
question is, why doesn't it get higher? i mean all hardware used can support better connection.
is it possible that i made a configuration limiting the radios to 20MHz?


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Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 21, 2022 03:20 AM
From: Herman Robers
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Are you talking Mbps or MB/s? First is megabit per second, and 15 Mbps is poor performance; the AP and link speed you see in the client are typically in Mbps; second is megabytes per second, which is 8 times as much, and 15 MBps is acceptable performance in many cases and is the equivalent of 120Mbps which is not exceptionally bad with a link speed of 287 Mbps. You will see roughly half of your link speed as actual throughput for a file transfer under normal conditions.

For a modern client, with multiple streams, to an 11ac/11ax AP, a link speed of 287 Mbps is quite low. With an SNR of 40 (from the screenshot), you should see more, unless you have an issue with your client. Do you see the same with all clients? The 100% utilization worries me a bit, unless that is the period where your are connected at 287 Mbps and pushing 15 MBps through the system.

If you have an AP-504, what antennas are connected to it? Do you have all antenna connectors connected? Have you checked the connectors are properly attached?

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Herman Robers
------------------------
If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 11:21 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

i did set the min. data rates up but didn't change, i now changed the WLAN-Network (WLAN-BUERO) to only 5GHz also withouth much impact.
i added a screenshot of the utilization when i start filecopy.

also strange is that the notebook only gets transfer rates of about 15MBs the WLAN information says it has a transfer rate of 287 MBs

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:40 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

You might also have to take a look at what the minimum data rates you have set. Looks like you might have some 802.11G clients that may be associated, effecting your performance. The WLAN will have to dumb down to the lower rates.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 10:30 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi Dustin,

thanks for your input.

i did try and turn off the High Efficiency feature and reduced all radio power to 9/15 (i had 9/18 before).
the channles are all static and planned to not overlap. on my workplace where i test i have only 1 AP in range (seperate building standing far off the rest)
so the test-enviroment should be "clean". about "rouge APs" i know only of some 2,4GHz APs that show up from the other side of the street, i would say they don't disrupt anything as most of our devices use 5 GHz (we are on the end of an industrial area, so not much neighbors)

with the changes made the notebook i just test with has got worse performence, went down from around 15 MBs to around 10 MBs during filecopy.
i've added another screenshot of the AP monitoring the notebook after it startet the filecopy.

any more ideas, or could i provide other info from the AP config that would help?

about the link to the mcsindex, that is a bit to much wifi for me.

edit: one thing just got my attention....when i start the filecopy, the radio of the AP that is transmitting the data goes up to a utalization of nearly 100%. i would say that the radio of the AP can't process more data but that would be silly, as the AP should be able to process much more bandwith.

regards
Wilfried

------------------------------
Wilfried Rolfes

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 09:33 AM
From: Dustin Burns
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

I would try turning off High Efficiency to start and see if that helps with your issues. I would also take a look at your channel overlap if your able to perform any type of site survey. If you have a lot of co-channel interference (overlapping channels of the same number) they this can also have a negative effect on your throughput. Decreasing radio power to recommended levels (around 9 for 2.4ghz and 15 for 5ghz) might help reduce this if your power levels are currently set much higher. You may need to walk the areas afterward to make sure that didn't create and coverage holes.

Each client will have different capabilities, and depending on how many antennas they have it will also effect how many spatial streams they use. For example a Phone or Tablet may only have 1x1:1 or 2x2:2 (transmit antenna x receive antenna : Spatial streams) but a laptop may have 3 or more. You can then look at the following chart to see where the device lands with the spatial streams, channel width, and SNR.: https://mcsindex.com/

------------------------------
Dustin Burns
Lead Mobility Engineer
Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 20, 2022 06:32 AM
From: Wilfried Rolfes
Subject: IAP-504 Performance Problems

Hi,

i'm looking for some help troubleshooting performance problems i have with new IAP-505 APs.
We have 12 IAP-505 on our site, all connected to aruba 2530/2540 switches with 1GB.

i manage all IAPs over the virtual controller. we have 6 different wireless-networks configured.
the networks have, besides the SSID, the following differences:

 - static VLAN for the network traffic
 - use of 2,4 GHZ, 5 GHz, or both
 - activated bandwith features (High throughput, very High throughput, high efficiency)

my problem is that the clients don't seem to use the max possible bandwith.

first example, in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have a signal above 25 with an AC connection but are negotianting to a speed of 65 Mbps.
in this example even the AP marks the speed as red, so it only uses under 25% of the max possible bandwith.

second example, again in the Office-WLAN i have notebooks that have signal above 25 and negotiate a speed of over 200 Mbps.
if i copy a file from the fileserver the copy-speed never gets better than around 15 MB/s.

the notebooks i tested with are macbook-pro and different HP pro-book or elitebook (the one i'm currently testing is 1 week old).

we installed the new system last year (2021) and it's slower than the old motorolla-enviroment we had before, wich was 7 years old then.
on other sites of our company we run older IAPs (204 and 304) wich don't have the said problems, but also run a much older firmware.

i would guess i made some configuration errors but can't see them.
any advice or idea to solve the problem would be welcome.

thanks
Wilfried




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Wilfried Rolfes
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