Controller Based WLANs

Environment : This article applies to Aruba OS 6.3 and above.

Perf-test has been done with CPSEC enabled on the controller which is acting a server & AP as client.

When perf-test was run with CPSEC enabled it resulted in low throughput as shown below:

(Aruba) #show perf-test reports ap ap-name AP

Perf-test: Success

Sep 25 00:17:03 2014
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 100.0.0.1, TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  248 KByte (WARNING: requested  512 KByte)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.121.227 port 60885 connected with 100.0.0.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0- 1.0 sec  2.38 MBytes  19.9 Mbits/sec
[  3]  1.0- 2.0 sec  2.12 MBytes  17.8 Mbits/sec
[  3]  2.0- 3.0 sec  2.25 MBytes  18.9 Mbits/sec
[  3]  3.0- 4.0 sec  2.25 MBytes  18.9 Mbits/sec
[  3]  4.0- 5.0 sec  2.25 MBytes  18.9 Mbits/sec
[  3]  5.0- 6.0 sec  2.12 MBytes  17.8 Mbits/sec
[  3]  6.0- 7.0 sec  2.25 MBytes  18.9 Mbits/sec
[  3]  7.0- 8.0 sec  2.25 MBytes  18.9 Mbits/sec
[  3]  8.0- 9.0 sec  2.12 MBytes  17.8 Mbits/sec
[  3]  9.0-10.0 sec  2.25 MBytes  18.9 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  22.4 MBytes  18.8 Mbits/sec

Below is the perf-test results with CPSEC disabled.

(Aruba) #show perf-test reports ap ap-name AP

Perf-test: Success

Sep 24 14:09:01 2014
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 100.0.0.1, TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  248 KByte (WARNING: requested  512 KByte)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.121.227 port 62492 connected with 100.0.0.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0- 1.0 sec  11.1 MBytes  93.3 Mbits/sec
[  3]  1.0- 2.0 sec  11.2 MBytes  94.4 Mbits/sec
[  3]  2.0- 3.0 sec  11.1 MBytes  93.3 Mbits/sec
[  3]  3.0- 4.0 sec  11.1 MBytes  93.3 Mbits/sec
[  3]  4.0- 5.0 sec  11.1 MBytes  93.3 Mbits/sec
[  3]  5.0- 6.0 sec  11.1 MBytes  93.3 Mbits/sec
[  3]  6.0- 7.0 sec  11.2 MBytes  94.4 Mbits/sec
[  3]  7.0- 8.0 sec  11.1 MBytes  93.3 Mbits/sec
[  3]  8.0- 9.0 sec  11.1 MBytes  93.3 Mbits/sec
[  3]  9.0-10.0 sec  11.1 MBytes  93.3 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec   112 MBytes  93.6 Mbits/sec

The perf-test function is intended to test the transfer bandwidth. If cpsec is enabled, the test data will be sent through the IPSEC tunnel.
The encryption and decryption is done by CPU which results in low-throughput and thats the expected behaviour.
So, its recommended to run the perf-test with CPSEC disabled.