Controllerless Networks

I have been running a single IAP-205 connected directly to a PoE port on my router for 6 different wireless SSIDs for about 2-3 years.  No issues, literally, the best wireless network I've ever had.

However, I recently moved and my new home is better insulated and longer in shape and now I don't get the coverage I used to out of a single AP.  So I recently added 2 new IAP-205s to my network connected to an 8-port Netgear PoE switch (4 ports PoE).  I have also added about 35 smart switches to my network on a routed VLAN subnet with a separate SSID from my main VLAN.  I didn't have that many devices connected previously but I did have the SSID set up and a few devices connected perfectly.  Everything seems to work fine but I get horrible performance periodically and on a network with gigabit fiber internet, I'm getting less than 1Mbps speeds over wireless.  

How do I go about troubleshooting this issue?  I'm getting significant amounts of retries on my laptop which makes it basically unusable...

Thanks in advance,

Tim

Do you still have 6 SSIDs?  (I hope not, because that would reduce performance considerably)

What is your channel width on the 5ghz band?  (20 40 or 80)?

Do you have Broadcast Filtering on all of your SSIDs?

I have 5 SSIDs...  1 main SSID, 1 Guest SSID, 2 SSIDs for my kids (I could consolidate these) and then my hidden smarthome SSID (2.4ghz)

Yes, I have broadcast filtering (ARP) enabled on all SSIDs.

I'm not sure where to check the channel width on the 5ghz band...

If your channel has a + or -, you are running 40mhz channels.  If it has an E next to it, you are running 80mhz channels.

By default it runs 80mhz channels, bit you would need to add more channels, otherwise you would only have 2 channels for 4 access points ..

Looks like I have wide channel bands enabled for 5ghz but not 2.4ghz.  80mhz support is enabled.  Do I need to disable it?

Leave Wide bands on 5ghz only.  Enabling wide bands on 2.4ghz will hurt performance because not enough channels are available and contention will degrade performance.

Set Airtime Fairness to default.  Making Airtime fairness "fair access" will theoretically increase performance of groups of clients, but at the expense of faster clients.

Enable Customize Valid Channels and enable all of the channels with an "E".  That will give you more 80mhz channels and prevent contention.

You should also reduce or eliminate the number of SSIDs because that degrades performance.  Consider any SSIDs that are not used much and eliminate them.

You can do a back of the napkin performance test before and after your changes by pinging the default gateway from a Windows or Mac device and seeing the response times.

Good Luck.

Thanks for your reply...

I made the changes you requested and then dropped my SSIDs from 5 to 3.  I'm not noticing any really improvements.  My ping times to the default gateway are all over the map... anywhere from 3ms to 3300ms to dropped pings altogether.  

I have a lot of smart light switches and devices on one of the SSIDs.  I've heard they can be rather chatty and wasn't sure if that was exacerbating the problem or not.  I also have 2 of the APs mounted on the wall vertically rather than horizontally.  Not sure if that's part of the problem either...

I'm open to doing whatever needs to be done to fix all of this but I really had hoped that adding 2 extra APs would help my experience, not completely destroy it.  I'm even considering changing the PoE switch to see if that's part of the problem...

Do you have an SSID that you can make a 5ghz (802.11ac) only SSID, so that you can rule out issues with the 2.4ghz (bgn) band?

Removed 2.4ghz from the primary SSID and things seem to be better.  Pings still seem to be all over but it's performing better with overall less retries.

Having a 5ghz only SSID rules out 2.4ghz issues.  You are now free to see if you have other problems....

Unless there is nothing on the channel you are on, pings will go up and down, due to the shared nature of 5ghz wifi.

cjoseph,

Just an FYI, I think I found a large source of my issues.  I have ATT internet and had the wifi disabled at my old house.  When they came to reinstall after moving, they must have reset the modem and turned wifi back on.  I disabled the wifi on the built in modem/router and things seem to be operating significantly better.