Controllerless Networks

Hi All, 

I hope I'm posting in the right place, and that you'll be kind to a newbie!

Current Situation - I'm working with 'hand-me-downs' and lucky ebay finds to get WiFi working for what may become a 'maker space'

So far I have:
2x Aruba 650's (One with lic-16-ap installed one with only poe)
6x Aruba Instant IAP-205-RW's
2x Aruba AP-205's
2x Aruba AP-105's

I've been able to stand up test networks first with four IAP-205's (Instant mode) and also with one 650 and the two AP-205's

My question is: What throughput should I expect? - I seem to be maxing out iperf at 230Mbs to an Dell 9560 with Killer 1535 (HT80 AC 2x2) or Samsung S8 (also HT80 AC 2x2)

I see devices showing as negotiating 866 Mbs link rate, but 200Mbs seems... underwhelming? - In contrast, we tried a Linksys 3200 ACM, and were able to acheive iperf tests over 350Mbs.

Our use case calls for reliability over speed, so I'm okay if the answer is "230 Mbs is the max you will get", especially given the increased flexibility of a controller based solution. I'd just like to sanity check the results I'm seeing, and figure out if there's something I'm missing (I'm reading the 6.4 users guide, but as I'm new to this, it's taking a while!)

If there's any configurations that would be helpful for me to share, please just ask, there's nothing 'production' that I can't share.

Thanks all!
Nathan

There are many factors that can affec the atual throughput. What is the client capability, e.g. 1x1, 2x2? Also, what is the channel width configured for teh AP?

Following table can help you "predict" the throughput:

https://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au/en/support/articles/000005725/network-and-io/wireless-networking.html

Hi Jibran, 

This is I think what's confusing me - Channel width is set to 80Mhz, and both test clients are 2x2 capable.

So from the table you linked, I'd expect (and see the link rate reported byt the controller and clients) as 866Mbs, SNR, Noise Floor all seem to be 'in the green' but actual observed throughput is down at 230Mbs? - It also seems too consistent to be interfearance or enviroment if that makes sense. Speed will fluctuate with distance from AP, but then 'levels out' at a max of 230 once I get within 2m of the AP-205

Did you test with only 1 AP enabled, and a single SSID enabled? If you have multiple APs and/or multiple SSIDs the available 'airtime' is reduced compared to a 'residential wireless router', which results in lower possible throughput.

Do you have jumbo frames enabled on your switches, controller and all links in the path between the AP and controller? If you haven't, you may experience packet fragmentation on the tunnel between AP and controller.

Do you have broadcast filtering enabled on the controller / Instant AP? By filtering broadcast traffic you save airtime for useful traffic.

The 650 controller is end-of-life for some time, but I'd expect that under good conditions you should be able to get more than 230 Mpbs, and if the negotiated speed is 866Mbps, roughly half of that should be achievable in a low interference environment.

Do you see the same throughput number with the controller APs and Instant APs?

If you have multiple APs, in general you can't effectively use 80 MHz channels as there is limited frequency space available to get unique channels per AP, which results in multiple APs on the same channel interfering with eachother.

Hi Herman,

Firstly thank you for taking the time to write such a comprehensive reply! There's a good few things there that I can now investigate, and check on.

I admit I hadn't tried this with only the single AP and Single SSID - That will be a good starting point, and I can rewind to that and start from 'basics'.

"Dynamic Multicast Optimization" is off, "Drop Broadcast and Multicast" is disabled and "Convert Broadcast ARP requests to unicast" is the default of enabled.

I'll check the Jumbo frame setting on the controller, for my testing I had the AP running from Port 1 of the controller directly however Jumbo Frames wasn't enabled on the switch between the controller and the wired host. I'll rectify that and re-test.

Thank you too for the estimate of ~400MBs, it gives me something to aim for, and see what I can achieve.

Kind Regards,
Nathan