As the wireless world moves to multi-gigabit wireless infrastructure, clients expect fast Wi-Fi but there are not much discussions about the bottleneck of wired backhauls for CAP or wireless backhaul for Remote Mesh AP where clients connect “gig” to wireless but the throughputs are slow in “meg” because invisible backhauls’ problems.
I have supported many remote sites where I have no control of the local contractor for cabling. There are multiple incidents because cables were not pulled or terminated correctly. For instance, at one site a plumber/low-voltage contractor ran and terminated network cables, APs are online, cables were running way over 300 feet to AP, terrible experience for users (BTW my avatar was “inspired” by this.)
After this incident, I used the Remote Mesh solution for most of my remote locations. Check my post on how to setup and monitor Mesh wireless backhaul with PRTG:
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2262583-how-to-monitor-aruba-wireless-mesh-back-haul-with-prtg?from_forum=6684
and my Remote Mesh configuration:
https://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Wireless-Access/Remote-Mesh-Points-Take-Long-Time-Connect-to-Cluster/td-p/656671
For CAP backhaul, since AOS8 the new command perf-test has been introduced. Instead of running iperf server from local controller I install and run iperf2 server on a physical Ubuntu. The benefits: accurate results, instant feedback (no need to run the command “show perf-test reports” to get the test results).
Ubuntu install iperf and test results from CAP
Install Ubuntu iperf and test result from three CAPs. Note the results are different from AP-105 (300 Mbits/sec) to AP-335 (600 Mbits/sec)
iperf at clientCommand to execute at client to test AP backhaul speed.
Fibers "terminate" by local TelcoI found this picture on the Internet where local Telco handles communication in the building including “terminate” fibers
Notes: I did not mask out IP addresses in this post because they are from my lab, NOT in production. Questions or comments are welcome.