Wireless Access

OK - have installed a RAP5-WN at our remote office - when clients connect throught the RAP, i loose around 3 to 4 MB off the internet speed. Out of interest, I set up a seperate WLAN at the office using the supplied Draytek router - i then connected clients through this WLAN using VIA - boom, the lost 3 - 4MB came back. So using VIA i get the true speed of the internet connection - using RAPs i loose a fair chunk. RAPs are set to split-tunnel so that shouldnt be the problem. I also tried a RAP2 at the same office to rule out the RAP5 as the problem, RAP2 did the same. Any one else had this problem or anyone have any ideas???

 

James

 

Are you doing broadcast-multicast optimization on the VLANs on the wired and wireless LANs?

 

Not that i'm aware of. The wired LAN is a single subnet class c network, so small broadcast domain. Pretty much a single VLAN too. Nothing clever going on, just a very basic set up.

You should look into enabling broadcast-multicast optimizations on the VLANs on that RAP and checking again.

 

What version of ArubaOS?

 

Thanks for the reply again.....where would one configure such a thing?

Oh - we are running ArubaOS 6.1.3.1

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@jgriffiths wrote:

OK - have installed a RAP5-WN at our remote office - when clients connect throught the RAP, i loose around 3 to 4 MB off the internet speed. Out of interest, I set up a seperate WLAN at the office using the supplied Draytek router - i then connected clients through this WLAN using VIA - boom, the lost 3 - 4MB came back. So using VIA i get the true speed of the internet connection - using RAPs i loose a fair chunk. RAPs are set to split-tunnel so that shouldnt be the problem. I also tried a RAP2 at the same office to rule out the RAP5 as the problem, RAP2 did the same. Any one else had this problem or anyone have any ideas???

 

James

 

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Configuration> Network> IP.  Edit the wired or wireless VLAN that your RAP users are placed on.  Enable BCMC Optimization.

 

That will prevent broadcasts from propagating.

 

Top man - thank you good sir. I've turned it on, i will test a RAP2 later at home and let you know how I get on.

Just had some feedback from users at our remote office that the RAP is still slower than connecting with VIA. Any other suggestions? :(

Please open a support case to get to the bottom of this.

 

 

OK - thanks - it is a bit of a weird one!

Just wondering if you found a solution to this. I'm attempting to do the same thing and when connected the users complain of extemely slow connections while wired at the site. As soon as the RAP is taken down things improve.

I'm afraid not - i havent had time to open a TAC case yet, but will certainly post a reply here if I ever mange to get round to sorting it out! ;)

Are you comparing the performance of users behind a wired RAP to their VIA performance?

Yes, but it is (in my case anyway) a significant difference. Not slightly slower, painfully slower! :(

Are VIA clients and RAP wired clients placed into the same VLAN?  A VIA client might have less contention because the client goes into a VPN POOL  as opposed to a shared VLAN.

 

What is the bandwidth between the remote site and the headend site, both up and down?

 

Flat network so no VLANs to worry about. Remote office connection is standard ADSL - around 8MB down and 1MB up. The router providing this ADSL also has its own wireless network, if a user connects to this wireless network and tunnels back with VIA all is good. If they join the wireless network provided by the RAP all is woefully slow. VIA recognizes the RAP wireless network as trusted so does nothing as expected - so i have ruled out an issue with this. The RAP is directly wired into the ADSL router and is running up to date code (i had a previous TAC case on this RAP to upgrade it to latest code from 3.x). You previously advised me to open a TAC case for this, just havent had time as yet (remote office users are happy to get by with VIA for the time being)

 

j

If you get a chance to open a case, please let us know.

 

Certainly will - thanks.

Hello James

I got a few questions here

Have you checked VIA is not set doign split tunneling?

 

What i can think of is this;

 

You got set the VIA with split tunnel

You got set the rap doing tunneling mode

 

That would explain your issue.

 

Why?

 

Well if you got your via with split tunneling and you using internet testers to see the BW speed then  of course it will work great on the remote site as you using your own internet

 

Now let see the case of the rap which is not using split tunneling and its using tunnel mode

 

Here you download will depend on your upload speed of your company internet, if you got a crappy upload in your headquarters then this would explain the issue.

 

Check if you dont have your VIA set with split tunneling and the other set on tunnel mode

 

Im testing mine and its wokring fine on version 6.1.2.8... and also tested witha  version 6.1.3.5.

 

Cheers

Carlos

If you didnt configure it yourself just go to a whatsmy ip  page with google and yhou wlll see from which internet you going out.

 

If you configured yourself and well both are on tunnel mode well then thats WEIRD!  i cannot think right now of other thing happening...

I will certainly check this out, but i am almost positive that both VIA and RAP split tunnel. I'm pretty sure I sanity checked all of that as part of my troubleshooting. Thanks

James

So Jgriffiths,

There are many factors that come into play in this situation. That is why you need to open a case to determine your issue. A client VPN connection is a point to point link that is not a shared medium like users on a rap. There can be a considerable amount of overhead introduced depending on what traffic is passed on a rap and much of that has to do with the fact that you have a flat vlan that all your users share. Broadcast and multicast of all users have to traverse that particular vlan and extending that behavior to a remote site can cause delays for those remote users.

 

There are also issues like application performance, MTU, serialization delay, upstream vs. downstream that have to be looked at and optimized.  A packet capture would normally be the definitive way to figure out what could be causing a slowdown.

Your setup needs to be analyzed to determine the issue (s) behind your slowdown, so please take some time to get a case open.

It doesnt hurt recheck that.... Check if they are on Split tunneling mode and also if you got the rule for it of the source nat.... otherwise all the traffic will keep going to the central...(well never actually tried putting Split tunneling and without the rule but does not hurt to check) Try checking the basics before going in something more in deep though But if you got time open a support case also listen to Collin he knows a lot :)

Thanks for all your advice gentlemen - I will endevour to open a TAC case this week

 

j

So they were both on spli tunneling? :)

have you tried putting it in tunnel mode just to see if it keep happning? if you putting it on tunnel mode check how much is the upstream speed of your corporate....

 

Yup, both on split tunnelling and another crazy week at work so still not TAC case...... :(