I had posted about this before, when I first started playing with the 951 back in September or so and at the time, I was using the 'default' config. I thought I had it working, but really didn't use it much.

I was just about to package up five of the six 951's that I have set up for home users, and was in the final testing and found that the wireless is still not working right. Up until this testing, I had been using only wired which near as I can tell has been solid. I took the first unit that I had gotten all configured, generated a RSC file of the config, which I then copied and modified the copies for each of the individual RouterBoards with their unique settings - LAN IP Address, SSID, SSID Key, System Name, etc, and then copied the contents of each file and pasted them into a terminal session on their respective RouterBoards.

The only thing I can see that MIGHT be off is that the 'supplicant-identity' is 'MikroTik', where the SSID is 'MikroTik{4-digit number}', but near as I can tell, the 'supplicant-identity' is for RADIUS EAP auth, and shouldn't have any bearing on wireless functionality with basic WPA & WPA2 PSKs.

The problem I'm seeing is sometimes the SSID doesn't show up at all, on any of my PCs, or on my Android with Wifi Analyzer. Sometimes it'll show up, but refuses to let me connect. Sometimes I can connect and it works. When I can connect, if I set up continuous ping to the Routerboards LAN IP, the response time fluctuates all over the place - anywhere from ~60ms to over 2000ms. Then it often drops the connection. If I try to reconnect using the saved settings that just worked, it fails. I tell Windows 'Forget Network', then re-enter the exact same credentials, and sometime it'll work.

If connect to my wireless and set up a continuous ping to my firewall, I get consistent response times of </=16ms (mostly <1ms, but occasional spikes up to ~16ms) - That's through an autonomous AP, through a switch (in one module, through its backplane and out another module) and out to my firewall - so there's no reason a wireless connection direct to the 951 should have response times from the router itself consistently >60ms, and frequently up in the 100's to 1000's.

Oddly, maybe related, maybe not, I've noticed that over Ethernet, the response times are a bit erratic as well (but not nearly as bad as over wireless) - Over Ethernet, with a direct connection and no I/O load, response times should never pick up over '<1ms', but I'm seeing response times of up to at least 31ms. Pinging my firewall over a gig wired connection stays a solid </=1ms.

Addition: After I typed all of that, I remembered reading something about fixes/improvements to wireless-n stability issues in a later release and checked to find that there were improvements in 6.8. I changed the wireless to '2Ghz-B/G' and knock on wood, it seems to be more stable. Since 6.8 is not available, and 6.9 horribly broke my VPNs, I'm going to leave it at B/G.

Does anyone have any other thoughts, or is the 'improved 11n and nv2 stability' listed in the 6.8 'What's new' likely the cause of the issues?

Edit: Each time I think I have them stabilized, They get lost in the weeds again. First, as I said above, I changed the mode to B/G, and that seemed to help... then reboot the router and it got all flaky again. Had similar results on all five. I then searched out DFS and disabled that.... That seemed to have helped as well, and seemed to reduce the response time and make it more consistent. But there is no consistency that I've been able to find. Even with DFS disabled and the radio mode set to B/G, one boot it seems to work fine, and the next it's lost in the weeds.

Can ANYONE help me get these stabilized, or should I give up on MikroTik's wireless altogether and send these out with the wireless disabled?

Well, in doing MORE reading and searching, there are people seeing the same exact issues I'm seeing going back at least two years - I spent some time reading several pages about the same issues on the RB751's, which uses a similar wireless card. It would seem that while the devices perform quite well and are quite stable using Ethernet, the wireless is hit or miss at best.

Unless someone has something SOLID that can be done to fix the issue pretty quick, I'm going to send them out with the wireless disabled.