Hello

For several days I have an UPC 500 Mbit optical fiber connection.
On the ConnectBox router from UPC to WiFi 5GHz I have a nice speed of 450-500 Mbit / s, and after Audience only 200-250 Mbit / s.
I'm using MacBook Pro 2019.
What could be the reason? Do I have to configure something in MikroTik with default settings?

Please help.

You never have optimal speed with default settings. Default setting is "some" configuration for a hypothetical environment, and for "some" concept of interconnection.

How is the Audience connected to the Connectmox? Wired or wireless? Audience has 2 separate 5 GHz radio's, which one are you using?

Don't rely on the "auto" settings of wifi, but be specific in what you choose, after checking freq usage in your environment.

You never have optimal speed with default settings. Default setting is "some" configuration for a hypothetical environment, and for "some" concept of interconnection.

How is the Audience connected to the Connectmox? Wired or wireless? Audience has 2 separate 5 GHz radio's, which one are you using?

Don't rely on the "auto" settings of wifi, but be specific in what you choose, after checking freq usage in your environment.

I set ConnectBox in modem mode and Audience is wired connection to CB.
I don't know which 5GHz radio I'm using...
I connect 5Ghz WiFi to Audience.

If you are just using default setting, you are most probably using 5G1, and it's managed by CAPsMAN, 5G1 is slower + CAPsMAN is slower, result in much slower is reasonable. Set the wlan3 to AP bridge, set basic rate to 12mbps and 24mbps, supported rate from 12bmps to 54mbps and connect to it, you will get a better result.

If you are just using default setting, you are most probably using 5G1, and it's managed by CAPsMAN, 5G1 is slower + CAPsMAN is slower, result in much slower is reasonable. Set the wlan3 to AP bridge, set basic rate to 12mbps and 24mbps, supported rate from 12bmps to 54mbps and connect to it, you will get a better result.

Ok but I need do mesh WiFi later so I must use capsman... two Audience later...

If you are just using default setting, you are most probably using 5G1, and it's managed by CAPsMAN, 5G1 is slower + CAPsMAN is slower, result in much slower is reasonable. Set the wlan3 to AP bridge, set basic rate to 12mbps and 24mbps, supported rate from 12bmps to 54mbps and connect to it, you will get a better result.

Why would CAPsMAN produce slower speeds?

CAPsMAN lags just a few configuration possibilities, but it works great (at least, that is my experience).

I really want to like MikroTik WiFi, but I'm regularly disappointed.

I realize I can't compare a $200 MikroTik to a $600 Ruckus, but why does
Mikrotik Advertise unrealistic specifications.

The Audience 5Ghz QCA9984 Radio is rated at 1733Mbs (I don't think half of that can be attained in a vacuum).

The best I can get out of it is ~540Mbs (running RouterOS version 6.46.6).
I think the cAP AC offers the best bang for the buck. I can get over 300Mbs on a $70 device
that can also work under CAPsMAN.

I really wish Mikrotik would produce some better WiFi gear for indoor APs.

I really want to like MikroTik WiFi, but I'm regularly disappointed.

I realize I can't compare a $200 MikroTik to a $600 Ruckus, but why does
Mikrotik Advertise unrealistic specifications.

The Audience 5Ghz QCA9984 Radio is rated at 1733Mbs (I don't think half of that can be attained in a vacuum).

The best I can get out of it is ~540Mbs (running RouterOS version 6.46.6).

Code: Select all

R name="wlan3" mtu=1500 l2mtu=1600 mac-address=C4:AD:34:B7:41:16 arp=enabled interface-type=QCA9984 mode=ap-bridge ssid="testTik" 
      frequency=auto band=5ghz-onlyac channel-width=20/40/80mhz-eeCe secondary-channel="" scan-list=default wireless-protocol=any 
      vlan-mode=no-tag vlan-id=1 wds-mode=disabled wds-default-bridge=none wds-ignore-ssid=no bridge-mode=enabled default-authentication=yes 
      default-forwarding=yes default-ap-tx-limit=0 default-client-tx-limit=0 hide-ssid=no security-profile=default compression=no 

Code: Select all

# iperf3 -c 192.168.7.182 -4
Connecting to host 192.168.7.182, port 5201
[  4] local 192.168.7.3 port 47254 connected to 192.168.7.182 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr  Cwnd
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  44.4 MBytes   373 Mbits/sec    9    489 KBytes       
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  59.7 MBytes   501 Mbits/sec    0    576 KBytes       
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  60.2 MBytes   505 Mbits/sec    0    648 KBytes       
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  61.8 MBytes   518 Mbits/sec    4    529 KBytes       
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  60.3 MBytes   506 Mbits/sec    0    608 KBytes       
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec  60.6 MBytes   508 Mbits/sec    2    499 KBytes       
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec  55.4 MBytes   465 Mbits/sec    2    428 KBytes       
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec  58.8 MBytes   493 Mbits/sec    0    520 KBytes       
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec  60.8 MBytes   510 Mbits/sec    0    600 KBytes       
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec  63.2 MBytes   530 Mbits/sec    4    472 KBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   585 MBytes   491 Mbits/sec   21             sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   582 MBytes   488 Mbits/sec                  receiver

I think the cAP AC offers the best bang for the buck. I can get over 300Mbs on a $70 device
that can also work under CAPsMAN.

I really wish Mikrotik would produce some better WiFi gear for indoor APs.

What client device are you using for this test? Is it 2x2 or 3x3?

If you are just using default setting, you are most probably using 5G1, and it's managed by CAPsMAN, 5G1 is slower + CAPsMAN is slower, result in much slower is reasonable. Set the wlan3 to AP bridge, set basic rate to 12mbps and 24mbps, supported rate from 12bmps to 54mbps and connect to it, you will get a better result.

Ok but I need do mesh WiFi later so I must use capsman... two Audience later...

I cannot imagine a reason why you MUST use Capsman.
By the way: having "local" packet delivery does not send your data to CapsMan first.
But again, you can set things up without Capsman.
If you use wireless mesh (or repeater or WDS) you will dedicate at least half of the air-time to that backhaul interconnect.

Why would CAPsMAN produce slower speeds?

Not sure, I suspect they are using 2048 in AMSDU, I got the exactly same speed by setting it to 2048 in wireless interface.

My speed test with Audience 5GHz
Wlan = 470mbps
CAPsMAN = 405mbps
Wlan+AMSDU 2048 = 405mbps

The Audience 5Ghz QCA9984 Radio is rated at 1733Mbs (I don't think half of that can be attained in a vacuum).

Please learn to read those commercial specs that everyone, every brand, uses. They are the aggregated throughput , the sum of all interfaces at once (what you cannot use with one client device) , and at the highest MCS rates and at the highest number of spatial streams, with max bandwidth (no interference, no other wifi above -96 dBm) . This means very close to the AP (high signal/nose ratio) , and a very capable client (number of spatial streams is usually limited to 2 however), without neighborgs or other own devices.

https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html

You never have optimal speed with default settings. Default setting is "some" configuration for a hypothetical environment, and for "some" concept of interconnection.

How is the Audience connected to the Connectmox? Wired or wireless? Audience has 2 separate 5 GHz radio's, which one are you using?

Don't rely on the "auto" settings of wifi, but be specific in what you choose, after checking freq usage in your environment.

I set ConnectBox in modem mode and Audience is wired connection to CB.
I don't know which 5GHz radio I'm using...
I connect 5Ghz WiFi to Audience.

Look in the wireless "registration" tab. You will find which WLAN but also signal strength send/receive, CCQ, and current interface rates. (add the needed columns or use "detail mode")

I really want to like MikroTik WiFi, but I'm regularly disappointed.

I feel You pain and I'm with You. I don't know how they test their products (if at all), but in real life Mikrotik wifi performance is low, no matter what settings are used. Someone could sue them...

What client device are you using for this test? Is it 2x2 or 3x3?

I'm using MacBook Pro with 3x3. As I said I don't want to be unfair to compare it to a Ruckus R710, but
I'm simply using claims by MikroTik specs.

I also created this chart a while back when first disappointed by RB4011 WiFi performance.
It seems newer software or hardware is limiting USA to zero DFS channels, when in the past
I was able to use the legal DFS channels here. In the past, we could choose "United States" or "United States 3".
Now it appears limited to "United States 3".

5GHZ Width Avail-1 RSSI/Noise Avg DN Avail-2 RSSI/Noise Avg DN Avail-3 RSSI/Noise Avg DN
20/40/80MHz-Ceee 36 (5180) -46/-92 200Mbs 149 (5745) -47/-92 280Mbs 153 (5765) -45/-97 80Mbs
20/40/80MHz-eCee 40 (5200) -48/-95 230Mbs 153 (5765) -48/-93 230Mbs 157 (5785) -46/-98 80Mbs
20/40/80MHz-eeCe 44 (5220) -44/-93 260Mbs 157 (5785) -47/-93 220Mbs 161 (5805) -44/-98 95Mbs
20/40/80MHz-eeeC 48 (5240) -46/-93 220Mbs 161 (5805) -44/-93 230Mbs 165 (5825) -45/-98 85Mbs

Why would CAPsMAN produce slower speeds?

Not sure, I suspect they are using 2048 in AMSDU, I got the exactly same speed by setting it to 2048 in wireless interface.

If that is really the reason, why doesn't mikrotik "fix" it?

Why would CAPsMAN produce slower speeds?

Not sure, I suspect they are using 2048 in AMSDU, I got the exactly same speed by setting it to 2048 in wireless interface.

If that is really the reason, why doesn't mikrotik "fix" it?

I'm just guessing maybe this causes the problem, so I did email them and their answer is they will add the option for AMSDU in CAPsMAN in future, but not sure when.

Hello

For several days I have an UPC 500 Mbit optical fiber connection.
On the ConnectBox router from UPC to WiFi 5GHz I have a nice speed of 450-500 Mbit / s, and after Audience only 200-250 Mbit / s.
I'm using MacBook Pro 2019.
What could be the reason? Do I have to configure something in MikroTik with default settings?

Please help.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=161041#p792742

"Audience should have the best coverage, also the design is more upright and from personal experience, covers really large areas."

But If the best device is acting so bad and needs also tuning, to get it somehow work at all, then this is insane.

"I'm using MacBook Pro with 3x3. As I said I don't want to be unfair to compare it to a Ruckus R710, but
I'm simply using claims by MikroTik specs."

1. Check in "registration" tab in "wireless" what your interface connection is. E;G."1300Mbps/80MHz/3s/sgi" is the best you can find there. (The Mac-book is 3x3, not 4x4. 4x4 is required for 1733Mbps)
2. Throughput (data rate) is estimated at 60% of the interface rate. 802.11 has quite some overhead! So the best datarate to expect here is 780 Mbps.
3. You only get 405 Mbps. Check the numbers in "registration" first. There the value might be e.g. "650Mps/80MHz/2s/sgi" (only 2s dual stream, and MCS07 encoding.), at least it will tell by what phenomenon you are not getting that ultimate max speed. (256QAM or MCS08-MCS09 needs a very strong and clean signal)

A ruckus R710 is a pretty dated unit. An R510 or R610 is newer and I would take a R610 over the R710 anyday.

Now lets also skip the B--L$h!+. Ruckus has been on Promo for nearly 2 years. The $650 R510 is readily available on Amazon for ~$250. AND STOMPS ALL OVER THE AUDIENCE.

A ruckus R710 is a pretty dated unit. An R510 or R610 is newer and I would take a R610 over the R710 anyday.

Now lets also skip the B--L$h!+. Ruckus has been on Promo for nearly 2 years. The $650 R510 is readily available on Amazon for ~$250. AND STOMPS ALL OVER THE AUDIENCE.

There is ABSOLUTELY [without ONE shadow of doubt] no comparison between Ruckus R510 and AUDIENCE .... Ruckus are one of the very few wireless manufactures that know how-to exploit MIMO effectively.

I got an R510, IPQ4019/4029(not sure which) based, got average 500mbps+ and 600mbps max speed of download, coverage is wider than Audience too, makes my Audience looks like an k12 student.

A ruckus R710 is a pretty dated unit. An R510 or R610 is newer and I would take a R610 over the R710 anyday.

Now lets also skip the B--L$h!+. Ruckus has been on Promo for nearly 2 years. The $650 R510 is readily available on Amazon for ~$250. AND STOMPS ALL OVER THE AUDIENCE.

I have an R500 that I bought used and it works really well with the hAP ac2 used as just a router.

On the other hand, I don't think that a separate router and AP (whether Ruckus or other brand) is really the competition for the Audience. People buying the Audience probably don't want to mess around with a more complex setup that could include PoE, wired backhaul, multiple vendors and thus multiple management interfaces, etc.

I just wanted to post results when Using an R710 (Again I realize this has a list price of $1,200 US).
So I know my MacBook was not the culprit for less than stellar speeds compared
to the Audience.

To try boost your speeds:

* Enable WMM in Wireless settings (CAPSMan turns this on by default)
* Set multicast helper to full.
* Set your rates to the following (for example in CAPSMan):

/caps-man rates add basic=12Mbps name=Rates1 supported=12Mbps,18Mbps,24Mbps,36Mbps,48Mbps,54Mbps

Also try this for even better performance.

/caps-man rates add basic=24Mbps name=Rates1 supported=24Mbps,36Mbps,48Mbps,54Mbps


There is an older discussion I had with someone else about multicast helpers and how they can improve things on a crowded WIfi channel (at the expense of battery life on clients). Rukus and others enable an equivalent helper by default which helps improve throughput on a channel.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=154613&p=764981#p764929

To try boost your speeds:

* Enable WMM in Wireless settings (CAPSMan turns this on by default)
* Set multicast helper to full.
* Set your rates to the following (for example in CAPSMan):

/caps-man rates add basic=12Mbps name=Rates1 supported=12Mbps,18Mbps,24Mbps,36Mbps,48Mbps,54Mbps

Also try this for even better performance.

/caps-man rates add basic=24Mbps name=Rates1 supported=24Mbps,36Mbps,48Mbps,54Mbps


There is an older discussion I had with someone else about multicast helpers and how they can improve things on a crowded WIfi channel (at the expense of battery life on clients). Rukus and others enable an equivalent helper by default which helps improve throughput on a channel.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=154613&p=764981#p764929

Interesting ... those broadcasts/multicasts do indeed take a very large part of the air-time if transmitted at 6 Mbps and the unicast is at high speed. (433-866 Mbps)

Some toughts ...

- Would 802.11n and ac be using the rates of A/G ? Or would they use the HT and VHT MCSes that are the n and ac modulations for broadcast and multicast? MCS0 single stream is also only 6 Mbps. So one would expect that the MCS0 is replaced with MCS1 as basic rate. Not sure if everyone still can connect. (I have seen tuning were one removes all the slower MCS encodings in the supported rates. Not a good idea to my opinion. You don't want to be in those rates until it is the only rate that works. So moving up the basic rate OK, Moving up the lower range of supported even higher not convinced that this is OK.)
- I can't find back if 802.11ac is broadcasting/multicasting at the lowest basic rate (like B/A/G does) , or at the highest basic rate that is lower than all unicast rates. Lower VHT MCSes cannot be disabled in Mikrotik. HT MCSes can be set individually.
- another strong broadcaster is that some devices send many ARP requests. Some threads in the forum mention using "proxy-arp" to avoid these ARP requests in the wireless part. (IF the WLAN is bridged, should the proxy-arp be on the bridge? There the proxy-arp serves another function ("poor man's routing").) So I don't know if it works. The sniffer still sees ARP requests.
- A-MSDU and A-PMDU have an enormous impact on the performance. Some brands have "adaptive frame aggregation", because A-MSDU performance is sensitive to bit-errors in the transmission. (viewtopic.php?f=7&t=161295). Mikrotik only activates A_PMDU for priority "0" by default. Well nobody sets that priority by default (so WMM is clueless), but at least A-PMDU is used, probably static.

Krystian,

the Audience "out-of-the-box" uses the 2x2 11ac as Wifi AP and reserves the 4x4 11ac as "wireless backbone" for connection to
additional audience (or other Wifi device from Mikrotik).
(this is what happened to my Audeince, but Mtik changed the "defaults over time", but I still think after reset this is what it gives you).
As this device has 2 x 5Ghz Wifi radios, they have to limit the frequency range on each Wifi interface
The 2x2 11ac Wifi interface is 5180-5260 Mhz (non DFS channels in many countries) 18dBm (80Mhz channel)
The 4x4 11ac Wifi interface is 5500 - 5640 Mhz (DFS channels), 23dBm and allows 160Mhz channels
(note these are not your exact values, as I use ETSI/European bands). But US is similar.

using 4x4 makes a lot of sense if you have Macbook (3x3). In addition the output power on the higher 5G Wifi frequency bands
is allowed to be higher than the "low" 5Ghz band (above Power values do show in the "status" page of the Wifi interface)

So what you definetely should do is:
Swap the 2x2 and 4x4 interfaces for AP if you do not use MESH yet. The 4x4 gives further reach, throughput etc...
(you even can use all two interfaces as classic AP as well). All this is just SW/config, the device can handle all combinations.

Again, as others said, you will not get as much Wifi speed as with some other manufacturer units, but you have lot of flexibility and tuning capabilites
for the rest of the system.

PS: Only cave out is that those 4x4 channels are DFS channels: this means if you choose 160Mhz, the initial scan period takes 5-10 minutes before the
device will actually activate the Wifi AP and you will see the SSID.

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A ruckus R710 is a pretty dated unit. An R510 or R610 is newer and I would take a R610 over the R710 anyday.

Now lets also skip the B--L$h!+. Ruckus has been on postmates promo codes for nearly 2 years. The $650 R510 is readily available on Amazon for ~$250. AND STOMPS ALL OVER THE AUDIENCE.

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I have an R500 that I bought used and it works really well with the hAP ac2 used as just a router.

On the other hand, I don't think that a separate router and AP (whether Ruckus or other brand) is really the competition for the Audience. People traveling don't want to miss out on travel promos from AirBNB with a more complex setup that could include PoE, wired backhaul, multiple vendors and thus multiple management interfaces, etc.

Yeah, very different setup, I don't know many people outside of enthusiasts that would even bother with a separate AP and router. I convinced one friend to get a Unifi and he is always stressed about it lol..