@R1D2 

FWIW, I have nobody else on that channel either. Intel AC8265 is rated at 2x2:2 MIMO

Also, I learned about SSH-ing into the AP and using the athstats command which lets you see, amongst other things, the MCS levels being used. Mine are all over the map even with line of sight between the AP and the laptop :-(

 Rx MCS STATS:
 mcs 0- mcs 4 STATS:     0,     0,    35,   138,  1710,
 mcs 5- mcs 9 STATS:  1049,  2702,  4463,   516,  1047,
 Tx MCS STATS:
 mcs 0- mcs 4 STATS:     0,     0,     0,     0,     0,
 mcs 5- mcs 9 STATS:  1303,  5078,  4386,  1301,    61,
 

More interesting stuff.

I'd been meaning to try a Live-USB version of the recent release of Ubuntu 20.04 and, while I was booted into it, ran iperf3.

Got 240Mbps on the same hardware!!!

Something in the recent Windows 10 update or an Intel driver update must have messed things up. I did learn a lot in the process, though, and still need to look into why the MCS is jumping around so much in supposedly clear air.

@unmesh 

Interesting. I've just setup an Ubuntu 20 LTS Live CD as well to do this testing. Will be doing a new install tomorrow at a new location and will update here what I find out.

Hi @unmesh,

I've definately had issues with certain Intel WiFi NIC chipsets and driver versions wheras the connection is up and down all of the time.  Recent versions of the drivers have been better.  Also, older drivers from the laptop vendor are often more stable as well.

But, is this your only Wifi device?  Better to eliminate it from the test cycle for now and focus on something more stable like a tablet or phone.

I link these little USB NIC's from TP-Link as well

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P6N2TZH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Sorry, I forget.  Do you have multuple EAP's and you see a similar behavior with both?  Is one bad, possibly?  Also try the midspan injector in the event that your PoE switch (I think I'm remembering that right -- not much coffee yet) is being weird.

-Jonathan

@JSchnee21 

Regarding Intel NICs, my laptops are all Lenovo and they like to whitelist PCIe NICs in their BIOS so it is not possible to replace them 

I do have an AC1200 USB NIC that I could try.

I should look into the availability of iperf on Android and/or iOS though I'm not sure if my tablet and phone have dual stream NICs

And my other APs are Broadcom (from ASUS and netgear) and do perform better so there may be an Intel+Atheros thing going on. The EAP is the new kid on the block and the goal is to have a single control plane for wireless by replacing the others.

I don't have a PoE switch so the midspan injector is what is powering on the EAP225. I did find a compromised Ethernet cable going to the AP though.

So many experiments, so little time 

Hi @unmesh,

Yes, I have 5 Lenovos myself, and a Dell Inspiron, with an older E420 being the most problematic historically.  I finally give up and use a USB dongle on it all of the time (it only used to support 2.4GHz 802.11n anyway).  Yes, the PCIe whitelisting is a huge PIA.

While iPerf is "the better tool" the reality is that in the USA any of the common internet testing apps (dsl reports, Speedtest, SpeedSmart, Fast.com, etc.) can be used.  of course these tests test more than just your local wifi.  And their performance / reproducibility does depend on the server chosen and how busy the internet path is between your client and server.  With the exception of DSL reports which is web only, all of the other tests have apps in the iOS and Android app stores.

Most modern phones/tables support 2x2 802.11ac.  From StackExchange:

"The earliest iPhone models to support 802.11ac were the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, both introduced in September 2014. As for iPads, the iPad Air 2 was the first iPad model to support 802.11ac - introduced in October 2014"

I'm not sure when 2x2 was implemented but it should be on at least the iPhone 7 or 8.

Also note that for iPerf, it's best to have one device be wired (server) and the other be wireless (client).  So if you have pairs of laptops you can try alternating to see if the issue is specific to one of the laptops, etc.  Just be sure that the Wifi on the laptop is disabled when you are connected via Ethernet.

In inSSIDER check to make sure the EAP is broadcasting a max link rate of 866.  In Windows, in task manager, Performance, Wifi, right click on the txt under the graph and view "Network Details".  this will give you the client link rate and other intersting details.

You can also see a lot of useful client details from the Omada pages on "Clients"

-Jonathan

@JSchnee21 

Thanks for the additional ideas to try. I have only 50Mbps Internet service so I've been doing the testing on the LAN which is where most of my heavy network traffic is in any case.

I have been using one laptop as the server over a wired connection and with wireless turned off and have been using the -R flag to turn direction around. I also recently discovered that my router also supports iperf as both client and server which adds to the experiment matrix.

One of the curious things that I see on InSSIDer is that the Netgear is advertising a max rate of 1300 even though I could have sworn the chipset supports only two streams!

@unmesh So I finished teh sintallation of the new site (3x EAP245v3 + OC200) and I am experiencing the same speed limitation on iPerf. Getting max throughput between 140-160Mbps. I am now inclining to think this may be an issue with my laptop's WiFi card (Intel AC8265).

My setup was : Server - Ubuntu 20 - Ethernet Wired Nego @1000Mbps. Laptop was maybe 2m away with line of site on WiFi. When my laptop is connected via Ethernet, I am able to get 985Mbps from the same switch.

The test was done using stock setting with teh controller. Controller on V3.2.5 but APs on v2.3 firmware.

I managed to find an iPerf tool for androind (Magic iPerf - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nextdoordeveloper.miperf.miperf). I'll be testing this tommorrow again with my phone to see what is going on.

@JSchnee21 

I tried Lenovo's wifi driver from 2017 and the results went up to 227Mbps!

@AsankaG 

I tried using my Fire HD tablet for testing but it is unfortunately single stream

@unmesh I managed to do some tests today with my phone (Galaxy S10) and was able to get twice the bandwidth compared to my laptop. iPerf was showing close to 300Mbps on TCP and UDP. Plus for UDP, there were no significant losses recorded (<1% loss). Which means our WiFi cards on our laptops were s**t.

What I am thinking of doing next is to load up the AP with multiple devices running iperf at the same time to see if that would able to saturate a 1GigE link with the server. At least this would give me a closure to say one device may not be able to get full bandwidth, but at least teh AP is able multiple clients loading up heavily.