@PBGBBB2020 

You are always going to get Dropped and Retry packets.    Anything less than 30% retry is normal, 60% heavy and should be investigated..    Drops should only be a few % at most (3 / 4%)

Those numbers are nothing to worry about

Here is a sample of my 4 APs / 50 devices and their drop rate for example, and that was middle of night when I was asleep  :)   

@Philbert 

Thanks for the really helpful responses. My knowledge has fallen so far behind over the years but your info is really helping bring me up to speed.

In terms of clearing up congestions on the AP;

1) Does creating a second SSID broadcast on the eap225 for just iot devices help? Or does it not matter since both SSID are in the same queue since its through the same AP and its antennas?

2) Alternatively, would it make sense to turn the netgear router wifi back on and create a separate broadcast of just 2.4 ghz for all of my iot devices? This is assuming it doesn't create too much congestion/interference on my 2.4ghz band.

Another observation:

I have my EAP225 and my netgear both broadcasting identical SSID for 2.4ghz and a different, but identical SSID for their 5Ghz bands. As expected, the 2.4 Ghz SSID is only seen once by client devices and inSSIDer detects it as one network with 2 AP. However, the 5Ghz band is seen as two separate networks by the clients and inSSIDer detects them as indetically named but different networks (not one network with two AP). What gives?

This didn't happen in the past with two netgear devices. I would think its a netgear vs TP-Link thing, except for the fact that it works with the 2.4 ghz band but doesn't with 5 ghz.

Thanks for all the help!

@PBGBBB2020 

1) Does creating a second SSID broadcast on the eap225 for just iot devices help? Or does it not matter since both SSID are in the same queue since its through the same AP and its antennas?

All SSIDS are on the same frequency using the same aerial, it likely wont make any difference for you

2) Alternatively, would it make sense to turn the netgear router wifi back on and create a separate broadcast of just 2.4 ghz for all of my iot devices? This is assuming it doesn't create too much congestion/interference on my 2.4ghz band.

You could do that if its on a different channels from the other, that would certainly remove the slow devices from your network and free up airspace :)

@PBGBBB2020 

This is just how the 2x different vendors implement the WiFi protocols.     At at guess they are using the exact same protocol and configs for the 2.4 (as its old and not used much now) but slightly different for the 5Ghz

There are things like polling rate, minimum frame, airtime settings, beacon rates etc that will cause this.. one of those isn't the same on the 5Ghz from both vendors..   it wont make a shadow of a difference to the clients but will appear the way you are seeing it on scanners.

I wouldnt worry about that..

@JSchnee21 just to say thanks for your initial troubleshooting message, significantly increased my network. Turns out having QOS/WMM off was crushing my speeds. Very very helpful

Thanks @Luke-r,

Glad to hear it!  Generally speaking, I've found the EAP's work best when using mostly default settings.

But there are a few exceptions related to:

Band Steering -- it's better off

Airtime fairness -- it's better off

Channel BW -- it's better with 20 for 2.4 (not 20/40), and 80 fo5 5.8 (not 20/40/80).

Transmit power -- it's better on the custom scale, with the dBm in the mid to upper mid range -- NOT maxed out.

In terms of QOC/WMM this is required for 802.11n and 802.11ac speeds.  So, if you disable this default setting, the AP drops back to what is effectively 802.11g speeds.  So, don't do that.

-Jonathan

So despite all of our progress I am still pretty disappointed with how the EAP225 is performing. It seems like as soon as a I get good throughput, things go and drop back to a snails pace within a blink of an eye.

Its like one second iperf and speedtest.net are 300mb/s. The next they drop down 5 mb/s. At first I thought it was intermittent interference in my area (a not so dense suburb) but after monitoring the activity and trying all different frequencies, there is no discernable correlation. Paticularly, there is really little to no activity on the 5Ghz band.

I am back to thinking maybe something is wrong with this EAP225. I have implemented all the suggestions and I still bounce back and forth between expected, high speeds and horribly slow. Furthermore, when monitoring the AP through the Omada SDN on a PC, I see its there and connected, but I don't see any performance data (no bytes transferred) and it shows 0 clients connected, even though I know at least 10 are successfully connected.

Any final ideas? I was supposed to get a call back from TP Link support last week but no one called so I guess I may try them again.

Thanks for all the help and informative responses.

@PBGBBB2020 

AH

Omada SDN on a PC, I see its there and connected, but I don't see any performance data (no bytes transferred) and it shows 0 clients connected, even though I know at least 10 are successfully connected.

Sounds like you are running the wrong firmware on the controller! 

You should be running   4.2.5 or 4.2.8 - you are likely running version 3.something  

One the symptoms is you dont get any reports of clients connected or device info, this is a manual update.  Just download the v4.2.8 firmware and apply manually, this will help greatly.  

If you are doing this backup the config as v4 update wipes this, its a VERY different version to v3