Archer AX50: ping response rate on wireless periodically atrocious
Several times a day the wifi connection from my laptop (Apple MacBook Air 2020 M1, Sonoma 14.6.1) gets incredibly slow. I set up a repeating ping from my laptop (to apple.com). Normally there's a 30ms response rate. When the slowdown is happening, the ping rate is anywhere from 2000ms to 9000ms, or times out entirely. This condition lasts several minutes and eventually corrects itself.
During a slowdown, running the same ping from a computer that's ethernet-attached to the router, the response rate remains a steady 30ms.
Meanwhhile, running a ping app on the iPhone also shows a slowdown.
This indicates to me that the problem is wireless related, and not specific to the one laptop.
A quick look at ping output suggests that each slowdown lasts around 300 seconds, but don't hold me to it.
Suggestions?
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Hey @claitch
Welcome to the community!
Are the devices connecting to the 2.4GHz band or the 5GHz band?
Is the router in a location where it has adequate ventilation, and is not overheating?
Has this behavior always occurred since you've owned the router, or did it only recently manifest? If so, were there any changes to the network (e.g., Firmware Update, new Wi-Fi networks within your area causing congestion, etc.)?
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@Ryan Thank you for your reply.
I'm connected to the 5GHz band.
Router is sitting on a wooden table. Underside I would describe as hot, but not uncomfortable to touch or hold.
Behavior only began in the past month.
No recent firmware upgrades.
I *may* have messed with some settings before symptoms manifested, not sure.
A new duplex neighbor has moved in roughly during the past month or two.
I'm comfortable with command-line tools. Would be curious to know how to diagnose any interference.
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@Ryan Actually, now I'm wondering if this may be specific to my MacBook Air:
I left the ping running all night on my MBA. In the morning I spent a half hour using my iPad (WiFi) to access the Web, with consistently good response. Then I opened the MBA and looked at the ping output, and I saw that the previous 8 hours had flawless 30ms response times with no timeouts. Within a minute or two of starting to use the MBA to browse, I noticed a slowdown and saw that the ping responses had become terrible. It was clearly triggered by my beginning to use the laptop.
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If it is triggered by the laptop, is there anything that would create a lot of traffic such as Cloud backup or a backup to the router's USP attached drive?
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@ArcherC8 No, I do my backups manually.
I'm currently trying to find a network sniffer to run on the iPad.
FWIW, I have a ping tool on the iPad. Ping response is fine when the laptop ping is okay, and it suffers when the laptop ping is suffering. So using WiFi on the iPad doesn't seem to cause slowdown, but it seems to be affected by it when the laptop is slow.
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You could move devices one at a time to the 2,4 GHz and test for a bit to see if the issue moves or you could power off devices when the ping is high to see if that makes a difference.
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@ArcherC8 Thanks -- I have switched the laptop from 5G to 2.4G. Will continue to monitor for the next 24 hours.
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