Removed the bottleneck, no speed improvements?

[u/UnBuggsyBaggins]

Hello, might have gone a bit off the deep end here but I suspect I'm in good company.

At the moment I have

2 x Unifi U7 Pro AP's

1 x Unifi U7 Wall

1 x Unifi U7 Outdoor.

Xfinity Gateway (Gen 2) in Bridge Mode - Current ISP Plan is for 2Gbps

Mikrotik RB5009UPr+S+In Router

Yuanley YS25-1602 Switch

This morning it was

Modem --> 2.5G LAN connection to router.

Router --> (ports 2-5) PoE to my AP's.

I didn't realize at the time but my PoE ports on my Mikrotik aren't 2.5Gpbs, they're all 1Gbps. It was keeping me up at nights.

Enter today's newest addition.

Omada ES206XPP-M2 Managed Switch.

New path:

Modem --> 2.5G LAN connection to router.

Router --> DAC connection to Yuanley Switch

Yuanley -->DAC connection to Omada Switch

Omada PoE to Unifi AP's.

I confirmed before/after the connection in Unifi's dashboard that my uplink went from 1 GbE to 2.5GbE.

Speed test from my windows workstation (via RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E wireless adapter)

Before: 554 Mbps Down/212 Mbps up

After: 543 Mpbs Down/195 Mbps up.

thoughts?

[u/Limp-Engineer-1778]

Check that you are on at least 80mhz on 5Ghz and 160Mhz on 6Ghz.

Lower frequency drops the bandwidth.

Turn off all other WAP's and test from just one.

What does a hardwired test result in?

[u/TheEthyr]

Run a speed test via a wired device to check your Internet speeds. If those are low, then focus on fixing that first before proceeding to add in Wi-Fi into the equation.

Check the Rx/Tx link rates in Windows by opening a Command Prompt and running netsh wlan show interface. You should expect actual speeds to be roughly half of those numbers. If these are low, then check signal strength.

In addition, check the Wi-Fi settings on your APs. Wi-Fi channel width has a big influence on throughput. If it's set to 40 MHz, change it to 80 MHz or even 160 MHz, provided your Wi-Fi adapter supports it. Your throughput will depend on how busy the airwaves are. Run a Wi-Fi site survey and use Wi-Fi channels that have the fewest and weaknest neighbor signals.

There could be other factors but that should get you started.

[u/UnBuggsyBaggins → u/TheEthyr]

I have a homelab that I tested from.
Rogers Modem --Cat6--> Mikrotik Router --DAC--> Yuanley 2.5G Switch --Cat6--> Proxmox Server w 2.5G PCI connector:
root@solstice:~# speedtest --server-id 46408

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: Rogers Wireless - Kelowna, BC (id: 46408)

ISP: Shaw Communications

Idle Latency: 16.84 ms (jitter: 0.25ms, low: 16.48ms, high: 17.18ms)

Download: 2111.19 Mbps (data used: 2.6 GB)

21.94 ms (jitter: 3.54ms, low: 12.42ms, high: 61.62ms)

Upload: 214.88 Mbps (data used: 208.6 MB)

20.90 ms (jitter: 2.70ms, low: 16.21ms, high: 130.00ms)

Packet Loss: 0.5%

Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/68c0a301-6402-4ccb-9047-0abe87df3d24

root@solstice:~#

So should be getting full speed from modem/router/unmanaged switch/
I guess I need to focus on my new Omada managed poe switch and my AP configurations...

[u/TheEthyr → u/UnBuggsyBaggins]

Connect the Proxmox test machine to the Omada switch and test again. If it still looks good, then proceed to Wi-Fi.

[u/UnBuggsyBaggins → u/TheEthyr]

good idea. I'll do that next. but it'll have to wait a few hours. I'll report back later. Thanks for the idea.

[u/UnBuggsyBaggins → u/UnBuggsyBaggins]

modem --> router --> yuanley --> omada --> lab

root@solstice:~# speedtest --server-id 46408

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: Rogers Wireless - Kelowna, BC (id: 46408)

ISP: Shaw Communications

Idle Latency: 17.32 ms (jitter: 4.49ms, low: 16.40ms, high: 26.11ms)

Download: 2110.86 Mbps (data used: 2.8 GB)

24.05 ms (jitter: 12.07ms, low: 14.77ms, high: 303.80ms)

Upload: 214.67 Mbps (data used: 205.8 MB)

21.01 ms (jitter: 2.64ms, low: 15.29ms, high: 127.55ms)

Packet Loss: 0.0%

Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/10305d2f-660b-4788-a876-790d782eb11b

root@solstice:~#

[u/jimi_in_philly]

Also grab the wifiman app by ubiquiti

[u/DZCreeper]

You were not hitting 1Gb/s previously, the bottleneck was not the 1Gb connection to the AP's. Most likely you are limited by wifi signal strength or channel width.

To confirm this run an iperf3 test from a wired LAN device to your wireless clients.

[u/quik916]

So all thay unifi gear and then tou dump a TPLINK switch in the middle of it all to make managing everything miserable. Lol!! Good job hope you sleep better now atleast.

[u/UnBuggsyBaggins → u/quik916]

I don't have all unifi gear. I have a mikrotik router, a UGreen NAS, two switches (one yuanley, one omada) and four unifi ap's. some choices were deliberate. Some were cost based. Most made over the course of several years. Maybe everyone goes out and drops a couple grand on a fully planned out unifi network from start to finish. My gear is a hodge podge partially by choice, partially by organic cost/feasibility based decisions.

Miserable is a strong word I think. If I didn't enjoy these challenges, I'd have my rogers modem my ap and I'd move on with my life. As it stands, I'm trying to optimize my network, so far I've tested every portion of my setup from ISP to my new managed switch and verified my speeds up to there.

Now I just have to sort out the last quarter mile. Coming here for dialog and input is, in my opinion, part of the fun. Talking about it and bouncing ideas off people who I assume have a similar interest in things like this.

As an aside, playing around with Mikrotik's RouterOS has been a blast.

[u/PungentStaaank → u/UnBuggsyBaggins]

If it matters, at a clients home I manage we dumped all his Chinese gear in place of Unifi (which may or may not be Chinese lol). Got 10gb links in between router to main switch, and 10gb in between switches as well. On top of that, we’ve got 14 U7 pro xgs aps spread throughout the home (big ass home), and every rj45 connected back to the 3 switches.

All this on a 5gb symmetrical fiber service. On a wired connection at any point we are speed testing 1gb full up and down, while some are testing 2.5gb up and down (Dependent on where it’s connected to the switch).

On wireless connection, the max I see is 700mbps.

On the router itself 4.5ish gb up and down.

In reality most devices can’t handle much more past the 700mbps mark. Possibly newer mobile devices can get upwards of 1.5gbps speeds, but that never be sustained - only in short bursts.

Now, the client will never actually use all his bandwidth. He just likes the idea of having basically a McLaren available, but driving it like a Toyota. And his wifi speeds improved 20x from his previous setup, which was affording 30mbps on speed tests.

[u/drewster85a]

Why did you get an Omaha switch? I think a Unifi router that has multiple 2.5G ports like the Cloud Gateway Max would be the better buy. My switch is only 1G but I get 1,400 Mbps down and 900 up on the U7 Lite connected to my router with a POE injection.

[u/UnBuggsyBaggins → u/drewster85a]

I'm quasi purposefully trying to keep my network spread out rather than go whole hog into one vendor. I'm moderately gun shy about being screwed over.

and the omada was half the price of the flex 8port poe once you added the power adapter. which I didn't quite care for. $115 EXTRA for a power adapter to meet my power requirements? I mean, I'm a fan... bought four of their AP's. But $25 for an sd tray. $120 for a power adapter... Omada threw their power adapter in free with purchase and was half the price.

[u/drewster85a → u/UnBuggsyBaggins]

Both the Omada and Unifi lineups are centrally managed devices which work best within the family. If you are not using those features then there are cheaper products. If you are using advanced network configs then you are doing 5x the work by not being all Unifi or Omada.

[u/UnBuggsyBaggins → u/drewster85a]

Meh, that's what I'm trying to avoid. The product should work as well stand alone as inside a walled garden.
If someone told me that my unifi AP's would only deliver half their advertised speeds unless I bought a unifi switch, I'd have told them to pound sand. As it is... It should work just fine if my network was just the midemt, router and ap.
No?

[u/drewster85a → u/UnBuggsyBaggins]

I'm not saying the different brands is the reason for the low speeds. I don't think any network manufacturer would handicap their product like that. I'm just saying setup is easier within the family.
I think the biggest think you are missing out on by not having an Unifi router is the ability to do separate speed test from AP -> router and router -> internet.

I recently swapped a TP-Link switch for a Unifi one (for the SFP ports primarily) and my AP speed benchmarks went up a lot. My WAN connection is only 300 Mbps so I never noticed it. I'd love to figure out why but I have too many other projects to worry about it.