What about enabling short guard interval support and frame-burst support?

I currently have SGIS enabled and frame-burst disabled.  I have multiple 802.11ac that may connect to an individual WAP, and I believe I read in the help section that more than 3 devices connected to the WAP may actually degrade throughput.

I'm trying to get the most speed possible.  Right now when I go to speedtest.net with a wireless device, it starts out at 250-290 Mbps then goes down to 180-220 Mbps and fluctuates.  I wish I could get it to maintain 250-290 consistently.

Any tips for optimal settings for 5GHz band for the best speed?

Wireless by nature is not going to give you the same speeds as wired. The reason being with wired, you have data flowing both directions(Sending Receiving) at the same time. With wireless, that flow is cut in half because you can only send or receive but you can not do both at the time. The more traffic you have on one SSID the more this speed falls off.

You can look at it this way, if you have a water hose trying to fill up a single glass, that one glass fills up pretty quick. Now using the same hose and the same amount of water flow, get 3 glasses and if you try to fill all three up at the same time, it will slower for them to fill up.

The reason it would take longer is that each PC is now listening to the traffic flow and waiting for the clear to send.

What is your current speed from your ISP that you are paying for? How do these numbers compare to your wired speeds to speedtest.net

Normally the default settings are set for the most optimal setting out of the box. Only in some unusual cases would you deviate from those. One thing that I would suggest is that if your wireless clients start having issues with maintaining connections, Set MFP to Not Required.

That can be accomplished by going under:

Wireless -> Networks go to Security, disable WPA-TKIP and then check MFP: Not Required

Eric Moyers
.:|:.:|:. CISCO | Cisco Presales Technical Support | Wireless Subject Matter Expert

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I realize wireless won't give as much speed as wired (which is why I have as much stuff in my house wired as possible).  However, if I'm averaging 300 Mbps downstream with a wired connection, and the WAP is rated to 1200 Mbps, then there is no reason for the WAP to transmit around 280-290 for a second then drop down to 150-190 when I'm standing right next to the WAP and there are no other devices pulling data from it.

When you say the more traffic on an SSID, the more the speed falls, are you talking about SSID's or WAP's?  In other words, if each computer connected to its own SSID, speed would improve?  (Like my computer on wifia, my wife's computer on wifib, iPad for baby monitor on wific, etc.?)  Or is it dependent on how many devices are pulling data from the WAP?

I enabled the frame burst support, but my data throughput actually dropped.

What does MFP do?  I had it configured for only WPA2 with WPA-TKIP disabled.  However, the speed dropped significantly with that setup and only improves when I reenable WPA-TKIP.

Hello again

If you are avg. 300 wired, I would expect no more than 200 with wireless traffic based solely on my explanation above with just one device connected to the WAP. Also regardless of what the WAP is rated you will never get more than the stream coming in

I understand the ratings of the WAP371, what are all of your connecting devices rated at? Are you trying to connect with AC all around or another signal, N? If you are using AC, N mixed and all of your devices are AC except say the baby monitor and it is N, then that SSID will drop to the lowest signal and transmit that for all. In this case I would make a SSID for N only and one for AC only.

What is the wireless environment in your area like?  Even if you only have one client connected to the WAP and say the channel is 4 on your WAP Your neighbor may have a WAP on channel 5. Those signals will actually overlap and cause issues with your wireless performance. Channels 1, 6, and 11 are the only channels that do not overlap in the US) So we will need to see what your wireless environment looks like.

Any traffic coming across a radio (which the 371 has two) can impede other traffic on that radio, they are all traveling out the same radio, granted two or three clients connected on three separate SSID's will not have a huge effect on each other under normal circumstances, but using your example from above, if one of them is a baby monitor streaming voice or video, it would have more impact, if you or your wife watching a movie then you have heavier traffic and that is when it all starts adding up.

For all of the testing and troubleshooting, I would suggest calling in and opening a case. One of our engineers here would be glad to work this with you and see about improving your through-put You really do have a good product , we just need to see what your wireless environment limitation are and if there is anything we can to to tweak your settings. That would be quicker for you easier with a live engineer looking at the settings. Once a case is made if you send me that number, I can talk to the engineer and see if there is anything I can assist them with. I have trained most of them and work with all of them.

In the US the best number is 1-866-606-1866

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/web/tsd-cisco-small-business-support-center-contacts.html

Eric Moyers
.:|:.:|:. CISCO | Cisco Presales Technical Support | Wireless Subject Matter Expert

Please rate helpful Posts and Let others know when your Question has been answered.

Thanks Eric, I just enabled this on my WAP371 and the 5Ghz went from 40Mbps to over 100!

Previously my 5Ghz WiFi was actually slower than my 2.4Ghz!

I am using an Intel network card, so it doesn't appear to matter if you're using non-Broadcom. Is there any reason this feature wouldn't be enabled by default?

Also 802.11ac is no longer in draft, so is the WAP371 not fully 802.11ac compliant?

Also the page says "RTS Threshold—The Request to Send (RTS) Threshold value. The valid integer range must be from 0 to 65535. The default is 65535 octets." .. but the default is not 65535, but 2347. Seems to be a typo on the configuration page and in the manual?