WAP 4410N serving at < 5Mbps

[benserrato]

Hi, I installed one of these on a small network.  It's going through a mini-switch 5 port netgear to a larger 16 port netgear.  Users are only able to get (4Mbps, 5Mbps) down on a file transfer.  Shouldn't I be able to get closer to 80 Mbps on a 100Mbps network when connected on 802.11N?

[David Carr]

What does the area look like wirelessly?  Is there any other wireless networks to interfere with the wireless connectivity?

If there is, I would adjust the wireless channel and see if that alleviates the issue.

How many users are connected to the unit at one time?  Has anyone setup any of the advanced wireless features on the device? 

There is a way to limit the throughput to around 5 mbps, if that was set that would be the reason why the connection is so slow.  I would check into these and see if that is the issue.

[benserrato]

Those are good suggestions, thank you.  There are (4) SSID's nearby, broadcasting and non.  Each with less than ~15% signal strength on channels 1, 1, 6, 8, in order of strength.  I changed to channel 11.  I changed the frequency to 20 MHz from 40 MHz.  I'm using WPA(1) with a ten digit number as the key.  I have only one SSID setup at "0%" throughput.  So I'm not limiting the through put.

What I've found is that I'm having trouble connecting with 802.11N support so I'm limited to 54Mbps instead of the 130Mbps that is advertised.  It only has a 100Mbps link to the AP, is this the reason I can't get an 802.11N connection?  Also, I heard this AP has some trouble with certain Intel WLAN cards, could my Dell WLAN card have a similar connection issue? (I havn't checked what the Dells that will primarily use the network were purchased with.)

Last, I get a 100Mbps link when I connect directly to  the link.

[David Carr]

Try using aes encryption instead of tkip and see if the speeds get any better for you.

[benserrato]

I temporarily removed security on the line and was using AES when I noticed the problem.  Maybe you could clear up some misconceptions.

When I connect directly to the line with a laptop I get ~ a 7Mbps connection and a < 1 sec read/write to the database for the application I need.  Is this in line with normal LAN speed for fast ethernet?  It seems slow.  I'm considering replacing the switches, but I will replace this AP first if I can't get it to do N.  I'm going to take it home to see if it will behave on non Dell / Intel hardware.

[David Carr]

Its based on the network and switches you have on your network, plus the speed of your nic's.  However i am a little confused as to what you mean by plugging in directly and getting 7 mbps.  With no security you should be getting n speeds, with wpa2 with aes you will be getting n speeds.  If using tkip or wep you will get g speeds even when your connected with an N card. 

[benserrato]

Thanks for following this.  It seems I've mislead you.  I switched the line from the WAP directly to my laptop to check that the line was good and that is when I got the 7 MB/s.

I was still unable to get my WAP to claim it connected at greater than 54Mb/s yesterday though even without security.  I'm going to go try again now would you tell me if I can also get an 802.11n connection with WPA since my Dell software doesn't have WPA2 as an option.  Is the AES info in the manual?  I skimmed through each part with "802.11n" and I didn't see it.

[mykel.tauber]

7 megaBYTES/second is 56megabits/second which is about half of 100mbs most machines cna easily saturate 100mbps.

When wireless says 54mb/s thats in the air it equates to 27mb/s by the time it hits the wire or 4.5MB/s.

[David Carr]

The aes is a security option in the wireless security tab.  You get the option in wpa mixed mode to select which one or in wpa2. 

[benserrato]

Thank you Mykel and Davic yesterday I had the clients running on 802.11n at about 80Mb/s (watching capitalization).  But four of the six clients I need running still run slowly when connecting to the application.  I'm going to compare the two laptops that work well with the other four laptops settings.

Mykel your comment was very helpful to me.  It was like bricks earlier when I realized I was confusing bits and bytes but I had thought that the over air speed was the adjusted speed for over wire.  I'm going to try updating their hardware to gigabit and checking the differences between the 15" laptops and the 14" ones.  Thanks.

[benserrato]

I don't want to open a new thread yet, but after updating their switches I persist in having a problem where it suddenly takes a long time to get a response on the app each time I go to change a tab after being idle for a bit.  How can I go about showing if it is the app d/t the current speed of the connecting, or if it is the wireless connection.