Poor OfficeExtend AP Performance (Aironet 600)

[jeremyrcarr]

For quite some time, performance on the office extend solution for our internal end users has been exceptionally poor, basically unusable to be accurate. However VPN connectivity via AnyConnect or an IPSEC VPN client was fast.

I do know the solution used to work quite well, and then stopped working well -- when this happened, nothing had changed on the WLC and we just started using the AnyConnect client instead.

Now that I've had some downtime, I blew away the WLC (2504) and re-configured it and only set the minimum configuration parameters for our 1x Internal AP and the OEAP specific SSIDs and configuration for the OEAPs.

Previously we were running 6.x code on the WLC, and now we're runing 7.4; I took two OEAPs home, and one of them seemed to have the same poor performance problem, while the other is definitely just as fast as our regular SSL & IPSEC VPNs. I've had 1 of my co-workers try his at home, and he said it was just as bad as the last time, and "useless, a complete waste of time".

Has anyone experienced performance problems with the OEAPs of this magnitude? I'm about to configure a 1042 or 1142 for that co-worker to take a home and see if there's a difference, but I just can't seem to get these to work reliably and I can't seem to find any support posts in the forums or articles that mention anything about aleviating poor performance or things to not configure that would impact performance.

For everyone's reference, I've been using this document for my configuration guidelines.

Any assistance that can be provided would be fantastic, I'd hate to have a customer purchase these and run into the same issue I'm having.

Thanks,

~ Jeremy

[jeremyrcarr]

Hi Scott,

The problem seems to be strictly related to OEAP/FlexConnect performance. We have APs deployed in local mode in our office and performance is as expected.

When dealing with FlexConnect mode APs, the problem exists regardless of model, I've tried an 1142 and a 3602 and the performance impact is the exact same on both of those FlexConnect APs as it is on the OEAP600's

TAC has looked at our ASA 5505 FW, and our 2504 and didnt find any problems; my engineer relayed this case to the Wireless SME's and when they didnt have a solution or a new approach, he offered to open up an RMA for equipment and since this affects all APs, we replaced the 2504.

Last night after having the licening issue resolved, I tested the performance again while at home, and the problem. I ran 3x tests from my Nexus 4:

• Raw WIFI
• AnyConnect VPN over WIFI
• Office Extend WIFI

The performance of the Raw WIFI and the AnyConnect WIFI is identical, and the OEAP connection is abbysmal. My home ISP 25 Mbps down and 2.5 Mbps up, my office has 50 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up, so it's not like we're running into any bottlenecks here.

Time of day doesnt really have an impact either, and I've made sure this isnt occuring strictly when our link is being saturated.

The equipment we're running is the following:

• 2504 Controller - Version 7.4.100.0
• ASA 5505 FW - Version 8.2(5) w/ 512 MB Ram
• 3560X Switches

I'd be very surprised if the ASA was the culprit as we've already replaced the hardware, and this problem occurred before I upgraded the RAM to 512 MB -- I also think we were on a slightly earlier version of the software; this weekend I'll probably upgrade the version to 9.1 and see if that fixes the problem, but TAC looked at the FW and didnt see anything off and we arent doing anything but the default inspections; furthermore, the OEAPs and FlexConnect APs only need rudimentary TCP and UDP forwarding to work, and we've had no problems getting the APs to talk to the controller.

toddportz87 & Michel Pedersen if you two have open TAC cases, you should post them, my case is 625320755. Perhaps by pooling our Case #s we can reference them to our engineers and they can talk to each other and see if they can find a single thread that is causing this issue.

Cheers,

~ Jeremy

[toddportz87]

Jeremy,

I have a good contact right now and we are working through the issues. I will pass on the information I find out.

Todd

[pvicari]

I just got a new office extend and setup was simple and easy.  Unfortuneately the sppeds I am seeing on the public or home side of my connection are only 5 or 10mb even though my broadband signal is giving me 35mb when i connect to cable modem.  the private or business side is great for my phone and network but the sppeds are not usuable.

[George Stefanick]

We have 50+ ap600s out there and we arent seeing this issue. Here is my capture at home over the oe and then on the home wifi. Its very similar .. In fact the office extends is faster lol ..

Office Extends

Home Internet

__________________________________________________________________________________________
"Satisfaction does not come from knowing the solution, it comes from knowing why." - Rosalind Franklin
__________________________________________________________________________________________
‎"I'm in a serious relationship with my Wi-Fi. You could say we have a connection."

[George Stefanick]

How is your anchor designed and conncted to the network.

__________________________________________________________________________________________
"Satisfaction does not come from knowing the solution, it comes from knowing why." - Rosalind Franklin
__________________________________________________________________________________________
‎"I'm in a serious relationship with my Wi-Fi. You could say we have a connection."

[David Fitzgerald]

I have a user who is reporting the same problem.

If she plugs a laptop into one of the OEAP switch ports, she gets 55M as she's just using her ISP at that point.  If the plugs into her work-supplied 7965G phone, she gets a whopping 1.5M down. 

Her wireless speeds are similar to the connected to the phone speed.

Of course, when she's connected to OEAP switch port she has to use VPN, as she's not on internal VLAN. 

[M.Netuschil5148]

Hi at all,

we have the same problem with this OEAP.

Had one of you found a solution for this problem?

Thanks in advance,

Mario

[David Fitzgerald]

I'm still working through this, but I have one possible development.  Our default browser is well, Brand X.  If I switch to say, another browser, something very shiny and new, and possibly Chrome-colored, I get a 20x increase in throughput.  I'm having others test this theory internally.  YMMV.

[Michel Pedersen]

I've had a talk with my Cisco rep and apparently when the OEAP600 was designed xdsl lines of upto 10Mbps was the norm so the AP does all the capwap encryption in software and not hardware. The throughput limit due to this is apparently around 9-10Mbps for capwap tunnelled traffic (ie. traffic to your corporate network) while locally switched traffic has a much higher throughput (puto 200Mbps). See the table below from Cisco.

Using a more powerful AP (for example 1140i, 1600i, 2600i, 3500i and 3600i) will apparently give much higher performance but at the loss of the built-in switch and tunnelled LAN port which we find on the OEAP600.

regards

Michel

[Michel Pedersen]

An update to this problem.

We have finally setup a 3602i accesspoint as an office-extend AP and did some testing with it. Since it does the encryption in hardware we were able to consistenly pass through about 50mbps of traffic and the end user experience was much better than on the 600 access points. No remote-lan functionality though.

-Michel

[rmontalbano27]

Experiencing the same issue with the OEAP600s and 1810s. 150Mbps down 10 up from the ISP, get 60 Mbps down and 10 up on VPN, and 3-6 Mbps tops on the OEAPs. Anyone else have issues the the 1810s??

[d.friday]

We have about hundreds of the 1810 units in field and are not seeing the same issues.   Have you tried running the Network Diagnostics on the AP. This is done via the WLC > Wireless > Access Points > click on an access point > Network Diagnostics and start Network Diagnostics.  and see what speeds and latency you are getting.

Then   600 APs max out at 10meg they are old and slow

[rmontalbano27]

Might have fixed it! Clicking the TCP Adjust checkbox (Advanced tab on the AP) and setting the value to 1320 improved DL from 900Kbps to 55 Mbps. We think every packet was getting fragmented.
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