WAP121 extremely slow

[zacmutrux]

A client contacted me for assistance with their wireless network. They had just purchased three WAP121 wireless access points and upon setting them up discovered the devices provided extremely slow access to the Internet. They have cable Internet service from Comcast and when attached to Ethernet or an older wireless router, speedtest.net shows download speed of 30Mbps. But when connected to any one of the three WAP121 devices they get less than 1 Mbps down.

Upon reviewing the settings with Cisco tier 1 support nothing seems amiss. The issue persists even when the AP is transported to another site. I am awaiting contact from tier 2.

Anyone else seeing this kind of behavior?

[joergbachmayr]

Now I set up some tests (I cannot believe that so many units should be damaged).

notebook - cable - ap - air - notebook

--> about 10MB Download/second

Tried different settings, all good speed.

Another setting:

notebook - air - ap - cable - sg300 (cisco switch) - NAS

--> also about 10 MB Download/second (this was strange)

Only the speed to the internet ist the problem, so what devices did you all have between your ap / switch and the internet modem?

In my environment there is a cisco pix 501, perhaps this is the problem.

To bypass my pix, I have to make some changes in my environment, which is only possible on weekend, perhaps this one.

Updates will be continued soon ....

[careyallenwood]

The WAP121 units I reported are behind a Cisco ASA 5505 (ASA Version 8.4(3)) connected to the PoE ports (

Ethernet 0/6 - 7) and the ASA 5505 is in turn connected to a Comcast-provided Arris TM502G on its Ethernet 0/0 port.

[joergbachmayr]

Ok, the analysing facts are not that easy like "slow".

It is no difference if the wap121 is behing or in front of the cisco pix 501, so the pix is not the problem.

But I spent some time in other areas, means:

FTP is at full speed !!

Also some http-speed-tests are at full speed, like

http://www.a1.net/hilfe-support/internet-speedtest

But other speed-tests are very slow:

http://www.speedtest.net/

There are also different websites: some are slow, some are fast, seems like it depends how the pictures of a website are placed.

The windows phone is also slow in downloading from marketplace or nokia maps.

Could it be that the wap121 makes some proxy thing that could be switched off ???

[Brian Bergin]

I was just informed by another Cisco employee that new firmware is out for the WAP121. It's at:http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=284152657&flowid=32562&softwareid=282463166&release=1.0.1.10&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest

It has a date of 27 August 2012.  Can anyone experiencing the issue get it installed and report back to let us know if it's fixed?

Thanks...

[joergbachmayr]

The update is in progress ... these minutes ...

[joergbachmayr]

Sorry, no good news!

The situation is still the same, FTP is fast, Austrian speedtest (A1) is also fast, but most speedtests are slow, also the http transfer.

I now try to get back to the factory defaults and run the wizard again, perhaps ... the hope dies at last

[joergbachmayr]

Also the reboot to factory default had no impact on the problems ...

The problem is still existing as described above.

[drmciscoccna]

I just applied the new firmware also and the download speed is still slow!! 2Mb/s down & 4 Mb/s up. from the wired side speeds are 21.5 Mb/s & 4Mb/s

ran on the following site web100.rit.edu:7123 

[Terp84Alum]

So based on this thread, these are: "do not buy"? What about the WAP321?

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

[joergbachmayr]

At this time, I think the issue is not only cisco WAP121 based, but is demanding on the whole network setting which I don't know exactly what are the guilty parts.

Cisco itself seems not to be analysing this problem, regarding the last lame excuses from cisco support, which I now post here, because in my opinion this answer is a cheek (the proxy question I asked because the problem seems only to be active on http transfer protocol, not on ftp for example):

-->

Of course this device do not have any features of proxy.

For speed delay, we can have many factors which can it influence of speed.

For example this could be ISP connectivity with Internet cloud, NAT, CPU utilization and so.

<--

It's me now again: It seems the support employee has forgotten completely the WebEx session he had with me analysing this issue.

But: a school mate of me, who is working for an telecommunications provider, has an idea about the problem, so I hope he has time the next few days to check this out - I will give an update here.

[drmciscoccna]

I was doing a little more testing and was able to get my speed to up to wired connection speed!!

through testing different setting i found the speed problem seems to lie with the 802.11n implementation. setting the wireless Radio tab Mode to 802.11b/g, my speed went from 1530 kbs down to 19868 kbs down. i also gained about 100kbs by unchecking the Legacy Rate Set for 1 & 2.  

So Cisco i beleive you need to look into the 802.11n settings on the AP!!

[careyallenwood]

You have come to the same conclusion I did (see my post from Jun 23, 2012 3:28 PM in response to zacmutrux). However, running an 802.11n access point in 802.11g mode is not an acceptable workaround. Joerg Bachmayr has made a heroic effort to resolve the issue, but even after applying a subsequently released firmware update (which I'm sure we all assumed was designed to correct the problem), the issue remains and there is no further comment from Cisco on this. Eric Moyers (Cisco Network Support Engineer) had attempted to respond to these complaints, but the last post I see from him is on Sep 14 2012, so perhaps Cisco does not plan to address the issue. What is disturbing to me is that Cisco continues to sell these products as if there is nothing wrong with them. Derek Singletary posted on Sep 14 2012 that he has not experienced the problem, so possibly the early adopters received a batch of faulty hardware.

[aubre]

Honestly ladies and gentlemen,

Time is money, I would never roll out a WAP121 to any of my clients. With the negative experiences that I've had with 2 of my own.  I've had Cisco RMA both, 1 worked with Wireless N the other didn't.  I purchased a WAP 321 a week ago and I have NO ISSUES!  I got tired of screwing around with settings as you can see in a previous post, working with a tier 2 or 3 engineers trying to resolve the issue to no avail.   I know that the solution shouldn't be to upgrade a brand new device, but I'd rather not have the headache or GOD forbid, a complaining customer!

[Brian Bergin]

For those of you with speed issues, can you let the rest of us know how many simultaneous users there are using the 121's?  I'd be very interested in hearing how many users there are.

[joergbachmayr]

I always tested with only one connected client, for clear testing results!