WAP561 very weak performance and signal strength

[muaddib_01]

Hello,

after having been dissapointed by the the high jitter and and slow performance of the WAP321, I have decided to roll out a configuration with four new WAP561 devices to deliver good coverage to use VoWiFi.

Unfortunateley the WAP561 deliver a very poor performance and signal strength that is 6 - 9 RSSI lower than WAP321's results, the gap gets even bigger compared to Acces Points from other brands (over 9 RSSI difference). Measurements where taken at different positions at 100 % transmit power. The result was always the same, depending on the band the RSSI was at least 6 - 9 RSSI lower with WAP561. Inteferences form other APs is almost zero (Neighborhood discovery shows no signal higher than 10)

Clients used where Notebooks with Intel Centrino, recent abgn Atheros chipset and Ascom i62 phone. All showed the same low signal strength. Measurements taken directly on the WAP device case showed only -15 to -20 RSSI.

How can it be that such pricey APs are pretty much unusable. Since all four devices show the same behaviour it can't be a defective device.

Is there a known bug?

Regards,

Paul

[mzeilenga]

I just bought a WAP561 and noticed the same thing.  I've got an old Linksys WRT54G that will double or triple the useable range.  I did some messing around with settings on the 561 and found that on radio 1, if I set the mode to 2.4GHz 802.11n it worked much better.

I'm running firmware v1.0.3.4

[Eric Moyers]

Gentlemen,  My name is Eric Moyers. I am a Network Support Engineer in the Cisco Small Business Support Center. Thank you for using the Cisco Community Post Forums.

For this device if you go under the Administration Tab and then Support Information you can download a diagnostics file.

During the time when you are experiencing a problem please download it and post here. I would like to look it over and see if I see anything from that. If I can't I may need you to call in and open a support ticket with an answering engineer.

Thanks

Eric Moyers    .:|:.:|:.

Cisco Small Business US STAC Advanced Support Engineer

CCNA, CCNA-Wireless

866-606-1866

Mon - Fri 09:00 - 18:00 (UTC - 05:00)

*Please rate the Post so other will know when an answer has been found.

[muaddib_01]

Hello,

further testing of the APs show that they aren't capable of delivering the neccessary quality for Voice or any demanding real time applications. The Jitter is very high, even under best conditions with just 2 Clients.

As an exmaple a Voice call from Client 1 to Client 2. Distance from the APs is just a few meters:

Client 1 with 2.4 Ghz UAPSD on

3878 packets transmitted, 3877 received, 0% packet loss, time 3881807ms

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.841/20.888/864.889/25.641 ms

Client 2 with 5 Ghz UAPSD off

3879 packets transmitted, 3879 received, 0% packet loss, time 3881806ms

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.620/4.923/881.654/29.302 ms

Both Clients show very high latencey about ever few minutes for a couple of seconds. Checking the WAP321, they show the same problems. Other APs work without any problems, even cheap ones.

In summary the WAP561 are just garbage. I have never seen such a poor performing device.

[jan_tenne]

Hi Eric,

I have the same issues. Less than 10m away in another room (open door), my iPhone has literally no reception.

Here's my Support File:

Can you help?

Jan

[jan_tenne]

Hi Eric,

me again.

I did a lot of checks and test last 24h, and found out some things. 2G reception is much better than 5G, even if there are a lot of other networks there and only one other at 5G. 5G is better on 20MHz than on 40MHz.

All in all: At the weakest point 5G is about -78 to -80 dBm and 2G -65 to -70 and this point is in another room that is only 4,5m away from the AP with one wall and an open door in-between. I changed the location of the AP a bit that made it a bit better.

Especially mobile devices like iPhone and Tabletts have problems to keep the connection there.

What is funny is that I changed the "Transmit Power" on both radios to all possible setting from 12% to 100% getting the exact same result. maybe there is something?

i attach another diagnostic.txt from today.

Yours

Jan

[mzeilenga]

I just modified radio settings and enabled Broadcast/Multicast Rate Limiting.  I set rate limit to 25 and left burst at 75.  This seemed to make a big improvement in link speed but not necessarily signal strength.

[muaddib_01]

Any change in settings won't help to increase performance. The performance issue is due to a bad antenna design. Replacing the Antenna with external 5dbi Antennas delivers a performance like the WAP321, which ist still not among the best but at least usable.

Unfortunetaly this means the problem will never be fixed and the AP will stay a bad investment :-(.

[mzeilenga]

Can you recommend an antenna that works?

Just looked closer.  Doesn't seem to support external antenna's.   Great!

[muaddib_01]

You can't plug external antennas in.

It is not complicated to exchange the antenna but it is only for testing purpose. Due to changed signal characteristic it might even be possible that you are not allowed to use the device anymore.