Catalyst 9130axi throughput issue

[Radu96069]

Hello,

I think there is something wrong with the Cisco 9130 EWC I have because no matter I tried I never got more then a bit over 600 Mbps on a connection that can do 944 (1Gb switch) even though on Ruckus R710 I get more than 817 Mbps form one 3x3 connection (iMAc).
I removed all Qos and AVC settings but there was no effect.
There is only one SSID and no interference on the channel.

For the 2x2, 5Ghz, 80Mhz the throughput is somehow what it should be (even though Ruckus still performs better) and therefore I didn’t observe until now that there is a potential issue. I realized only when I added the 3x3 iMac and the wifi 6 160Mhz Dell laptop.

Does anyone have any idea why this happens?

Devices used for testing.

Cisco 9130axi: 4 antenna radio (4:4) and 8 antenna (8*8) 5Ghz ax radio setup (same results)

Ruckus R710: 4 antenna radio (4:3) 5Ghz ac radio

Cisco ISR 1100 – both APs and Iperf3 server are connected to it

60w poe injector

Dell laptop wifi 6 2x2 160 Mhz – 2402/2162 link on Cisco, 866 on Ruckus

Iphone 11 – wifi 6 – 2x2 80Mhz – 866 link

Imac -wifi 5 – 3x3 80 Mhz 1300 Mbps link

Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 wifi 6 -2x2 2.4 Ghz, 344 Mbps link

Cable, switch and iperf server tasted with Ethernet first: results 944 Mbps for both uploads and downloads (cable is 6a but I do not have any multi gig switch yet)

Iperf command: iperf3 -c <ip address> -P4 -R -t10

Testing results

• Iphone 11
  • Cisco – max 606 Mbps (
  • Ruckus – max 668 Mbps
• Dell laptop
  • Cisco – max 582 Mbps (this is strange on a 2162 link)
  • Ruckus – max 502 Mbps
• iMac
  • Cisco – max 571 Mbps
  • Rukus - max 817 Mbps
• Galaxy Tab
  • Cisco 2,4 – max 228 Mbps (it didn’t connect on 5ghz no matter how many time I disabled and enabled the wifi)
  • Ruckus 5Ghz – 645 Mbps
• Galaxy Tab on 2.4 Ghz + iMac on 5Ghz for 5 minutes
  • Cisco – max 510 (aprox) total throughput
• Iphone 11 on 5Ghz + iMac on 5Ghz for 5 minutes
  • Cisco – max 530 (aprox) total throughput
    
    

On an AP with a total theoretical throughput of more than 5 Gbps to get a max of 0.6 Gbps in almost ideal conditions it is not ok. Especially when with the exact same conditions, I get 0.8 from a single connection to Ruckus R710.

Another thing that I observed but didn’t have time to properly test is that if I run iperf on 2 devices on the same time that are connected using different radios (either 2.4 and 5 or two 5Ghz) the connection o one device crushes and I need to restart it. It happened several times during the tests. If the devices are connected to the same radio (I tried with 3 connections at the same time) everything works fine.

Thanks!

[Radu96069 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

A final update!

The update to 17.6.3 solved the iMac 'issue' and increased the average throughputh to 760 Mbps.

Still the Dell throughput on the 160mhz channel remained the same.

What solved everything was the multi gig switch.

New average results:

iPhone 11: 775Mbps (with a maximum on 811)

iMac: 870 Mbps (with a maximum of 929)

Dell on 160Mhz: 1.2 Gbps.

So my conclusion is that there is probably a limitation based on the wired connection link even though no QoS profile is applied by the admin.
If Fastlane auto-qos is used (as recommended by Cisco) the throughput decreases (iMac 560 Mbps) but I use it as it makes a lot of difference for the conference calls apps (Zoom, Google). I did a test and even if i flooded all the interfaces with perf traffic for 5 minutes there was almost no latency impact (from 39 to 43) on the active calls (Qos policies are applied also on the router and the switch) 

Thanks for all the sugestions and feedback.