Everything Instant On

Hello,

I just installed 2 brand new AP11 access points which I receivd today and I'm experiencing unacceptably poor performance.
I'm receiving roughly 45mbps up/down on an intel AC3160 and AC7260 whereas on my previously installed Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LR or UAP-AC-Lite I was getting more then 4x performance.

Access point is connected to a 3750x switch with Gigabit PoE and is installed roughly 10 feet away from user.
I'm specifying 2 SSID's each bridged to a unique VLAN.

Any assistance from the manufacturer would be appreciated.

You should be getting much better performance out of the AP11.  If you are still experiencing the problem, best is to contact Support, they should be able to help you troubleshoot.  If you can also say which client(s), device and measuring tool, you are using for assessing the performance, that may help pinpoint the problem.  Thanks.

I phoned support last Tuesday to open a case.
They mentioned I should get an email with a case ID which I unfortunately did not get which makes me believe the case was never submitted/created as I still haven't heard anything.

Here is my testing setup:

1. Laptop with AC3160 running linux and iPerf3 to a wired 1Gb machine running iPerf
2. Laptop with AC3160 running Windows 10 and iPerf3 to a wired 1Gb machine running iPerf
3. Laptop with AC7260 running linux and iPerf3 to a wire 1Gb machine running iPerf
4. Laptop with AC7260 running Windows 10 and iPerf3 to a wire 1Gb machine running iPerf

Both machines running Windows 10 and Linux were using latest available drivers.
To verify my test setup, I ran iPerf across the same VLANs wired and I received line rate.
Next test was copying a large 8GB file from a wired host to another wired host over WiFi with still poor results.

I purchased these devices for clients who were looking for some of the features offered.
I've since torn these devices out of my network as they were unusable and have since put the Ubiquiti gear back.

Is someone who is an employee able to open a case for me and ensure it actually gets opened?

Hello @darwinlabs 

We apologize for any inconvenience. Aruba Instant On Support Team will be contacting you soon.

@darwinlabs,

See resolved issues in v1.3 in the release notes: https://community.arubainstanton.com/t5/Release-Notes/Instant-On-Release-Notes/ta-p/758

There was an issue with AP performance that is now resolved.  It would be great if you could try your tests again, I suspect you were hitting this performance issue on the AP11.

Thanks,
Stephane

Hello,
I reinstalled one of the Access Points after deleting the site and factory resetting the AP.
I can confirm the AP is running 1.3.0 and is performing a little bit better but it's still not behaving like other vendors I'm testing.
TAC has reached out to me and we have a case opened to try and troubleshoot further.
Unfortunately, this product is designed for the end user with no advanced information relating to Frequency width, signal levels etc which makes troubleshooting very difficult without trying to involve TAC which will become unusable without paying for support.

I'm hoping for a good outcome as they have some really good features at a good price point.

Hi thanks for your feedback. We have kept the configuration as simple as possible to enable ease of use for customers. We have Aruba's enterprise grade optimization engine running on the APs constantly to ensure that the best frequency and power levels are chosen at any given point in time by measuring the RF environment. 

As you know, we have constant software updates being released with new capabilities. Stay tuned for more releases.

Providing an update to this post in case anyone is following it.

Support and I are continuing to look into the issue and has been escalated to engineering for further investigation.

We appreciate your business and the feedback. As you know, Aruba Instant On provides enterprise grade Wi-Fi along with great features at an affordable price for Small Business and SOHO customers. Following your interaction with our Support Team, we have a better understanding of how the AP11s were deployed and tested.

The Aruba Instant On Access Points include edge gateway, firewall, application visibility and blocking functionality in addition to selective client blocking, bandwidth limiting, to name a few. Performing all these functions in a rather simplified and low-touch solution requires additional cycles as an overhead on the AP’s limited memory and compute resources. Our competitors on the other hand have very lean APs and require an external gateway at extra cost to provide most of this functionality. Therefore it would not be ideal to merely compare the speeds and feeds while the Aruba Instant solution offers an expansive feature-rich WLAN experience including top notch Technical Support and Warranty. The net result is a lower cost of ownership and an effectively increased Return on Investment.

While the AP11 and AP11D are entry-level models and may not have measured up to your expectation concerning throughput, we encourage you to explore Instant On AP12 and AP15 models for higher bandwidth applications, in addition to the aforementioned and several other great features.

Aruba sincerely welcomes your continued participation in the Instant On community forum - by sharing your domain knowledge and expertise with the rapidly growing Instant On customers and partners community. We value our customers’ suggestions and feedback.

so the answer to poor performance is because of the many features?

but this is the case even with the features not being used? isnt the hardware incorrectly sized in this case?

what would a possible workaround/fix be?

Hi

Just an update to let you know that release 1.4 is out. It comes with several new features including knobs for controlling channel width as you previously mentioned in your post. Do check it out!