AP One poor performance

I’m getting poor performance with a new AP One. My old consumer grade Wifi units perform better. I returned the original AP One for an exchange because I thought it was defective, and this one exhibits the same behavior, so I doubt it’s a hardware issue.

I’m running in bridge mode paired with a Linksys RV042 router. I also grabbed a Cisco 2811 router from work and manually config’d it, just to rule out the RV042, same problem, so it’s not my router.

Basic problem is that I only get max 15Mbps actual throughput from any endpoint (PC, mobile device, etc). Direct connect to the RV042 / Cisco yields ~70Mbps, which is my circuit speed.

I’ve tried out-of-the box settings, and adjusted what little parameters are available, no luck. Am I missing something here, or is this all that I can expect from an AP One?

This sounds like it could be an interference/noise issue. Have you tried changing the channel on the AP One? The most common ones are 1,6, and 11 but I recommend to use a program that will help you determine the best channel to use.

The following is a very good free one:

I have very little RFI here. The few signals I can detect are about -90dBm or less. As mentioned, I have some old consumer units that I’ve tested and I can get ~30Mbps with a single stream 65Mpbs rate. Every channel gives the same result. With the AP One, the 15Mpbs I stated is best-case performance. It often drops to 5 - 8 Mpbs for no apparent reason. Signal strength is excellent, better than -35dBm (close range), S/N ratio is excellent too.

Slight off topic, but I can’t disable WMM - is that by design? Also is there a command line interface?

-35 is pretty hot, maybe too hot. Have you tried turning the power down? Sometimes too much power can have an impact on performance as well.

Are there any other possible 2.4 RFI sources like a phone or baby monitor?

Please open a support ticket and we will help investigate:
http://cs.peplink.com/contact/support/

Yes that’s -35 close up. I have to keep the power turned up because the signal drops off drastically at even moderate distances, which is another issue. All of the consumer grade units have lower power when at close range, but far better signal at distant ranges - I tested the exact same spots. That’s using the same channel, channel width, source location, etc. I still don’t get that.

Anyway I get the same low data throughput even at distance. No other RFI sources, no phones, baby monitors, etc.

I opened a support ticket as you recommended, hopefully it can be resolved. Thank you.

This sounds like a defective unit, which is rare. Even more rare would be getting two in a row!

The AP One has very high output power and should destroy a consumer grade unit on distance.

We may need to get this unit RMA’d so we can test it ourselves.

Thanks -Tim