Anyone having an issue with Peplink APs experiencing limited speed and a reboot resolves? I have a B20x with multiple Peplink AP including AP One AX and AP One AX Lite. All seem to have the issue in rotation. They seem to end up limited to 20mbps or so when normal throughput is closer to 3-400mbps Thanks
Hi @mystery. We have at least three that exhibit that behavior. All are AP One AX (not lite.) Actually, we had several more but the owners changed them out for another brand.
I think there is a separate but possibly related problem. I have two AP One AX Lites. One says Pepwave the other says Peplink but both say the same hardware version. One operates at half the speed of the other, using the same cable, in the same location, right next to it. So far I am not finding a setting that might cause that and both have a B20x as the controller so should be same profile.
Interesting. Sounds like it is time for a ticket.
have a ticket but they want me to eliminate all SSIDs and have just 1 SSID. That would require hours of work to reconfigure many dozens of devices. Not going to happen.
That’s something that could easily be simulated on a bench if it were suspected to be an issue.
i was able to figure out one part of the issue, channel 165 is providing slower speeds, upon changing to 161 the differences between the Lite APs was fixed. but the big question remaining is why do i get 20mbps on 2.4ghz
this issue is still an issue
I will see 300-400mbps consistently on a fresh boot on 5ghz, for example
Over days or weeks, I start to see 20-90mbps on the same AP, same SSID, same 5ghz
As soon as I power cycle the AP its back to 3-400mbps
@Rick-DC did you ever get to the bottom?
Hi @mystery. Sadly, no. We’ve replaced some of the AX models with the earlier AC models which work extremely well.
Like clock work. Was seeing 300-400mbps (ISP max) a week or so ago. Down to 20mbps today. 5ghz only SSID. Sitting a couple feet from the AP. Happening with multiple device types (laptops, phones). Using multiple speedtest sites (speedtest.net, fast.com, etc). Ticket # 25110589.
The behavior is so weird. Last week the issue was popping up but resolving itself within 30-60 minutes without a reboot. The other day the issue presented for the entire day but then resolved itself as soon as I came back from dinner. Test devices are a mix of phones and computers using multiple speed test sites , I was testing multiple times per hour. I was seeing 1-20mbps a lot of the time. These devices were a couple feet away from the AP. The next closest house/structure/network is 150-200+ feet away. If it was interference I wouldnt expect it to cause this when the client device and AP are only separated by a couple feet. Also interestingly enough, the spec sheets on the AP One AX say 2400mbps and the Ap One AX Lite says 1200 but I seem to only get about 300mbps at best. This is all on 5ghz with Wifi 6 box checked.
AP one ax has been in limited speed state for days (maxing out around 30mbps down) but no reply from peplink support. AP one ax lites are ok showing 3-400mbps. Ticket # 25110589. hoping peplink support can look soon and maybe finally identify the root cause?!
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bump please can someone look at the ticket
I had something like this years ago. My AppleTV would normally pull 150mbps down over 5G WiFi, but after a lot of uptime (and possibly much time with the AppleTV sleeping) I would find that it would get stuck at a lower rate (closer to 30mbps). This was using an AP One Mini.
Rebooting the AP didn’t help, but rebooting the AppleTV always fixed it for a while (a few days)
I never did diagnose it, but eventually the problem went away, either due to a Peplink AP update and/or an AppleTV update.
- What firmware version are you running on the APs?
- do you see the slowdown only on a single device? If so, could you try updating its firmware too?
its happening on multiple devices including laptops, phones, etc. all devices are latest drivers/firmware. this has been on-going for a very long time. it comes and goes. saw the issue for five days straight this week and then poof it resolved itself. devices are two feet from AP One AX during testing. they roam onto other APs that are AP One AX Lite that seem unaffected.
That doesn’t sound like the problem I was having. The fact that your issue comes (and goes) makes me suspect some sort of WiFi interference issue.
Some ideas:
- could this be interference from your own APs, or from a neighbor? Try using an app such as WiFiExplorer Mac: WiFi Explorer - Wi-Fi Scanner and Analyzer for Mac) , Windows: WiFi Explorer Lite - Download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store and see what’s going on
- Are you using any DFS channels on WiFi?
- are you using “Auto” channels? perhaps instead, you should try hard-coding your APs to specific, non-overlapping channels
Neighbors buildings are 200+ feet away. Issue is happening within 2 feet of AP. Can there still be interference? Have tried switching to different channels the issue reappears. No DFS. No Auto. My APs are all on non-overlapping.
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This is all on 5ghz with Wifi 6 box checked.
I was going to suggest this thread to you:
but looks like you already know about it.
This sort of sounds like a serious flaw in the AX models?
This may be off Convo here and possibly a very large rant but I think it might be useful to some, regarding mystery’s problem:
TLDR:
Update to the latest firmware, turn off the wifi 6 POS, set it back to normal wifi operation (separate 5 and 2.4 channels), use the same SSID if you want, set the 5 GHz frequency to auto in MHz channel, set the 2.4ghz frequency to 20mhz channel
Turn boost on and off (may help) see which setting works best
Do a wifi channel scan and set your AP on either channel 36, 38, 149 and 165, those are the channels with the least radio interference
You might want to tweak some of the other radio parameters, ask chatgpt if you need help knowing what each one does.
The reason you might be experiencing this is radio interference but not in the way you think, of you have it set to auto, you will get constant weird problems, try setting it on a channel fixed, usually when OTHER, APs roam channels this happens, when you are fixed they avoid you for the most part
Also regarding the AX units specifically every time we installed these on high radio density office environments we had all sorts of issues, we eventually found homes to all our nightmare AX hardware units where they stopped failing, those homes were out in the middle of nowhere ranches or places with barely any wifi, they worked absolutely great there, but we were never able to make them run on city levels of wifi radio interference, so not sure how much success you will have
But try these changes, they should improve your signal quality and range slightly, of they don’t, contact @Rick-DC to find you a rugged unit with a Pismo chip and that will for sure solve your problem 
Now for the long as rant haha
I keep getting reports from friends that they might have solved the issue about a year ago with an update but I have not verified it myself.
I know I never had the issue again… Because I switched back to 5 year old, second hand, used, oldschool, Pismo chip, enterprise, rugged and mini units and never had another issue since, all my customer complaints evaporated, I have never touched an AX AP since and never been happier
As long as @Rick-DC keeps supplying my Pismo addiction those are the only APs I’ll ever install to customers until Peplink goes back to caring for their WiFi hardware, not re-badging some random other guys hardware but making custom badass proprietary design hardware built to survive until the next nuclear apocalypse, and yes the AX units are rebadged hardware, they were also sold by Netgear and other network hardware manufacturers, which explains the problems (and don’t get me started on how it was the same hardware bust costed 1/2 of the Peplinks hardware cost)
Haven’t had a chance to test the new enterprise APs with wifi 7, seems like a great unit, but Peplink is now doing to us what Cisco did back then and what originally brought us to Peplink, we came to Peplink because we didn’t want to spend $500-$1500 per AP on terribly complex Cisco hardware, Peplink offered equally better quality with much better software and management for 1/4 the price, it was a no brainer
Fast forward a few years, Cisco now has things akin to incontrol, much cheaper licensing on the units, and they went down from $1200 an AP to around $600
And make no mistake I love Peplink, I’d rather install that over Cisco, if I never again have to touch a piece of Cisco hardware in my life I’ll die a happy man, but ATM it’s basically imposible to convince large Enterprise customers to ditch Cisco wireless hardware (or even unify) over something like Peplink which they have mostly never heard of, if it costs the same and has higher suscription costs
These new enterprise units seem like the real deal but at $500 I’ll hard pass, the 6 year old Enterprise units may not give me gigabit WiFi or 10gb backhaul… but they work, they work great, my customers don’t complain, they are happier than ever, they pay me on time, and replacements are under $100 whenever they do break down, so until the supply of these runs out I am absolutely not going to upgrade to anything else, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it I learned that lesson with that AX units, newer is not always better
Maybe if it was $250 like the original enterprise and the same quality I would consider giving it a shot, but as it is right now, nope. I don’t want a repeat of selling $50k worth of hardware upgrades to a customer for the things to then have a mental breakdown in real time and having to scramble to find how to restore the old hardware back, all of this while wrangling the customer to not ditch us as a service provider, if we hadn’t had 4 years of absolute perfect service with them they would have ditched us on that spot for that fiasco, not something id like to repeat.
And for the record, I’ve been an avid Peplink lover since before it was cool haha (2008), this rant comes from a place of caring, I want Peplink to be the best but they have absolutely dropped the proverbial WiFi ball in the past years by providing mediocre to downright bad WiFi hardware (sub 25m range on some of the BR1 units WiFi? Really Peplink? Even the Starlink mini’s integrated router reaches farther than that…) and not caring enough about their WiFi arm to fix it properly, not sure why they did this maybe cost cutting? Either way I hope they eventually take a small break from making 700 versions of the same mobile hardware for 5 minutes to put some TLC back on the WiFi front, here’s to hoping the New Enterprise is all it’s claiming to be! (Not holding my breath)
Sorry for the long rant I figured this info might be useful to others having issues, I know going back to the old enterprise units solved all my headaches
Peplink seems to have forgotten the fundamental point that made their original WiFi’s so great, the customers and end users have no idea about how any of this works, they pay you and expect stuff to just work, us installers don’t care about big stats or the newest bells and whistles, we care about being able to affordably and within market provide our customers with a good service, keeping a good relationship with our customers (not having their networks crash several times a day) and keeping them happy (and paying), and well of course making a profit (15% margins? Really Peplink?)
End users don’t want/need gigabit internet, they need 100-200Mbit good, stable and reliable WiFi, that’s all they want, anything else is excess cost and bells and whistles, the fact that we have hundreds of users all running on several years old hardware with some going for as long as two years without a single wifi ticket attributable to AP issues is proof of that.
Just my 2c
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Peplink may have found a fix, its been running for two weeks so far. Usually the issue surfaces around two weeks on average so the next week will be telling.
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