When troubleshooting performance issues in a wireless network, taking care of the different frame flows over the air, will help us mitigate the majority of the issues.
One of the frame's flows that affect the overall performance of the wireless network is the retransmission rate (a frame is retransmitted when the delivery was not acknowledged or it's reported as corrupted), excessive frame retransmission forces the client-AP to negotiate lower data rates for the communications, causing greater delay and higher airtime utilization.
How can I tell if the retransmission rate is high?
- From the AP support log.
----------------------- Host/Target Tx Stats ----------------------
RKS stats magic: cafe0001
421200 MSDUs success(msdus_success)
4582766 MPDUs success(mpdus_success)
632 tx completions delivered(comp_delivered)
7828618 Tx HW queued(hw_queued)
7828618 Tx HW reaped(hw_reaped)
188 Tx MAC underrun(underrun)
1424910 Tx HW paused(hw_paused)
3290623 Tx seq posted(seq_posted)
740 Tx mu seq posted(mu_seq_posted)
72066 Tx seq failed(seq_failed_queueing)
1342284 MPDUs requed(mpdu_requed)
5925004 MPDUs tried(mpdu_tried)
2748 MPDUs sw_flush(mpdus_sw_flush)
19468 MPDUs truncated(mpdus_truncated)
1324450 MPDUs block ack_failed(mpdus_ack_failed)
568 MPDUs expired(mpdus_expired)
2654643 excess retries(tx_xretry) ------------------------> very high 'tx_xretry'
902025741 sched self trig(self_triggers)
116763 ampdu retry failed(sw_retry_failure)
Excessive retries can be directly related to PHY errors:
------------ Host/Tgt Rx Stats ------------
34066065 PPDUs Rx from HW(htt.ppdu_recvd)
31502324 MPDUs Rx OK(htt.mpdu_cnt_fcs_ok)
2602746 MPDUs Rx Err(htt.mpdu_cnt_fcs_err)
2696712 MPDUs dropped in FW ring(htt.fw_ring_mpdu_drop)
2599042 local mgmt Rx(pdev_local_buffer_stats.local_reaped)
63379830 Rx PHY errors(rx_phyerr) ---------------------------------> very high 'rx_phyerr'
34073621 Rx MPDU errors(rxdesc_err_att)
2599027 Rx MPDU FCS errors(rxdesc_err_fcs)
- From Wireshark.
Collect a packet capture on the specified wireless interface of the AP by selecting the AP and then click 'More'>Packet Capture.
In the Packet capure page, select the appropiae radio you want to monitor and the option 'save to file'. Click 'Start' to begin to capture and then 'Stop' to stop the capture. When the file is ready, the 'Download' option will appear for you to download the file.
Once you have got the pcap file, then you can look for the 'Retry' flag on the 802.11 information of the frame.
Right click and 'Apply as Filter>Selected to fiter out the all the retransmitted frames:
This is the wireshark filter for the retry flag in the frames.
wlan.fc.retry == 1
Check the total amount of packets in the file vs. the number of packets displayed and then you will have a meassure of the retransmission rate of the packets captured in the specific lapse. In our example, we have a 10% of retransmission rate.
We can see, for our example, the probe response from the AP was retrasmitted many times, which means -most likely- the client never received it. This could have ended on a client unable to connect to the wireless network or maybe just connecting to the next available AP -no usually the closest one-.
What are the causes of high retransmission rates and how can I address them?
- non-wifi interference. Identify the source of the interference and shut it down -if it's under your administration- or relocate the AP if the interference cannot be disabled.
- wifi interference (co-channel or adjacent channel). Review the channel plan and choose a channel selection option that best services your enviroment.
- hidden nodes. Reduce the cell size or relocate the AP.
- poor signal to noise ratio. Identify the sources of the most noise signals and reduce/disable them -if it's under you administration- or relocate the AP if the interence cannot be reduced.
- bad coverage configuration. Relocate the APs, add more APs or increase the cell size.
