Slow Download Speeds R710 Unleashed

[max_p_eogltxsc8]

Strange issue with R710 on latest unleashed firmware. Upload speeds consistently incredible on both laptop and phone but downloads even from 5 ft away never go over 200 but stay consistent through 3 thick walls. Speedflex on android shows 550 up 550 down to AP. Iperf reflects speedtest.net results. Cable shouldn't be the problem as I have plugged my laptop on it and gotten the gigabit fiber speeds I should be getting. I have factory reset it countless times set everything to auto and tried manually setting the bands and channel width, am I missing something? Any help would be appreciated.

[john_d]

FWIW I also noticed the same thing on R720 with newer ZD builds (forgot which 10.x version, but one of the 10.x's after 10.0 GA) and also vSZ -- vSZ is really easy to test. 3.6.2 is lightning fast, 5.1.x builds had the same characteristic downlink results where the speed start off good for a split second and then decay to 100mbit, but uploads were always in the 500mbit range.

In my experience this affects Wave2 APs the most (R720, R510 in my personal experience), in combination with any Apple or Broadcom based client. Seems like QCA clients and Intel Wifi clients are not as affected.

But yeah, I'd invite QA to try Unleashed 200.6 vs 200.7 against any recent 802.11ac capable iPad or iPhone (made within the last few years) with a static channel + 80MHz out of the box config. I've had this problem on 3 deployments.


With regards to hayk's regression testing, I agree too that 200.4 was the fastest Unleashed release with Wave2 APs. For me the drop between 200.5 and 200.6 was not very noticeable, but the drop in 200.7 was huge. I don't want to roll all the way back to 200.4 as Unleashed has improved in many many other ways in recent releases. It's just the downlink throughput has really suffered.


(P.S. I honestly think this is an upstream regression with your chipset vendor. I have some Meraki APs in my test lab and their Wave2 APs are exhibiting the same behavior with their firmware 26.x vs firmware 25.x, on 26.x speeds start 'good', decay hugely, then slowly inch back up. Based off public info in FCC diagrams, I see the R710/R720 and Meraki's Wave2 APs use the same underlying chipset....

P.P.S. 'good' for Meraki means 25% lower speeds than Ruckus unless standing right in front of their AP. Nobody comes close to Ruckus in antenna design!)

[hayward_kong]

Michael Brado,

     Thanks for escalating my ticket, but does that mean I don't have to get a current support contract?  I don 't mind helping out DE/QA team from what I know currently.

[hayward_kong]

So finally an Engineering team contacted me... hopefully can start tracing the issue down.... At least I have R710, R610, and R510 and R500 to test with...

[john_d]

Any luck yet?

I've wondered if the "per packet adaptive tx" algorithm could have something to do with it, perhaps dialing tx power down to a level that affects throughput (maybe good for ultra high density but at expense to individual client throughput). It doesn't seem like there's a way to turn that off, it is included in SmartZone 5 and I am wondering if the same rate control algorithm was introduced into ZD/Unleashed at around the same time.

[hayward_kong]

I also can confirm this bug also affects the R500 too using unleashed firmware 200.7.x  and 200.6.x
To get the best performance is to drop by down to 200.4.x unleashed firmware. 
When comparing 200.4.x and 200.6.x on the R500 under same conditions etc... we are looking about averaging on downloads with speedflex  on a iPad Pro 2018 
Firmware 200.4.x  Downloads about averaging 220mbps  (downloads speeds are pretty consistent)
Firmware 200.6.x  Downloads about 150-175mbps. (starts out slow and builds up)

As I have noted this also impacts R500 and more likely impacts the R600 for unleashed firmware. 

I also would like to speak on behalf of other R500 and R600 owners that this bug has been around for the last two years which went unnoticed by most people. Because that the R500 and R600 are EOL, I implore Ruckus as a company that is known for it's reputation for their APs for high performance and reliability  to at least consider releasing a new firmware in 200.7.x in fixing this performance issue before abandoning the R500, R600, and possibility the R310. 


 I believe this bug which  a high performance issue is more likely impacting all of Ruckus's 802.11ac wave 1 and wave 2 product lines ranging from Unleashed, ZD, and SZ when developed the same time when the bug first appeared. 

I know this is a educated guess .. but it's something to be explored.