Netgear WAC120 Wireless slow

so it looks like after a few days that i'm more or less back to where i was before.. the AP wireless is great and fast for a day or so and then it either doesn't work (devices report that they can't reach the internet despite having a wifi connection) or it is doing something funky speed wise (starts out slow at 1Mbps and crreps up to 20 or even higher). If I unplug and plug the AP in, it instantaneously jumps to 90Mbps once it's back up.

so in effect, it's faster but i'm back to unplugging and plugging in the AP again. frustrating..

I have exactly this problem too. 

My network connection is a 200Mbps cable link and Speedtest regularly puts it at that and it's nice and consistent. Our office has a large floor plan so we need a couple of AP's to cover everywhere. To that end, I've got two WAC120 AP's and they work great apart from the fact that over time, they get slower and slower. To workaround this, I reboot them once a week and that's all it takes for Speedtest to tell me I've jumped from 10-20Mbps back up to 200Mbps.

I've always put it down to a probably memory leak in the firmware as over time I've tried all sorts of different configurations and optimizations for the settings. Both AP's are on different channels for both 2.4 and 5G networks and the signal is strong with a reasonable overlap in when using WiFi analyser if I stand exactly half way between the access points.

All my devices are happy to roam between the two AP's and happily transition between areas of the office with no issues.

So coverage is great, there are no channel clashes, we're sufficiently far away from other AP's from other offices that they barely register on WiFi Analyser and yet, the WAC120's slow down dramatically over time.

I've never been able to solve it so any extra insight into the problem would be useful.

I'm still working a support case through netgear on this issue that I opened on 8/5/16 (3 months and 2 days as i type this). I have sent them topology information, captured and sent network packets while the issue occures, screenshots showing it occuring, AP configuration files, setup a syslog server to send syslog dumps, various other info on my devices, diagnostic logs from the AP itself, installed inSSIDer and given them remote access to my wireless laptop via team viewer, and so on.

The feedback that i've gotten is that so far they don't see anything wrong. Their only actionable recommendation so far has been to replace my ethernet cable. That didn't resolve the problem.. I'm waiting to see what they say next. It's a good thing that i have a unix systems administration background because i can't imagine a regular home user doing half the things that they've asked me to do. To be fair to netgear support, the 3 months of elapsed time has a lot to also do with my ability to follow up with some of their requests (e.g. finding a laptop to install wireshark on so i can capture packets for them when i don't own one) at a time when it's occuring which I don't always have time to do. But i digress..

I'll update this thread with whatever resolution I end up getting one way or another, but my advice currently would be to avoid this model. At some point I expect that they'll just swap some other device for mine but we'll see. Needless to say my faith in the product and company has sufferred.. 

gwichman / Paul2004v,

Have you tried to perform a factory reset then reconfigure the WAC120 from scratch and check if same problem will occur?

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

Yes. After reading some other's experiences around firmware upgrades and doing factory resets after them, I tried that to no avail.

Yes, I've factory reset them several times usually after firmware updates and reconfigure them from scratch. If also reset them and then restored backups of my config as well.

Within a week I have to reset both devices as they both slow down dramatically. At the moment they're running the latest firmware for the European market and they were last reset a few days ago.

I largely experience the exact same thing Paul describes most of the time. It's very fast (nearly 90Mbps which is what my cable tops out at) for a week or so and one day we're struggling to load web pages or stream across multiple wifi devices (ipads, laptops, etc) and speedtest shows 1-3Mbps so i go power cycle the AP and viola - back to nearly 90Mbps for another week or so.. It does feel like a memory leak

Some updates.. My issue was finally handed over to the engineering team. The engineering team asked me to provide ping results to the AP both from a wired LAN device and my wireless device (laptop) when the issue was occuring. I waited for it to occur again and then captured both during the occurance and then again after power cycling the unit (showing before/after speedtests again). The results were mostly identical to my eye but I sent them in (i.e. no real difference).

Engineering then recommended replacing the unit and sent me an RMA. My replacement unit should be on it's way shortly. We'll see if that resolves the issue that i'm having or not. I assume they're sending me the same exact model but we'll see what I end up receiving. Further updates when i have them..

I just got my new WAC120 and am having the exact same problems, works great for a day or two at 90 Mbits then slows to a crawl at 1 to 2 Mbits download speeds. Rebooting the wac120 fixes the problem. This is with the standard 802.11ac 5 Gig Auto settings and several different iPads and iPhones get the same problem. The firmware version is WAC120_V2.0.3 Oddly the upload speeds are still at about 5 Mbits. Since Apple is out of the WiFi business now I was looking for a good replacement, so far the WAC120 is failing. This does sound like some kind of memory leek or error creep over time. This should be fixable in firmware.

Short update.. I recieved my replacement unit today. Same model.. I updated the firmware and have it up and running at 94Mbps which is good. We'll see if it lasts.. i'm skeptical. I will report back either way

Last night the AP did the same thing the prior one did. Dropped to 2-3Mbps.. I power cycled and it was right back at 90Mbps. So the replacement unit did not fix my problem. We'll see what netgear says next but i'm pretty tired of it all..

Out of interest, do you have QoS enabled? I do and tonight whilst it happily streamed some 1080P HD content to an Amazon TV stick after that, the rest of the machines on the network slowed down dramatically as they were only doing general Windows networking and file sharing. My http downloads topped out at 20Mbps again when it should give 200Mbps.

Rebooting to AP's solved the issue again so I'm going to disable the QoS and see how things go.

UPDATE: Disabling QoS causes the AP's to top out at 20Mbps on my speed tests. Enabling QoS again and the speed tests return to full speed.

Could it be that the QoS management algorithm is failing/crashing/working in such a way as to limit the maximum connection speed by mac address and over time, the speeds are negotiated downwards to give all the clients a good chance of getting at least some bandwidth?

Paul

I have previously yes.. turned off a bunch of things like QOS and dynamic channel selection.. It did seem to stabalize the AP but my overall throughput suffered a great deal.. I would then only get 20-25Mbps but at least it didn't seem to drop to 2-3.. I really didn't understand why a QoS setting would impact things like that considering nothing is typically using the wireless except the one ipad that i'm watching youtube on. But there may be somethign to all that..

I would be interested in hearing how that works out for you in comparison though!

Hi,

Can any of you please send a copy of configuration (user back/restore configuration option), also please send a copy of the logs in the monitor page during the issue. I will try to reproduce the issue on my setup and check for any workarounds that I can suggest.

Thanks

Ranga

I also suggest you to upgrade to Firmware version WAC120_v2.0.7 which is the latest available.

I've been on the latest firmware for quite some time and the problem has persisted.

Where would you want the access point configurations to be sent? I have two backups that I've just done. I just need somewhere to send them....

Obviously the issue takes 7 to 10 days to appear and I reset the access points yesterday so it'll be a few days before I can send any logs.

Thanks

Paul

I just found this thread...

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Business-Wireless/WAC120-poor-throughput/m-p/977776#U977776

It seems the resolution for the owner in that thread was to have Netgear upgrade the devices to the WAC270 after six months of investigations. That was on v2.05 firmware but clearly the underlying issue has not been resolved...

Paul

gwichman,

Since same problem still occurs on the replacement unit you have received, I suggest that you seek assistance again from NETGEAR Support and share the forum link that @Paul2004v has mentioned.  

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

I have upgraded to v2.0.7 and am also still seeing the same slowdown problems. I have noticed it is on a per device basis my iPad works at 90 Mbits but the iPhone has degraded to 2 Mbits download speeds. Upload speeds seem to be uneffected also. The Station monitoring screen shows the rate at 48.00 on the bad devices and 400.0 on the good devices all in mode 11ac and other stats are the same. Shutting down and up Wifi on the device does not fix the problem only a WAP reboot gets it working again at full speed, for a day or two. 

That's an interesting observation. If that's the case, it seems the AP is negotiating the connection speed and remembering it even after the device is disconnected. When the machine re-nogotiates its connection speed, the maximum it gets is the previously negotiated speed. At some point, the connection is being re-negotiated due to a drop in signal quality and the speed is lowered. Beause the re-negotiation seems to start from the last known speed, it will only ever negotiate downwards and over time the devices will get slower and slower.

This sort of behaviour would appear similar to a memory leak in the sense that a reboot would clear the mac address table with the connection settings allowing the devices to re-negotiate from the highest possible speed downwards and that results in the observed speed increase after a reboot.

Hi Paul,

Please copy and paste the configuration and logs in the reply directly.

Thanks

Ranga

Hi,

i've got the same problem for nearly one year. Is there already a solution available?

Greets

seackone,

It seems that you have already opened an online case with NETGEAR Support with regard to your concern.  Kindly let us know about the progress of it.

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team