Netgear WAC120 Wireless slow

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