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Forum Discussion
Orbi RBR750 WLAN Latency!
Interesting thing going on here. I've been a orbi fan for a while now and for the most part have not had an issues. That is until I recently "Upgraded" to the RBR 750 WiFi 6 dealeo. Right off the bat...
On average the latency over WiFI ranges from 10-160 ms.
Could you be a bit more specific about which latency is being measured and how?
- Using ICMP packets?
- Which tool?
- From which device to which device? For example:
- To measure a single WiFi link, from a device on WiFi to the Orbi unit it is connected to.
- To measure the WiFi backhaul link, from a device hard wired to a satellite to the Orbi router (in AP mode)
- To measure both user WiFi and backhaul?
- To include a target outside the Orbi
- Cisco switch
- pfSense
- ISP modem
- Internet resource (DNS server, etc.)
Thanks
Hey man appreciate the reply. To keep it basic, all im measuring is ICMP between a couple of my laptops and phones and those same laptops and phones back to the router (Macbook Pro 2020, Samsung Galaxy Book, iPhone(s)) and get a pretty wide sweep of latency, but all devices report on average 50+ ms over WiFI. I know 100% for a fact it is the orbi because any of those devices plugged into the switch get sub zero latency every single time no questions asked. I do however understand there will be maybe a couple ms lost when on the satellite, which is why in every ICMP request I ran I also did one without the satellite in the equation to eliminate that as a suspect. Outside DNS or whatever else that leaves the network at my house doesn't really matter though. As long as it still has latency from a wireless perspective, whatever wireless device reaches outside the network will just have those MS tacked on, which is unfortunate because the actual throughput is great! And look I know I'm being a brat about the added latency, it's just the OCD in me lol .
(oh, Dear. "i things". My tools are all Windows)
I have a strong suspicion that the problem is WiFi itself. i.e. The Orbi in the sense that it is a WiFi router, but the problem would exist with any WiFi router.
I use the hrping tool from cfos software https://www.cfos.de/en/ping/ping.htm
Just now, I did 200 ICMP requests against my ancient RBR50 Orbi with the Windows PC connected directly to it.
Results are:
Minimum 0.530 ms
Average 1.239 ms
Maximum 18.385 ms
Std. Dev. 1.837 ms
Hmmmm. Even with a direct wired connection, there are occasional long ping times.
Then ran 1.000 ICMP requests against the same RBR50 using a Lenovo PC connected to WiFi at 5G with the LInk speed 866 for transmit, 866 for receive. (RBR50 is 802.11ac - no ax)
Minimum 1.208 ms
Average 5.942 ms
Maximum 133.717 ms
Std. Dev. 14.351 ms
My explanation is that the wired connection is inherently 'Full Duplex'. Transmissions can occur in both directions at full speed. "no waiting". In contrast, every WiFi connection is inherently 'Wait Your Turn'. Every device competes for the same WiFi radio channel. When any device in the network transmits, every other device must wait and attempt to gain control of the channel long enough to transmit. "Any" device includes all of the WiFi access points and all of their SSID's plus every device doing anything. Like Ethernet, WiFi is a very busy communications channel. Every SSID broadcasts 'beacon frames' 5-10 times a second. (1 router + 2 satellites times 2 (primary and guest) = 15-30 beacon frames every second.) All of the broadcast frames that clutter up the IP subnet use time on the WiFi channel (ARP broadcasts, DHCP requests/offers/acks, multicast broadcasts....) Every time I use Wireshark to capture the network I am astounded by all the crap flying around.
A good test would be to plug in any other brand of WiFi router (perhaps the router that the Orbi replaced) and perform the same experiments. i.e. run a several hundred pings using a wired connection. Then run hundreds more over WiFi.