Less than expected WiFi speed with 802.11 AC

[LGNilsson]

Not really, at least not unless it's a router with the same Wi-Fi chipset. See if you can test with a TP-Link Archer C7, as I know it has the same Wi-Fi chipset.

[takisot]

I understand that it might be a wifi chipset issue, but this doesn't change the fact that the almond AC performance is crippled under certain circumstances (,if indeed other routers achieve faster speed). Anyway, I will report my findings with whatever AC router I find available.

[xaminmo]

I think the last test would be to try a couple of modern Android phones.

Unfortunately, I only have an iPhone to test on 802.11ac, though I do have several 802.11an systems.
When I test using iperf, with 1 meter distance between station and router:
From iPhone 5s with iOS 7.1.1, and Linux 3.2.63 on gigabit wired, I can get from 49-76Mbit/sec on either radio.
From iPhone 5s to Windows 7 on Intel 6400AGN, I get 72Mbit/sec on 802.11an at 140mbit connect rate.
From the Windows laptop to the Linux box, I get 85Mbit/sec on 802.11an at 140mbit connect rate.
From the Windows laptop to the Linux box, I get 82Mbit/sec on an 802.11gn at 217mbit connect rate.

YMMV; however, you should definitely be able to get more than 30Mbit/sec to/from your iPhone, even if you're not at iOS8 which fixes many of the WiFi issues.

[SethB]

Just tested my iPhone 6 with my Almond Plus and the Ookla Speedtest app on my 5Ghz network.  I have fiber internet service at 100Mbps down, 50Mbps up.  Tested at 80.51 Mbps down, 51.13 Mbps up, 8ms ping time.  I can pretty safely say there are no problems here.

[LGNilsson]

One area of concern I have is that my Almond+ doesn't have a QCA9880 chip.
In the web interface, it says 802.11ac, 1300Mbit/sec, and lets me set channel widths, etc.
However, mine has an AR9580-AR1A. The internet tells me this is an 802.11an chip rated to 450Mbit/sec on 5GHz.
I'm not sure if it's supposed to be compensating with CPU offload or if I've just found the wrong information.

YMMV; however, you should definitely be able to get more than 30Mbit/sec to/from your iPhone, even if you're not at iOS8 which fixes many of the WiFi issues.

The AR9580 is the 2.4GHz chip, with the QCA9880 being the 5GHz chip in the Almond+, so I'm not sure where you're seeing what you posted, as both chips are very much present.

The new firmware which I hope we're going to release any time now, has the Wi-Fi offload and it does increase the performance quite a bit.

[xaminmo]

The AR9580 is the 2.4GHz chip, with the QCA9880 being the 5GHz chip in the Almond+, so I'm not sure where you're seeing what you posted, as both chips are very much present.

The new firmware which I hope we're going to release any time now, has the Wi-Fi offload and it does increase the performance quite a bit.

Edited.  I didn't find the 9880 in the dmesg logs, but I stopped short of disassembling enough to separate the riser card.

[takisot]

Happy New Year to everyone!
I am following up after more tests, this time by using the latest Apple Airport Extreme AC router in the house of a friend.
By using this I was able to achieve 175 Mbps between my Macbook pro and my iPhone 6 and vice-versa:

Also, I achieved 350 Mbps between my Macbook pro and my friends 15' Macbook pro (both retina late 2013):

Then, I decided to repeat the same tests by using the Almond+ instead of the Airport Extreme:
As expected, the connection speed between my Macbook pro and my iPhone 6 dropped to the very low 32 Mbps.
When I connected the two Macbook pros a funny thing happened: They also connected only at 32 Mbps when the same machines achieved 350 Mbps at the same room with airport extreme!

I repeated the tests many times to make sure if they were consistent and they were.
Given that I achieved high speeds (over 500 Mbps) when I connected my late 2013 Macbook pro to my late 2014 Mac Mini, it seems that the low speed problem is evident when the Almond+ connects to any Macbook pro Late 2013.
To be extra sure, I repeated the tests in my house and I was again able to achieve high speed between the mac book pro and mac mini.
Also, I realized that I had not tested my iPhone 6 directly to my mac mini, and I was indeed able to achieve very good speeds, even better than with the airport extreme on my friend's house:

Of course, when I connected my iPhone 6 to the late 2013 macbook pro, the speed dropped again to 32 Mbps..
So, to summarize, I have pinned down the speed problem to the cooperation of the Almond+ with the Macbook pro late 2013 (chipset?drivers?). As I mentioned, I had the exact same results with two macbook pros, so it is not a specific unit issue.
Can you help with this?

[LGNilsson]

I'm sorry, but this is clearly an Apple issue.
We're not in control of their Wi-Fi drivers as I've said before, so there's only so much we can do.
Again, you're not the only Mac owner with problems and I suggest you try Apple's support forum.
I know this doesn't apply you your specific model, but Apple is clearly having some Wi-Fi issues when they issue standalone Wi-Fi patches like this http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1620?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

[takisot]

I'm sorry, but this is clearly an Apple issue.
We're not in control of their Wi-Fi drivers as I've said before, so there's only so much we can do.
Again, you're not the only Mac owner with problems and I suggest you try Apple's support forum.
I know this doesn't apply you your specific model, but Apple is clearly having some Wi-Fi issues when they issue standalone Wi-Fi patches like this http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1620?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I am sorry but this answer is unacceptable without not even investigating the issue , given that at least one other router (AirPort Extreme) works just fine in the same setup.
You should be the one to contact apple and sort this out, not your customers.

[LGNilsson]

Are you surprised that Apple products work well with other Apple products?

We can not contact Apple, they don't care, we're technically a competitors of theirs. If they have driver issues, it's something that you're going to have to complaint to them about as one of their customers.
If two out of your three Apple devices work properly with our product, why is it that you continue to blame us for a problem that we didn't cause?

[takisot]

Wow. You continue to hide your head in the sand instead of trying to resolve the problem.
I lost valuable time to try to help you identify this issue and you quickly dismiss this as an "apple" problem without even trying.
My fault for even bothering to help. Won't happen again.

[LGNilsson]

Please go back and look at your own test results.
They're hard to dispute.
If you have two devices that works well and a third that doesn't, how is that our fault?
This is what I don't understand.
There's really no need to get angry about this, especially as you've proven by your own tests, that there's an issue with the Wi-Fi on the Macbooks.
What would you like me to do? Call Apple and ask them to fix their Wi-Fi drivers? I don't own a single Apple product, so I'm pretty sure they'd tell me to get lost.
You're free to contact our support team and discuss the issue with them, but there's as I said, little to nothing we can do in this case.

[LGNilsson]

One question, are you running OS X 10.9?
It looks like a lot of people are seeing poor Wi-Fi speeds running 10.9 on several devices https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5523321

[takisot]

No I am using Yosemite.
And you do not seem to understand that the problem so far appears ONLY when Amond+ is acting as AC router and not with Airport Exteme so, in my book, this is something that you should investigate.
I wish I had another brand of router to test but I don't. And it is certainly not my job to hunt bugs for securify.

[Zimmie]

Blaming Securifi and blaming Apple isn't going to help figure out the problem or get it fixed. To troubleshoot effectively, we need to know exactly what the problem is. To that end, I suspect it may be useful to have a better description of each testing setup. Specifically, are any of the machines wired? Here are a few test setups that I think may help. First, you will need to set up separate SSIDs for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz so you can control which one the clients use.

MacBook Pro and Mac Mini both on 5 GHz wireless.
MacBook Pro and Mac Mini both on 2.4 GHz wireless.
MacBook Pro on 2.4 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on 5 GHz wireless.
MacBook Pro on 5 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on 2.4 GHz wireless.

MacBook Pro on 5 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on a wired port.
MacBook Pro on a wired port, Mac Mini on 5 GHz wireless.
MacBook Pro on 2.4 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on a wired port.
MacBook Pro on a wired port, Mac Mini on 2.4 GHz wireless.

iPhone on 5 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on a wired port.
iPhone on 2.4 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on a wired port.
iPhone on 5 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on 5 GHz wireless.
iPhone on 2.4 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on 5 GHz wireless.
iPhone on 5 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on 2.4 GHz wireless.
iPhone on 2.4 GHz wireless, Mac Mini on 2.4 GHz wireless.

There are many more combinations you can set up with just the Almond+ and the clients you have, but this is a decent spread. Which ones behave how you expect and which ones don't?

Please don't say that one behaves how you expect until you are absolutely sure you have tested it. In troubleshooting, bad information is worse than no information.