Overview
A customer has new LAN and wireless deployment in an existing building and wish to deploy wireless to two different groups of users: staff and guests.
There is one MSM710 (version 5.3.6.0-01-8252) and 10x MSM410.
Design
In order to achieve the required functionality the following VLANs and VSC’s were created.
VLAN Name, VLAN ID, Network, Gateway
server, 200, 192.168.200.0/24, 192.168.200.253
wlan, 230, 192.168.230.0/24, 192.168.230.253
wguest, 231, 192.168.231.0/24, 192.168.231.253
VSC Name, SSID, VLAN ID, Usage
Staff, Staff, 230, Internal staff wifi
Guest, Guest, 231, Guest wifi
Configuration
The HP MSM710 is only connected using the LAN port with an address of 192.168.200.250/24 and has VLAN 230 & 231 configured with an address of 192.168.230.250/24 & 192.168.231.250/24 respectively.
The client has requested services for IEEE 802.11g & n and this has been configured accordingly with distance between the APs set to medium. The APs are NOT tunnelled back to the controller and are connected to ports with VLAN 200 untagged and 230,231 tagged. The port the controller is plugged into is configured the same as the APs.
Issues
The client has been experiencing issues with wireless clients getting slow and intermittent connections.
Testing
As the LAN has only just been deployed, I thought it best to prove it was working properly before moving on and testing the wireless. The LAN was tested using iperf on two laptops and testing between VLANs. The exact results were not recorded but each test was set to two minutes with average throughput of 350-400 Mbps recorded (the laptops are over two years old and had other applications running, so this was deemed an acceptable result). Using the controller as an iperf server, a similar speed was recorded when testing via its LAN port.
The Staff SSID was then tested, again the exact results were not recorded but throughput would peek at around 9Mbps and vary down to 6Mbps but each run would suffer a period of 0Mbps for around 5 to 15 seconds at least once during each 2 minute test.
The settings were changed to IEEE 802.11n only and then IEEE 802.a & n with similar results, so IEEE 802.11g & n was restored.
The transmission rates were changed with all the slower rates (below 18Mbps removed). All but 1 AP were removed, with patch cables swapped. The test was repeated later on with a different AP so that only 1 AP was connected at a time. The set of tests produced the same result as each other but different from the previous results, the rate would peak at 17Mbps to start then drop to 9Mbps. The rate each second would alternate between 0Mbps and 9Mbps, very occasionally it would stay at 9Mbps for 2 seconds but no more than that. The periods of 0Mbps only lasted 1 second throughout the test.
I have not yet changed the AP distance to short or long, but with only 1 AP in the last tests done on the client site, I fail to see that this will make a huge difference.
I am at a loss as to what is causing this intermittent level of performance.
Is there anything obvious that I have mis-configured or are there any further tests anyone recommend I try?
Your thoughts and any assistance would be very welcome.
Many thanks
Mark
P.S. This thread has been moved from Communications, Wireless (Legacy ITRC forum) to MSM Series. -HP Forum Moderator