Router low performance wifi on AP Mode

[sucka]

Hello,
i have an Asus be98 router and wanted to use it in AP Mode so i can use a firewall gateway before it, i tested everything using a 1gbps pppoe connection. After i set it up i realized wireless is not as stable as in router mode, so i started debugging.

After speedtest i have realized that in router mode i get about 850mbps download, in ap mode with the same setup and same place for device test, i get 350mbps max (sometimes even lower), every time, i have used an iphone for test mainly but i have tested other wifi devices and had same results, on lan there is no difference in performance, just wireless is the one messed up, and only download so badly, upload not so much, it almost gets to the right speed for download, but rapidly always falling to the same low values.

So i continued debugging, tested the cables, they are brand new and they test fine running benchmarks on all the cables half a meter cat 7 & 8 anyway overkill, started testing all lan port inside the router maybe that was problem, still nothing, then even tested different gateways for inbound internet inside the ap, i tested a pfsense, an opnsense machine and even an asus axe16000 router to give internet to be98 that was in ap mode.
I have tested the devices with dhcp and static ip in ap mode, i have even tested everything in router mode but with dhcp, firewall and wan disabled, and just connected the gateway on lan ports.
(And yes on devices like be98 after changing to ap mode, i have re-enabled wifi7, and made sure all tests were made with the same wifi settings all the time, even tested all wifi settings combinations possible, hoped something there was at fault as a bug, but to no difference).
The same problem manifests itself on all bands 2.4, 5hghz and 6ghz so it isn't band specific, and tested last 2 firmwares from asus and last 2 from merlin/gnuton on both of them.


I then tested everything on axe16000 as well, to check if it's something device specific, even if it has a different speed from the start as its a different device, i still see the same behavior of low performance in ap mode or any method i try to use the external gateway.

So what gives? are both routers with ap mode with performance problems? even though i am an experienced dev, did i omit doing something like a noob? i mean im no network engineer; Or do i have wrong expectations from such a device? Did anyone hit anything like this and knows any solution? I wanted to use this router as it would be a fenomenal AP on paper compared to an actual AP.
Thanks.

 

[bbunge]

Well, I am sure others will chime in with buying hardware for its intended use (a router should be used as a router not an access point) and beta testing WIFI 7 devices. And, don't use a phone for bandwidth (speed) tests!

 

[Bill_Stewart]

(I thought this forum was for wired-only routers?)

 

[sucka]

Well, I am sure others will chime in with buying hardware for its intended use (a router should be used as a router not an access point) and beta testing WIFI 7 devices. And, don't use a phone for bandwidth (speed) tests!

Like i've said speedtest was the same with phone or laptop so why would you say phones are bad, just because cheap phones may have problems for a simple gigabit test? well i have tested on wifi7 and 6e as well, so i needed phones as well, and the problem was the performance on acces point mode that this routers have, i hoped others would know about this problem as well, so thanks for the advice, i'l remember phones are not to be used and routers with vlan tagging and acces point mode as well.

At least i got here as much help as from the company's support, the lesson, don't ever buy consumer hardware or ask consumer brands for help or other consumers, everything open source.
P.S. it may be in the wrong thread, sadly i can't delete this thread, i'l try by deleting account though if i can, or if anyone can help me at least delete this thread and account, thanks you very much and sorry for the fuss.

 

[Tech9]

No need to delete the account. You’re correct about phenomenal on paper thing. How it usually works with consumer AIO routers - you pay for the latest and greatest and then wait for about 2 years to have it fixed (Asus) or just EOL’d (TP-Link, Netgear, etc.), then next, and next… the reason I call them disposable hardware.

 

[ali.]

Like i've said speedtest was the same with phone or laptop so why would you say phones are bad, just because cheap phones may have problems for a simple gigabit test? well i have tested on wifi7 and 6e as well, so i needed phones as well, and the problem was the performance on acces point mode that this routers have, i hoped others would know about this problem as well, so thanks for the advice, i'l remember phones are not to be used and routers with vlan tagging and acces point mode as well.

At least i got here as much help as from the company's support, the lesson, don't ever buy consumer hardware or ask consumer brands for help or other consumers, everything open source.
P.S. it may be in the wrong thread, sadly i can't delete this thread, i'l try by deleting account though if i can, or if anyone can help me at least delete this thread and account, thanks you very much and sorry for the fuss.

@sucka back from another thread: you mentioned you have PfSense: so I am guessing you had PfSense handle the DHCP duties with router mode on AXE16000. Did you run into any other issues besides obviously the low speed problem?

FYI: I had similar type issue with AX-6000 but that was on the upload side not download, the issue was with the physical port configuration.

 

[kuki68ster]

Some weeks ago I went into a rabbit hole, from Asus, to Nanopi r4s with OpenWrt, to a topton n100 mini-pc (pfSense and opnsense), and I came to i conclusion, better stick with built for purpose devices, in your case just get a wireless access point if you are using something like a firewall gateway...

In my particular case, using an Asus router just works...

 

[ddaenen1]

Some weeks ago I went into a rabbit hole, from Asus, to Nanopi r4s with OpenWrt, to a topton n100 mini-pc (pfSense and opnsense), and I came to i conclusion, better stick with built for purpose devices, in your case just get a wireless access point if you are using something like a firewall gateway...

In my particular case, using an Asus router just works...

And pfSense also "just works" once it is set up correctly. pfSense and OpnSense are much more built for purpose than any consumer appliance but if it is just for domestic use and there is no need for functionality that pfSense or OpnSense has to offer, i would agree with you.

 

[sfx2000]

When you look at the current crop of WiFi6 (wave 2?) and WiFi7 big honking routers...

There's a lot of HW offload - from NAT to Wireless - it's a given that these devices are trying their best to hit the marketing claims...

If one wants to do a dedicated router, along with AP's - then one should consider this - buy AP's, not BHR's and run them in AP mode...

And as I mention in other threads - wireless performance is really driven by the client capabilities...

 

[sfx2000]

Some weeks ago I went into a rabbit hole, from Asus, to Nanopi r4s with OpenWrt, to a topton n100 mini-pc (pfSense and opnsense), and I came to i conclusion, better stick with built for purpose devices, in your case just get a wireless access point if you are using something like a firewall gateway...

On X86, OpnSense/pfSense is a great solution- their weakness perhaps is wireless...

OpenWRT is strong at Wireless, but their x86 is kind of not on the mainline - it's supported, but not a priority...

two different targets, and perhaps two different arrows...

 

[sucka]

Sorry for the delay in response.

As an update where i am with the situation, i found out the problem is not on Asus part.
I have bought an ubiquiti ap u7 pro max as well, and had the same experience, the same speed results.
Then while debugging, i though about testing an Asus router with Wi-Fi disabled set up as a gateway, and everything is perfect, so the culprit is the pfsense/opnsense machine, so i tried another pc i had with a 14700k intel cpu, to eliminate cpu problems as a culprit, same results, but i have the same NICs, on the mini pc i use pfsense i have i226-lm and on the secondary test machine i have i226-v, i tried opnsense as well without a difference. With the asus router as a gateway, i get the same speed on u7 ap like testing directly on asus router's wifi.

The pfsense i have tested is version 2.7.2 CE, and opnsense versions 24.7.2 to 24.7.8. The computers i tested, the mini one has an intel cpu x7425E, and the test computer i used had a i7 14700k.
So the problem remains, at least now i know in more detail where the problem is, everything is set up ok, tested all combinations of tunables and settings to no result, i didn't see anything wrong with slow packets or fragmentation or anything in error log, maybe it just something wrong with this NIC's how they work in freebsd, or maybe some problem with this specific hardware support, something i can't see easily because i am not experienced in debugging this kind of problems so i couldn't find a reason why this devices are so slow only through an AP wifi.


The conclusion i gathered from this experience is that i really like how u7 pro max works, and that i will keep it, especially for my homepods, everything is more stable conectionwise and latencywise and no more needing to restart homepods if i do changes to the wifi network, on any asus router i had to restart homepods for a good connection, with u7 homepods just reconect and everything is ok.
And now i have to find a nice wired router, good with pppoe that can handle more than gigabit of pppoe, something that is hard, as now i am afraid that maybe there is something with the use of pppoe and i get a netgate device or protectli and i keep having the problems, even though most probably it may be something with the hardware support, so i want to try something new, and even mikrotik and ubiquiti gateways may have problems with the performance on pppoe, so everything just scares at this point. )


P.S.

@sucka back from another thread: you mentioned you have PfSense: so I am guessing you had PfSense handle the DHCP duties with router mode on AXE16000. Did you run into any other issues besides obviously the low speed problem?

FYI: I had similar type issue with AX-6000 but that was on the upload side not download, the issue was with the physical port configuration.

Oh yes, pfsense was doing everything, the asus router was set as an ap, though i tried even as a intermediate gateway and just using dhcp on asus router to get from pfsense/opnsense gateway, and my experience is that with pfsense everything worked ok with my pppoe network connection, on opnsense ipv6 through ipv4 wasn't working unless i boosted with a tunable the ipv6 dad count, opnsense had some bugs on ipv6.
In rest all the critiques are only about how bad freebsd manages the cpu and how hot it keeps the device.
Among those 2, pfsense seems to me more polished and more stable, and with more features like even gui settings for speedshift, and asus... i am disappointed with them because no updates (especially the devices on new branch, they are like tplink now, allot of new devices but barely any firmware updates) and all bugs with both my last routers, the only reason why i used them is laziness and small footprint unlike the many devices needed for an entire network, and merlin which had a great custom firmware, but clearly they are my last asus routers as well.

 

[degrub]

i recall seeing that there were issues with the NIC drivers for that series of intel nics. Moving to a server nic and drivers cured the issues.

 

[sfx2000]

i recall seeing that there were issues with the NIC drivers for that series of intel nics. Moving to a server nic and drivers cured the issues.

The issue there was with the i225's prior to V3 of the hardware on that chipset...

i226 has been fine there...

 

[sfx2000]

Anyways - as a router, pfSense/OpnSense (I encourage folks to check out OpnSense) is generally pretty good on Intel HW, both CPU and Ethernet...

On the AP side - OpenWRT is very interesting as it always has been - for WiFi6 - the MediaTek Filogic chipsets have a lot of potential compared to both Qualcomm/Atheros and Broadcom...

 

[kuki68ster]

Anyways - as a router, pfSense/OpnSense (I encourage folks to check out OpnSense) is generally pretty good on Intel HW, both CPU and Ethernet...

On the AP side - OpenWRT is very interesting as it always has been - for WiFi6 - the MediaTek Filogic chipsets have a lot of potential compared to both Qualcomm/Atheros and Broadcom...

Using pfSense on a topton n100, and it is working great, after some tinkering...

Which AP compatible with OpenWrt do you suggest?