Slow DL speed for all wifi clients sitting behind a wireless bridge...

[Trip]

Hi All,

I have a strange download speed issue for all wireless clients of an AP/switch sitting behind a wireless bridge (see attached diagram). WAN speed at the router is 30/5. All clients of the main AP and all *wired* clients of the remote AP/switch get full speed. My issue: all *wireless* clients of the remote AP/switch have a download speed of just 2Mb/s (or less). I've confirmed identical speedtest behavior on multiple endpoints, where there's an initial "peak" of ~5Mb/s down, then an immediate flatline down to 2Mb/s, sometimes falling away to almost zero...

Attempted fixes: I've swapped in different remote AP-switches (Asus RT-N12/D1, RT-N16, each tested with known solid versions of tomato, DD-WRT, stock and Merlin firmwares). I then replaced the Cat 5e cable between the bridge AP (ECB-350) and the remote AP/switch. I also tried a proper setup of spanning tree protocol on all gear, thinking some looping may have had something to do with it (most likely not). Finally, I power-cycled all devices several times, both individually, and as a group in successive order. All of the above to no avail.

Clearly, something is causing improper handling and/or return routing of wlan traffic originating/terminating from any AP wired into the client AP end of the wireless bridge... what could it be, and how to do I sniff it out? I have a sneaking suspicion one or both of the ECB units are to blame, but as best as I can tell, they're configured just fine...

More clarification/details needed anywhere?

Thanks in advance for any ideas,
Trip

EDIT: Forgot wifi tidbits -- all bridging/broadcasting is being done on 2.4Ghz, open network (no neighboring wifi broadcasts and zero roaming traffic, very rural location). The main AP is on channel 11, and remote AP/switch is on channel 1. Have tried all channels combinations on all gear. All orientations/positioning of APs as well.

 

[Trip]

Just an update on this: I finally fixed the issue by switching to WDS (WDS AP on the base side, WDS Station on the client side). I definitely had a brain fart not realizing I needed it in order to ensure 4 frames of addressing and thus accurate return-routing. The L2 bridging limitations section of this doc on Mikrotik's wiki jogged my memory and clued me back in that I had completely missed that in my setup.

So, problem solved. Full bandwidth on all devices once again.