Unifi - Apple Devices 24Mbps T

[SAFCasper]

Long shot here but wondering if anyone has seen a similar issue with Unifi and Apple devices.

Have a client with an older setup. 7x first gen UAP access points so it's 2.4GHz only.

They recently upgraded to a faster internet package which gives them 45-50Mb download speeds. Great. All running well with their wired devices getting full speeds. However, their wireless devices can't seem to get over 21-22Mb when running speed tests.

On further inspection of the Unifi console - every single iPhone or iPad that is connected has a TX rate of 24Mb. Non-Apple devices are connected at 100-144Mb depending on distance from AP (it's 20Mhz so 144Mb is the max).

It's a farmhouse with no other houses in half a mile any direction. Occurs no matter which AP they are connected to. Controller and AP's all running latest firmware. Have tried forgetting and re-adopting the AP's. Have tried changing to 40MHz channel.



TL;DR
Android phones, laptops, Xbox, smart TV etc all connecting with 100+ Mb TX rate
Apple devices all connected at 24Mb TX rate.
No idea why

 

[timeshifter]

Apple devices all connected at 24Mb TX rate.

I've got a single AP-LR in my house, older unit. My MacBook Pro connects to it at 145 Mbps according to the WiFi dropdown (hold down Option key while clicking WiFi icon on menu bar). I looked in my UniFi controller but don't see where it shows the connected speeds.

 

[Mick]

Well - they didn't think they were going to pay all that extra money for Apple stuff and not see a difference, surely?

 

[Markverhyden]

Well - they didn't think they were going to pay all that extra money for Apple stuff and not see a difference, surely?

They want their phone to work better than one that cost's 1/3 less? Cheeky I'd say!

 

[Markverhyden]

My AP is much newer. But I just checked and my Mid 2012 MBP is 300+ TX and my iPhone 8 is 300-400 according to my controller. But that symptom does ring a bell. Someone else recently posed that question to me. I think I remember who it was so I'll see if they found a solution, at least one that they could remember.

 

[SAFCasper]

I've got a single AP-LR in my house, older unit. My MacBook Pro connects to it at 145 Mbps according to the WiFi dropdown (hold down Option key while clicking WiFi icon on menu bar). I looked in my UniFi controller but don't see where it shows the connected speeds.

Yeah that sounds about what I would expect to see. With wireless-N and 20MHz channel width, which is the default, connections should max out at 144Mbps. Apple must round that up to 145 for you.

In the Unifi Controller I'm looking under "clients" on the left hand side. You may have to add the TX/RX as additional columns as I think they are hidden by default.

Admittedly, I'm not sure which way around the TX speed is being reported by Unifi.
I believed it's the TX speed of the AP - which is equivalent to the RX speed of the client (download speed).

 

[SAFCasper]

My AP is much newer. But I just checked and my Mid 2012 MBP is 300+ TX and my iPhone 8 is 300-400 according to my controller. But that symptom does ring a bell. Someone else recently posed that question to me. I think I remember who it was so I'll see if they found a solution, at least one that they could remember.

Appreciate that, thanks.

Newer AP's with 5GHz AC is definitely the solution long term. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 we can't go on-site for the foreseeable future to install anything.

 

[Markverhyden]

In the Unifi Controller I'm looking under "clients" on the left hand side. You may have to add the TX/RX as additional columns as I think they are hidden by default.

.

On mine, after selecting clients in the far left, if I click on a client in the client list it shows it all on the right.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Make sure you've got your firmware up to date, there have been many cases of Unifi firmware that didn't like Apple hardware.

Beyond that... not sure... because the other junk that used to be a headache just flat isn't supported anymore.

 

[SAFCasper]

Make sure you've got your firmware up to date, there have been many cases of Unifi firmware that didn't like Apple hardware.

Beyond that... not sure... because the other junk that used to be a headache just flat isn't supported anymore.

All up to date. Latest controller, latest firmware.

Might be something they just have to live with for now. It's not like 24Mb is limiting anything you can do on an iPad or iPhone. The only reason they are querying speed is the whole "we are paying for 45Mb we want 45Mb"

 

[Markverhyden]

All up to date. Latest controller, latest firmware.

Might be something they just have to live with for now. It's not like 24Mb is limiting anything you can do on an iPad or iPhone. The only reason they are querying speed is the whole "we are paying for 45Mb we want 45Mb"

Just heard back from the person I mentioned. Turns out all he did was power cycle the entire network and WiFi got better. But it's still only 120mb wireless which is not close to his 400mb pipe.

At any rate I always tell people that they'll never see the full pipe when they are on wireless. Far to many variables. But 50% or less should be reasonable to expect.

 

[Sky-Knight]

If you've got devices changing their lan sync speed on reboot... you've probably got cables that need replacing.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

First gen Unifi devices weren't the friendliest with Apple devices. Surprising since the founder/CEO of Ubiquiti was one of the primary engineers in the early days of Apples wireless airport division.

I can't remember off the top of my head was the specific settings were to change, default setup for Unifi was not optimal for Apple clients, you had to flip a few settings in advanced settings. May have also included changing width of the channels. If the old UBNT forums were still around could probably find those posts talking about those settings fairly easily. Since they changed to the new forum type, probably fruitless trying to find those...but worth a try.

 

[SAFCasper]

I have taken the bulldozer approach and quoted an entire network refresh with Unifi throughout. It was well overdue anyway.

UDM-PRO
USW-24-POE
US-8-150W
7x UAP-AC-LITE

They will have to live with 24Mb until we can safely get on-site to install this. UDM-PRO is still unavailable in the UK but our supplier seems to think they will arrive later this month. Of course they can't confirm anything with the whole coronavirus situation - getting tired of hearing that one.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@YeOldeStonecat, it's just the encryption settings. Back then they defaulted to TKIP, and you had to configure it for AES only.

That's no longer a problem, as the only WPA2 encryption supported anymore is the AES/CCMP only option. The drop down doesn't even exist anymore... you literally cannot configure even first gen stuff to be an Apple problem anymore.

Unless you were running absolutely ancient controller and firmware. But you can see it still, if you hit the advanced settings for the wireless network, you'll see the AES option in the list, but there's no drop down to change it anymore.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It wasn't that...it was under some more advanced wifi settings on the radio parts....I always did AES anyways but I remember with a couple of clients that were heavy IOS users...I had to tweak to get their speeds up. Plus an occasional DHCP issue with IOS devices...where Androids and Windows always latch on in the blink of an eye.

 

[Tech Savvy]

@YeOldeStonecat here is a post you gave to me before:

I still never resolved my issue, because moving the iPad and setting an auto ping seemed to do the trick. Not fully resolved, but the issue isn’t happening so to the backlog it goes! Aside from the settings you mentioned I think you might be thinking of increasing the DTIM value.
I set mine to 3.

I'm thinking some sort of power management on the iPad too.....but to check other things:
*You have bandwidth steering set?
*With 4x APs...have you done a thorough site survey and tuned the channels and TX settings and RSSI? Perhaps disabling the 2.4 radio on at least 2x of the APs if they're relatively close?
*Default 40 wide on the 5.0 or did you lower to 20 wide?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

That's a newer one...in the dual radio days.