Ubiquiti AmplifiHD Help

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jonathanc

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#222906 3-Sep-2017 09:16

Hello

I have tried looking for help through this forum but could not find any.. I am also very noob at all this network talk so forgive me for my naivety.., I have currently subscribed to Sparks UFB plan of 950/500 speeds and was sold to buy an Ubiquiti AmplifiHD by a PB sales person for maximum speeds also great coverage.

The coverage is great I am getting full bars even at the furthest point of the house which is fantastic solving that issue (we used to get 1 bar only). But I have trouble attaining max speeds anywhere around the house - even on a wired connection. Is there any solve around this? I have tried changing channels to my frustration there are little to any change. We possibly have a max of 12 devices using it but not always and very rarely 5~ at any one time.

Right now my settings are

-PPPoE with our Spark Username and Password

-Spark regulatory DNS addresses (210.55.111.1 and 122.56.237.1)

-UPnP on

-Vlan ID on (set on 10)

- IPv6 on (DCHPv6 no Client ID)

We are attaining 20mbps max at the furthest point (I was told that I would have consistent internet speeds throughout the house, but i also understand wireless is not the best esp the further you get so I expected atleast a 20-100mb drop)

Near the router we only get a max 225mbps speed on wired or wireless.

Forgive me again, as networking is not my strongest point but i am worried I was sold on this product for nothing and connot attain anything close to what Ive seen people posting 500-700mbps speed on their signatures around the forums here. Is there anyway for an avg user to fix this by changing my Amplifi settings or adding to it? Or changing my firewall settings etc? and would anyone be able to give me a tutorial how?

Many thanks to those who comment :)

Edit I also do understand that 950/500 does not mean that I am able to achieve that number. but as mentioned before I've seen people with 500-700mb speeds on their signatures on this forum and query how they achieve that? I assume it would be through a gigabit connection...

ive had speed test spikes where it would be a good 600mbps for the duration of the speedtest then dropping and finalising to 200-225mbps~

l43a2

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#1857480 3-Sep-2017 09:26

did you update the firmware?

jonathanc

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#1857483 3-Sep-2017 09:30

Yes it is on 2.2.2 - the latest i believe, out of the box firmware (1.5.1) couldnt even get me to connect to the internet as it didnt have the VLAN option

CYaBro

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#1857484 3-Sep-2017 09:31

What speeds do you get with the originl Spark router, using ethernet?

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l43a2

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#1857485 3-Sep-2017 09:33

what devices are you connecting to the Ethernet and which devices are you connecting to the wireless. i have one of these units and your speeds do seem slow.

jonathanc

7 posts

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#1857489 3-Sep-2017 09:41

Sorry I hould have clarified all this too

We were given the HG659b by Spark and that could get almost 250mbps on wireless (we just moved house and didnt bring laptop with me on this day to do a wire test)

The next day we brought in our old router DSL-ac68u and was able to get near 350mbps on a wireless connection and near 450mbps on a wired. at the furthest point where and if i could get connection I would get about 60mbps in an empty house. But I worried this would drop out and disconnect once the house was full with furniture and other people were connected.

I was looking at purchasing an RT-ac88u or one of netgears nighthawks to try juice out a little more of what i could with a 950/500 connection, or i would have settled with an extender for the DSL, but was sold on this as it was better?? :(

jonathanc

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1857493 3-Sep-2017 09:47

l43a2:

what devices are you connecting to the Ethernet and which devices are you connecting to the wireless. i have one of these units and your speeds do seem slow.

How have you set your AmplifiHD on and are you too on Spark?

We have 2/laptop - bought last year. 2/Galaxy s7, ipad (last years version), S4 mini, S5, 2/iPhone, and a computer - bought last year on wireless

as we are all in our rooms

and have a samsung 55" hooked up to it wired.

again these are rarely always on at any one time - there is odd occasions.

wed generally have the tv both laptop the computer and s7s connected as a "max" general if you could say

sbiddle

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#1857512 3-Sep-2017 10:36

What speeds are you expecting to get over WiFi? I assume you're not aware that realistic real world averages will be in the vicinicty of 150-300Mbps even on a Gigabit plan. Depending on the hardware you have (whether it's 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4 chains) 225Mbps may be the most you will get.

If you're expecting anything close to 900Mbps over WiFi you need to understand that's simply impossible.

Amplifi is also a mesh product. It's limited by physics and the way WiFi works.

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michaelmurfy

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#1857526 3-Sep-2017 11:18

It is also important you put the mesh points where there is good coverage - they will not work if you place them further away.

Take a screenshot of your app and post it here showing the signal of the mesh points - also, ensure they're set to 5GHz.

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jonathanc

7 posts

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#1857602 3-Sep-2017 13:26

sbiddle:

What speeds are you expecting to get over WiFi? I assume you're not aware that realistic real world averages will be in the vicinicty of 150-300Mbps even on a Gigabit plan. Depending on the hardware you have (whether it's 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4 chains) 225Mbps may be the most you will get.

If you're expecting anything close to 900Mbps over WiFi you need to understand that's simply impossible.

Amplifi is also a mesh product. It's limited by physics and the way WiFi works.

Hi sbiddle

thanks for your reply, not entirely too sure what you are talking about with the 1x1, 2x2... chains as mentioned im a bit not familiar with these network talks.

I understand speeds 950/500mb speeds are theoretical. but surely getting only 200mbps speeds on a $600 product whilst the Huwawei router provided and DSL-AC68U was able to achieve 250-400mbps speeds is a bit absurd. To add other households i have been too on a Vodafone UFB connection (100-200 connection) they are able to achieve up to 80% of their theoretical speeds. so with a 950 connection I'd be expecting atleast 400-500mbps, is this incorrect?

jonathanc

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1857603 3-Sep-2017 13:33

michaelmurfy:

It is also important you put the mesh points where there is good coverage - they will not work if you place them further away.

Take a screenshot of your app and post it here showing the signal of the mesh points - also, ensure they're set to 5GHz.

Hi Michael

Thanks attached is the screenshot requested.. its a bit odd the first connection D30D7D is about 10m from the router and the D30EBF is 5m from D30D7D.

I know this isn't the most ideal way of connecting as mentioned on the guide, but given the layout of the house and where the ONT is located this is the only plausible connection. To add I could make the D30D7D about 3m closer and put the D30EBF where the D30D7D was originally but it also doesn't make much a difference on the bars

sbiddle

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#1857609 3-Sep-2017 13:43

jonathanc:

thanks for your reply, not entirely too sure what you are talking about with the 1x1, 2x2... chains as mentioned im a bit not familiar with these network talks.

I understand speeds 950/500mb speeds are theoretical. but surely getting only 200mbps speeds on a $600 product whilst the Huwawei router provided and DSL-AC68U was able to achieve 250-400mbps speeds is a bit absurd. To add other households i have been too on a Vodafone UFB connection (100-200 connection) they are able to achieve up to 80% of their theoretical speeds. so with a 950 connection I'd be expecting atleast 400-500mbps, is this incorrect?

The simple reality is if you want the best WiFi performance you need to understand how WiFi works.

First off chains - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac

Your devices will be 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 or (if you're really lucky) 4x4. Most 802.11ac capable devices are 1x1 or 2x2. If you have a 2x2 device and are using a 40MHz channel the maximum data rate is 400Mbps which gives real world throughput figures of around 200Mbps since real world TCP throughout is around 50% of the rate. It doesn't matter what type of wireless AP you have, you're never going to get faster than that because it's the device that has the limitation.

From what I'd read in the early days in the Amplifi beta forums it was only capable of routing WAN->LAN at around 500Mbps tops. If you wanted better throughput you had to configure it in bridge mode. I believe this has changed with newer firmware but I haven't see anything recently updating this figure.

At the end of the day price means very little. A Huawei HG659b is one of the most powerful routers out there right now and will beat an Amplifi hands down when it comes to routing performance. Likewise it'll also beat a DSL-AC68U which is a $400 device.

As somebody who's day job is deploying wireless I would never ever recommend a mesh wireless system as a solution. At the end of the day mesh suffers the same limitations as it did 10 years ago when people started doing mesh networks because the laws of physics can't be overcome. Something like Amplifi or Google WiFi can be made to work well - it can also deliver a totally lousy end user experience if you don't set it up properly.

As Michael has played with this quite extensively he's probably able to offer more advice.

jonathanc

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1857619 3-Sep-2017 14:30

sbiddle:

The simple reality is if you want the best WiFi performance you need to understand how WiFi works.

First off chains - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac

Your devices will be 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 or (if you're really lucky) 4x4. Most 802.11ac capable devices are 1x1 or 2x2. If you have a 2x2 device and are using a 40MHz channel the maximum data rate is 400Mbps which gives real world throughput figures of around 200Mbps since real world TCP throughout is around 50% of the rate. It doesn't matter what type of wireless AP you have, you're never going to get faster than that because it's the device that has the limitation.

From what I'd read in the early days in the Amplifi beta forums it was only capable of routing WAN->LAN at around 500Mbps tops. If you wanted better throughput you had to configure it in bridge mode. I believe this has changed with newer firmware but I haven't see anything recently updating this figure.

At the end of the day price means very little. A Huawei HG659b is one of the most powerful routers out there right now and will beat an Amplifi hands down when it comes to routing performance. Likewise it'll also beat a DSL-AC68U which is a $400 device.

As somebody who's day job is deploying wireless I would never ever recommend a mesh wireless system as a solution. At the end of the day mesh suffers the same limitations as it did 10 years ago when people started doing mesh networks because the laws of physics can't be overcome. Something like Amplifi or Google WiFi can be made to work well - it can also deliver a totally lousy end user experience if you don't set it up properly.

As Michael has played with this quite extensively he's probably able to offer more advice.

Thanks sbiddle

So for my situation with a mid-large home with the ont box on one end and bedrooms (20~m? length) on the other i go suckered into buying an amplifiHD? would it have been better to get an extender instead?

richms

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#1857620 3-Sep-2017 14:37

No, you have one of the best mesh networking devices there are, if you need greater speed at that distance you need to look towards accesspoints cabled back to the router in the room that you need higher speeds in.

The mesh products are made to provide sufficient speeds for most portable devices, which they do very well.

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sbiddle

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#1857621 3-Sep-2017 14:40

jonathanc:

So for my situation with a mid-large home with the ont box on one end and bedrooms (20~m? length) on the other i go suckered into buying an amplifiHD? would it have been better to get an extender instead?

WiFi extenders are the worst device to ever be built. IMHO they should be banned.

Amplifi / mesh works in a similar way where it relies on repeating the signal from one radio to the next. The biggest limitation with both systems is that people tend to put their AP's in poor coverage areas thinking it will magically improve things. It can't. These need to be in strong coverage areas. Explaining why is a bit beyond this post and requires an understanding of WiFi.

If you want wireless that works the only way is to have multiple access points that are cabled back via Ethernet.