Poor performance on Cisco WAPs using WPA2

[Koldov]

Hi All,

 

A few years ago before I came to this school it had a major reworking of it's network. It was a BSF (PCP) thing and the wired and wireless network was upgraded.

 

It has been running fine since with no outages or hiccups and pretty good speed, but it always bothered me that the wireless was WEP authenticated and on the wireless g band (I always wanted to make the move to WPA2 and wireless N which I presumed the CISCO WAPs were capable of). Incidentally I can see the wireless network of the infant school (done at the same time) some two or 3 hundred yards away and it is WPA2/wireless n band and with a good if not better signal than ours!

 

I believe from what I can gather, at the time it was installed the wireless performance was poor and rather than fix it they switched it to WEP and wireless g and everything was fine... I can only think that back then most of the schools wireless devices were only capable of wireless g connectivity anyway so it was a non-issue.

 

So, as this is a managed network I put a call into the company that deals with it and told them I wanted WPA2 and wireless n enabled. They confirmed that the WAPs were capable of both g and n at the same time and the wireless device would connect on whatever band it was capable of.

 

Now.... As laptops have been coming in for maintenance I have been trying to switch them to WPA2 and wireless N if they are capable, but I generally get the laptop returned with complaints of poor network performance. One of these this morning showed 'Excellent' signal strength yet as soon as I connected, it went to 'Poor' so I put in a manual network using the SSID and WEP authentication and it went straight up to 4 or 5 bars...

 

My phone for instance can see two SSID's one with WEP and wireless b/g and one with WPA2 and yet strangely also shows wireless b/g. The WEP connection has 4 to 5 bar connectivity and the WPA2 has 1 or 2... I thought it should be the other way round (especially as previously mentioned, I can see the Infant school's wireless network 300 yards away)!

 

Now, I thought to enable WPA2 you should be using the n band, but on a laptop in front of me now, it shows the following:

 

Name: xxxx

Signal strength: Excellent

Security type: WPA2-PSK

Radio type: 802.11ag

SSID: xxxx

 

Here is some text (from the Netgear site but it confirms what I thought). Overview:

 

The IEEE 802.11n wireless standard promises very high connection speeds for wireless networking. NETGEAR's "N" wireless routers and access points fully comply with the 802.11n standard, but they are also backward-compatible with earlier wireless networking standards, to ensure that you can still get connected with your legacy wireless devices.

 

In keeping with the need for backward-compatibility, NETGEAR "N" devices support a range of wireless security standards : WEP, WPA and WPA2. However, there is a catch ; the 802.11n standard only allows 2 security options :

1.No security at all (usually a bad idea, unless you have chosen to create a free public Wi_Fi hotspot).

2.WPA2

 

If you use one of the other security options, you will not be able to connect wirelessly at 802.11n speeds. You will be limited to the 802.11g speed of 54Mbps.

 

Therefore, NETGEAR recommends using WPA2 if possible.

 

So why aren't my n capable clients when using WPA2 connecting to the WAPs on the n band?! Is it that none of what I 'think' are n capable devices aren't actually? I have an Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300 Wi-Fi adapter, which in the properties shows Wireless mode as only going up to 6. 802.11a/b/g... But further up in the properties it has details on wireless n properties...

 

Just as an afterthought, it is connecting at AES encryption type and not TKIP if that makes a difference?

 

Seriously confused!

Edited January 16, 2015 by Koldov

[localzuk]

You've mentioned your Cisco wireless but haven't mentioned what actual Cisco WAPs you're running?

[Koldov]

Actually, that's a really good point @localzuk I've never checked as it's a managed system I tend to leave them alone. I shall go look...

 

So after my initial massive post I may have saved myself some time and hassle thanks to @localzuk as it would appear we have a mixture of mainly:

 

Cisco Aironet 1130AG series (specifically AIR-LAP1131AG-E-K9)

 

And one or two:

 

Cisco Aironet 802.11 DRAFT 2.0 DUAL BAND ACCESS POINT (specifically AIR-LAP1142N-E-K9)

 

From this I take it that 99% of our WAPs aren't even capable of n band!

 

This was done just under 5 years ago, don't you think they would have used n band WAPs all around then?

 

Kol

 

This also explains maybe why sitting in my office I can configure the wireless device on the n band as one of the two n band WAPs is only a couple of offices away - and then the teacher takes it to the other end of the school complains of poor performance...

 

Also, why the Infant school (much smaller and with fewer devices) may have only 2 or 3 of the n band WAPs to cover the entire school as so is pure n band goodness all the way.

 

What it doesn't explain is why on the same band (b/g) WEP has better connectivity than WPA2?

Edited January 16, 2015 by Koldov