Experiencing Packet Loss

[outlaw78]

I am having issues with packet loss on my WiFi. I've read in several places that packet loss up to 1% should be expected (and that is OK for me) on networks with heavy workloads and considering other factors like signal strength, noise, walls etc., but I am experiencing 7% to 15% on my 5ghz. This has apparently been going on for awhile as I looked back at previous tests and they all show packet loss while connected to the 5ghz WiFi.

We have a smart home with WiFi cameras, lights, outlets, google smart speakers etc. but that is all running on 2.4 GHz (the most connections) and no packet loss. The 5ghz has the smart speakers and streaming sticks and all the personal devices like phones, tablets, laptops etc.

My current home setup is an AXE-16000 withe latest Merlin with 6hz ticked in all WiFi professional settings with airtime fairness ticked for 5ghz bands (tried airtime fairness and 6hz off/on and didn't make a difference), using smart connect for 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz and 5Ghz-2; running 1 mesh node using 5ghz-2 as the back-haul to an ac-5300, on spectrum 1gig service. My router is centrally located in the house, upstairs near the ceiling, away from metal and other interfering devices. I've tried turning off most of the settings under "professional" for the 5ghz bands to no avail. QoS is OFF but I have the devices sorted and a priority set for most devices (not sure it matters with QoS off). All the game enhancing features are turned off as well. However QoS on does give a slight improvement but then I loose half my rated download speed.

The 5ghz is not bogged down by any means (almost all the other smart devices are connected to 2.4Ghz) and I get good signal on all the bands in the house using mesh (tested with TV's off, personal devices in airplane mode except for the device used for the test). I've tested using the mobile app, "Speedtest.net" and that is what is showing the packet loss.

I've also tested on a hard wire from my desktop computer and have no packet loss either so I know its not my line leaving the modem.

I'm thinking its a setting somewhere that shouldn't be set but not entirely sure.

Thanks in advance!

 

[drinkingbird]

I am having issues with packet loss on my WiFi. I've read in several places that packet loss up to 1% should be expected (and that is OK for me) on networks with heavy workloads and considering other factors like signal strength, noise, walls etc., but I am experiencing 7% to 15% on my 5ghz. This has apparently been going on for awhile as I looked back at previous tests and they all show packet loss while connected to the 5ghz WiFi.

We have a smart home with WiFi cameras, lights, outlets, google smart speakers etc. but that is all running on 2.4 GHz (the most connections) and no packet loss. The 5ghz has the smart speakers and streaming sticks and all the personal devices like phones, tablets, laptops etc.

My current home setup is an AXE-16000 withe latest Merlin with 6hz ticked in all WiFi professional settings with airtime fairness ticked for 5ghz bands (tried airtime fairness and 6hz off/on and didn't make a difference), using smart connect for 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz and 5Ghz-2; running 1 mesh node using 5ghz-2 as the back-haul to an ac-5300, on spectrum 1gig service. My router is centrally located in the house, upstairs near the ceiling, away from metal and other interfering devices. I've tried turning off most of the settings under "professional" for the 5ghz bands to no avail. QoS is OFF but I have the devices sorted and a priority set for most devices (not sure it matters with QoS off). All the game enhancing features are turned off as well. However QoS on does give a slight improvement but then I loose half my rated download speed.

The 5ghz is not bogged down by any means (almost all the other smart devices are connected to 2.4Ghz) and I get good signal on all the bands in the house using mesh (tested with TV's off, personal devices in airplane mode except for the device used for the test). I've tested using the mobile app, "Speedtest.net" and that is what is showing the packet loss.

I've also tested on a hard wire from my desktop computer and have no packet loss either so I know its not my line leaving the modem.

I'm thinking its a setting somewhere that shouldn't be set but not entirely sure.

Thanks in advance!

I'm confused if you're mixing 6ghz and 5ghz in some parts above.

Airtime fairness will cause packet drops if devices are contending for bandwidth (and even sometimes if not). I'd shut that off on all bands. Ensure universal beamforming is off on all bands also (you can leave AC/AX beamforming on).

With all the toying and tweaking you've done I'd start with a factory reset and reconfigure manually (not from backup). The only advanced wireless features you should mess with is disabling universal beamforming on all bands.

Do not use QOS, airtime fairness, any of that stuff.

If you still see packet loss, disconnect all wifi devices, confirm your packet loss is back to 0, and start adding back one by one. One of those smart speakers or other IOT devices on 5ghz may be flooding the network with garbage. Isolating those to a guest network may help (or may not, depends on the type of garbage it is sending).

To confirm, you're pinging the router to determine loss, not something on the internet?

 

[sfx2000]

Airtime fairness will cause packet drops if devices are contending for bandwidth (and even sometimes if not). I'd shut that off on all bands. Ensure universal beamforming is off on all bands also (you can leave AC/AX beamforming on).

Hmmm... airtime fairness shouldn't cause any packet drops, as it is not Quality of Service - it's a scheduling thing, but operates at the PHY, not the MAC layer... that being said, on some of the broadcom based devices, there are known issues with AT Fairness with certain IoT chipsets - Espressif comes to mind with older SDK's on those devices...

Just like Beamforming - shouldn't cause any issues related to packet loss - again, this is PHY layer, not MAC layer - but the general guidance of disabling Universal Beamforming is valid, as that is Broadcom specific and not standards based...

QoS guidance - this is valid - QoS, by design, will shed packets to maintain a packet flow - for example, VoIP or Video streams vs best effort traffic - but that is normally just WAN to LAN (and vice-versa, not LAN to LAN)

 

[sfx2000]

am having issues with packet loss on my WiFi. I've read in several places that packet loss up to 1% should be expected (and that is OK for me) on networks with heavy workloads and considering other factors like signal strength, noise, walls etc., but I am experiencing 7% to 15% on my 5ghz. This has apparently been going on for awhile as I looked back at previous tests and they all show packet loss while connected to the 5ghz WiFi.

How are you testing this?

 

[outlaw78]

I've tested using the mobile app, "Speedtest.net" and that is what is showing the packet loss.

I've also tested on a hard wire from my desktop computer and have no packet loss either so I know its not my line leaving the modem.

-Tested on 2.4 ghz band and no packet loss using speedtest or ping mobile app​

-Tested on both bands using wifi ping app to router address​

-Star Trek Fleet Command gives me a yellow wifi indicator with an excalmation while on wifi but not mobile (This is what started me checking)​

I am going to do as another suggested and do a complete factory reset of the network, and re-set it up. Only problem is with the smart home, I have a ton of devices that I manually named in the network list and those all get deleted. Most of them are connected to the 2.4 because they won't even see anything above 2.4 which suprises me that it isn't the 2.4 that has this problem, not the 5ghz+. If the log made sense to me, (I know some things in there but most of it is gibberish) I could maybe figure it out; unless someone has an optimized setting for what gets populated to the log. I found a couple of places in the settings aside from admin, where stuff is populated to it.

 

[drinkingbird]

-Tested on 2.4 ghz band and no packet loss using speedtest or ping mobile app​

-Tested on both bands using wifi ping app to router address​

-Star Trek Fleet Command gives me a yellow wifi indicator with an excalmation while on wifi but not mobile (This is what started me checking)​

I am going to do as another suggested and do a complete factory reset of the network, and re-set it up. Only problem is with the smart home, I have a ton of devices that I manually named in the network list and those all get deleted. Most of them are connected to the 2.4 because they won't even see anything above 2.4 which suprises me that it isn't the 2.4 that has this problem, not the 5ghz+. If the log made sense to me, (I know some things in there but most of it is gibberish) I could maybe figure it out; unless someone has an optimized setting for what gets populated to the log. I found a couple of places in the settings aside from admin, where stuff is populated to it.

You can export that NVRAM variable from SSH to backup your custom names. But I wouldn't reload it until you've confirmed things are working correctly, just in case that big list is causing some NVRAM size issue which is impacting other settings.

 

[outlaw78]

You can export that NVRAM variable from SSH to backup your custom names. But I wouldn't reload it until you've confirmed things are working correctly, just in case that big list is causing some NVRAM size issue which is impacting other settings.

Oh, that is awesome. Don't know much about the NVRAM system and SSH though. I'll have to dive into it though. Thanks.

 

[drinkingbird]

Oh, that is awesome. Don't know much about the NVRAM system and SSH though. I'll have to dive into it though. Thanks.

nvram get custom_clientlist
copy and paste the output to a file somewhere

to reload
nvram set custom_clientlist=[paste here and hit enter]
nvram commit

 

[outlaw78]

nvram get custom_clientlist
copy and paste the output to a file somewhere

to reload
nvram set custom_clientlist=[paste here and hit enter]
nvram commit

AWESOME! Im in the middle of a remodel at the house and when I get all moved around I'll try this and then do the factory reset and see if I have any issues before I upload the list back in. Thank you again...

 

[drinkingbird]

AWESOME! Im in the middle of a remodel at the house

Me too, for 10 years

 

[outlaw78]

Me too, for 10 years

Mines since 2019 LOL

 

[outlaw78]

Well, I changed a bunch of settings on all bands on my wi-fi the two days ago. I am still experiencing packet loss according to speedtest.net but now when I ping the router itself or another address outside my network, I get 0%. Not sure whats going on and why speed test says I still have packet loss when connected to 5Ghz but I keep monitoring. Also, Star Trek Fleet command has not given me the yellow wifi signal with the exclamation which is a plus. Things also seem quicker to respond with google home (lights, outlets etc) since the change.

Current Settings on all bands:

 

[drinkingbird]

Well, I changed a bunch of settings on all bands on my wi-fi the two days ago. I am still experiencing packet loss according to speedtest.net but now when I ping the router itself or another address outside my network, I get 0%. Not sure whats going on and why speed test says I still have packet loss when connected to 5Ghz but I keep monitoring. Also, Star Trek Fleet command has not given me the yellow wifi signal with the exclamation which is a plus. Things also seem quicker to respond with google home (lights, outlets etc) since the change.

Current Settings on all bands:

Speedtest will almost always have packet loss since you're saturating the connection to 100%. It depends on buffers etc in the path but I would not worry about that. A more valid test would be do a continuous ping to google.com or whatever, you can try both standard and 1500 byte packets, let it run for a while and see if you get 0% loss. You can even fire up a couple at a time, one with standard size and one with 1500, let them run for 30 mins and see what the results are.

 

[outlaw78]

Speedtest will almost always have packet loss since you're saturating the connection to 100%. It depends on buffers etc in the path but I would not worry about that. A more valid test would be do a continuous ping to google.com or whatever, you can try both standard and 1500 byte packets, let it run for a while and see if you get 0% loss. You can even fire up a couple at a time, one with standard size and one with 1500, let them run for 30 mins and see what the results are.

Does the 1500 byte packet include the header or should I adjust for that? I know my MTU for my network is set for 1500 anyways. I am using a new app on my phone called PingTools and I can adjust packet size and packet send speed but anything above 68 bytes says "Truncated"

 

[drinkingbird]

Does the 1500 byte packet include the header or should I adjust for that? I know my MTU for my network is set for 1500 anyways. I am using a new app on my phone called PingTools and I can adjust packet size and packet send speed but anything above 68 bytes says "Truncated"

As long as you don't set "do not fragment" it doesn't really matter, I always use 1500 but technically that will result in a fragmented packet, so you can use 1472 which will result in a 1500 byte packet, matching your MTU.

OK don't use google.com, they are responding with max 68 byte packets (it is a DOS/DDOS mitigation measure). Use 4.2.2.2 (level 3 DNS) or something else that doesn't give you that message.

 

[outlaw78]

As long as you don't set "do not fragment" it doesn't really matter, I always use 1500 but technically that will result in a fragmented packet, so you can use 1472 which will result in a 1500 byte packet, matching your MTU.

Thanks. What's a good ping interval? 500ms?

 

[drinkingbird]

Thanks. What's a good ping interval? 500ms?

I think most stuff defaults to 1 second, but 500ms should be fine.

 

[outlaw78]

I think most stuff defaults to 1 second, but 500ms should be fine.

Well last night while on the wifi network I pinged 4.2.2.2 on the following settings:

Ping Type: ICMP
Packet Size: 1500
TTL: default
Timeout: 3000
Count: 2500
Interval: 500
General Timeout: not used

--- ping statistics ---
500 packets transmitted, 497 received, 0% packet loss, time 294661msrtt min/avg/max/mdev = 44/54/104/7.9 ms

Played on Fleet Commander again, still no yellow wifi signal with the exclamation point. At this point I think I'm good even thought a couple of packets were dropped which I account as normal. It was probably them intentionally dropping them because I up'd the interval. I did not run it the full half hour though, and I'll try that this weekend at 1 sec intervals and see if I can duplicate any results.

I appreciate all the help!