Customer’s question: We’ve started using the PicoStation2HP in our network in station mode and have been getting a lot of complaints. Specifically my techs are telling me they are seeing very poor performance when the client has strong signal. I decided to run some tests of my own in the lab and have confirmed this to be the case. Before I started digging into it too much further I wanted to drop you a line to see if you were aware of any issues like this. Here is what I’ve seen and done thus far:
When the receive signal is at around -55 or higher I see both the RX and TX data rates drop to 1 to 5.5 mb. Speed tests are obviously slow, 400kb/sec or so. If I attenuate the signal, for example stick the antenna in a coffee can, the rates jump right up to 54mb. Speed tests also recover (as expected) and return 18+mb/sec. The coffee can will take the signal from -55 down to around -70. As a 2nd test I decreased the TX power on my AP from 27dbm to 10dbm. That had a similar effect as the coffee can. 54mb rates and 18+mb/sec speed tests.
PicoStation is in station mode, tried using both open/un-secured and WPA2. Tried G-only and B-only modes. Tried disabling dynamic-ack timeout and hard set to 100 and 30. Tried disabling extra reporting. Nothing has helped. The unit is running the latest 3.4 firmware, downloaded from your site today. I’ve tested using a Linksys AP and our Belair AP, both with similar results.
ANSWER: For the most part this is normal. With any high powered device, if you are too close, or have too high of a signal, you will oversaturate the receiver of the unit (think yelling vs talking in someones ear). The best advice is to have a signal that is -50is or less, with best signal in the 60’s.