Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

Having built a software platform that integrated with the big enterprise wifi vendors, I can comfortably say meraki's is the most intuitive and easiest to use.

Silly. If the author doesn't want to follow good advice, too bad for him.

I'm using WRT1900ACS with DD-WRT. It works like a charm.

> if I buy a product then I expect it to work as advertised and not need to implement hacks to keep it alive.

It's not a "hack". It's installing a better quality OS on the device. Again, if the author doesn't want to do that, there is no reason to complain.

My phone stays on ac all the time. Not sure how to fix it. That and the stupid java application needed to configure were not my most favorite on boarding experiences. Seems an ok system but not super great for getting set up. Its definitely enterprise though.

Last year I bought my wife and I our first set of "smart" phones. Yes I'm serious, I've been in IT all my life but never felt I had a need for anything other than a flip phone. But I noticed Samsung selling a Galaxy Core Prime for $90 and I bought my wife the LG Stylo for $180 since I wanted her to have a better camera.

For my home network, my modem runs into a linux box with Shorewall where it is natted/firewalled and split into two subnets.

I've been a fan of the netgear prosafe access points for the last 10 years, as I could always find older models on ebay for cheap.

Currently I was using a WN203 (2x2 802n). For the most part it was just my laptop and a Roku box connected. never had problems. But enter in these new smart phones...

Within a few weeks (of buying the phones) I noticed random times of terrible wifi lag. Looking at the AP's management webpage, I noticed during these random times of lag, my wife's phone would be connected at just 1M. I'd tell her to restart her phone and the problem would go away for a day or two. But it kept happening. I wasn't sure what the problem was but I used it as an excuse to get another access point, I was wanting one that had 5ghz anyway. I sniped a netgear WNDAP660 (3x3 802n) off of ebay, new in box for $95. They are normally $350 new. Figured that would solve my problems.

To my horror after a few days of having the new WNDAP660 set up, I started getting the same terrible lag and my wife's phone would be connected at 1M again. This time though the WNDAP660, through the web interface had an option to save wifi traffic packets. During the next time of lag, I saved a few minutes of packet captures and opened them in wireshark.

I was surprised to see that even though my wife's phone was connected at 1M, it was not the issue. My phone (the Core Prime) was spamming pwr_mgt request packets, 100's per second. It was basically using up all the bandwidth. In disgust, I moved everything to the 5ghz band (gave it a different id), and left only my phone on the 2.4ghz. So all was well....

But that was just a couple of months ago. I've since out grown my core prime (which doesn't take much) and bought a Galaxy S6. I turned off the 2.4ghz band on the AP, and now everything (including my new S6) are all connected to 5ghz.

And then you guessed it... I was sitting at the kitchen table and noticed lag while trying to browse the net on my laptop. I looked up and noticed the Roku box playing on TV was also stuck loading. I reached over and picked up my new S6 and put it into airplane mode. Instantly all was well on the airwaves. I haven't actually done a packet dump yet, so I don't know if the S6 is spamming pwr mgt requests or not.

But this is really annoying. I don't know what is at fault either. It seems smart phones don't play nice. But I've also caught my Roku box spewing RTS requests, even after rebooting it. I thought it had been hacked or something and was trying to dos me, but after restarting one of the cell phones all went back to normal. Its as if certain devices don't play well with each other. I mean, in my original lag case, the core prime was spamming packets, yet restarting my wifes phone would solve the problem just as good as restarting my phone. Makes no sense....

So I guess if you get random lag on wifi, try turning off a cell phone or two until you find the culprit. And once you find it, then.... Well actually I don't know what you do then. Any tips? lol