Very slow IOT network using UniFi APs and Pf sense

Networking & Firewalls
1

Hello, I’m hoping to find some guidance here. I have had a network configuration consisting of a UniFi AC pro and AC lite with Pfsense as my router and firewall. Pfsense is being run on an older computer. My UniFi controller is a cloudkey. I have my network segmented to an IOT vlan, a secure Vlan, a camera vlan and a test vlan. I have never had an issue with speeds but recently I have seen a significant drop on the IOT network with both wired connections and wireless connections. The IOT network contains 40 devices almost equally split between both APs. So about 20 per AP. Most of the devices are using 2.4 ghz on IOT. When connecting to IOT on the 5 ghz range I get roughly 50 to 60 mbps when connecting to the internet. When connecting to the 2.4 IOT network often that connection speed is less than 6mbps. The wired IOT is not good either often only 10 mbps. On the secure side I’m getting over 600 mbps wired and over 200 wireless. I’m assuming the device count is bogging down the IOT network but the same number of devices was not a problem in the past.

I’m not even sure how to begin troubleshooting since the issue isn’t consistently a wireless issue. Based on the vlan specific behavior I’m leaning toward this being a Pfsense issue but don’t know what troubleshooting techniques to take. Any guidance is appreciated.

2

Check the cables, check the physical layer, test the wired links first using iperf.

I might do a video on this topic at some point but I had a VERY weird troubleshooting issue that I spent an hour on thinking it was my ISP because I could get my full 600 down but only 2MB up. Uploading YouTube videos is really what brought the issue to my attention. Turned out to be a bad DAC cable in my rack, which is rare and odd. I had not made any changes, that cable had been in place for years. The UniFi switch did tell me there was some error with it, but that error was STP and I was ignoring it as I could not find a loop. I have since tried that cable in other switches with the same result, traffic is very restricted.

3

Thank you. I will try that. It seems to be so many random issues but after you mentioned it everything is tying into a very old Cisco switch that I had since 2016. If it’s failing that could account for the issues being so random.

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