Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2 I am using the onboard wifi as an access point and plugged into a switch via eithernet.
I noticed something odd if I leave my ubuntu laptop connected for a long time eventually websites stop responding and the laptop wifi needs reconnecting to make it work again.
so I tried to ping the laptop to test if it was responding.
Packets: Sent = 298, Received = 298, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 1695ms, Average = 283ms
so the first issue I have is why would the laptop be dropping connection (and acting like it was still connected)
secondly these response times can't be normal ? even if the internet connected was pegged at max download shouldn't there still be enough bandwidth to respond to a local ping instantly ? the high MS response times do line up with spikes on wlan0 real time graph.
a phone, xbox one, laptop and a spare pc are the only devices connected to the pi.
laptop is linux using the Ath10k_pci driver but the ping delay also happens on the desktop that is using a cheaper usb wifi adapters, neither had the issue on the previous modem/router I was using as an access point.
I was part wondering if the older pi3 wasnt fast enough or if it's built-in wifi wasn't strong enough,
The raspberry pi devices (all of them) have WiFi that is not designed to be used as an ap. They are all slow and not designed for use with multiple client devices (1x1 radios). They also have a small PCB antenna which will have very limited range compared to a purpose built ap.
The pi3 is not particularly fast as a router (mainly limited by the usb bus speed), but the pi4 is actually an excellent device as a wired router. Even with the pi4, though, the WiFi is not sufficient for use as an ap. Even a decade old 802.11n ap can probably outperform the pi’s WiFi.
I did further testing and found that the Ethernet performance was great always less than 1ms so I was very much suspecting the built in wifi (or it's tiny antenna) may have been the issue.
but this response was exactly what I wanted to know. saved me a lot of headache on further troubleshooting. thanks psherman!
so I am still wondering, would any off the shelf usb wifi adapter be better ? if one would work at all?
Probably not. Some (many?) USB wifi adapters actually do not support AP mode operation, so those would obviously be of no use to you. Those that do may have slightly better performance than the Pi's wifi, but it still will generally be fairly lackluster.