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Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

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Re: Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

#61

Post by ece »

Informative page, but the most common speeds with 2x2 MIMO probably were (in Mbps):

Far (QPSK) 4(20Mhz)/5(80Mhz)/6(160Mhz)/7(320Mhz): 28.8/130/288.23/576.47

Near (64QAM) 4(20Mhz)/5(80Mhz)/6(160Mhz)/7(320Mhz): 144.4/650/1,441.17/2,882.35

Not bad for throughput increases, though most of the increases come from more spectrum, and the reliability comes from more MIMO antennas/streams. I've had WiFi 4/5 2x2 routers and something tells me I won't see much more than what's listed above for 7. Buying a 4x4 does get you a generation of throughput in advance pretty much, if you need it.

Re: Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

#62

Post by [deleted] »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #40

I hate how they did this big rebrand to simplify things and then immediately ruined it with 6e and 7. Okay, we have wifi 6, now we're adding 6GHz. How do you know if you have 6GHz? You check if it says 6...e. And is wifi 7 an upgrade to that? Lol who knows, depends on the individual device specs. Check if it says tri-band, that will tell you it supports 6GHz... OR that it can support two simultaneous networks on one…

[deleted]

Re: Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

#63

Post by izacus »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #28

Today I set up a NWA210BE (Zyxel) to replace a unifi 6+ AP; I bought it second hand and my key metrics were: 4x4 MIMO, available used/discounted, current gen, fully functional standalone mode. The 4x4 makes all the difference. Sitting in my car the 6+ would fight with my 4G for internet and cause maps to be super slow; now I'm off the property before its unusable. I had intended to put APs in multiple rooms, but ther…

What benefit does 4x4 give you? I haven't seen a single client station with more than 1x1 or 2x2. Do you have so many clients that transmit concurrently?

Re: Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

#65

Post by Havoc »

walrus01 wrote: post #7
Havoc wrote: post #3

Nice detailed article! Finding it increasingly difficult to avoid bottlenecks though. Even with wifi 7 I still get 1.3 on my mac and 0.5 on iphone. More than enough realistically, but upstream internet is 1.7 so tiny bit unfortunately Think I'm just going to wire the place with 10 gig fiber >The speed advantages that Access Points have over mesh systems will become much more obvious with Wi-Fi 7. From what I've read…

how many spatial streams are you using (2x2, 3x3, etc) and are you using an 80 or 160 MHz channel? If you have a set of full capability 802.11be clients you'll see the best performance with a 3x3 AP and 160 MHz channels.

160hz channel & 2 spatial streams.

It's unfortunately consumer grade tp-links so while they have actually been pretty good...you don't get a lot of knobs to tweak.

Still need to try MLO at some stage and they're currently acting as a bridge so (i.e. wifi backhaul) so think it might get better once I've laid fiber backhaul between them

Re: Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

#66

Post by Havoc »

anyfoo wrote: post #5
Havoc wrote: post #3

Nice detailed article! Finding it increasingly difficult to avoid bottlenecks though. Even with wifi 7 I still get 1.3 on my mac and 0.5 on iphone. More than enough realistically, but upstream internet is 1.7 so tiny bit unfortunately Think I'm just going to wire the place with 10 gig fiber >The speed advantages that Access Points have over mesh systems will become much more obvious with Wi-Fi 7. From what I've read…

Due to boring circumstances outside of my control, I have to use WiFi for the most part, so I've got quite some experience with making it run optimally (or rather, as optimally as I managed to, not as optimally as I would like it to). And yeah, you pretty much already have to have a visible line of sight to get anything even close to 1 Gbps. And still be on channels with little interference. (DFS helps if you're not…

Yeah, used to run a wifi bridge by necessity for years (yay rental). I could get stable 1gig over wifi6 which is why I'm a little puzzled that 7 isn't much better

Re: Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

#68

Post by throw0101a »

xuki wrote: post #48
Onavo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the newer WiFi standards on 6Ghz support a lot more channels. Not a perfect work around by any means but it does significantly reduce congestion.

Yeah 6Ghz freq doesn't have DFS channels which remove a lot of usable channels for 5Ghz. Unfortunately it'll be a while until most devices support 6Ghz.

> Unfortunately it'll be a while until most devices support 6Ghz.

Per this May 2025 Juniper presentation, half of their deployed APs have 6 GHZ enabled, and at least 20%—but as much as 50% depending on the environment—of clients have 6 GHz:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV-3gA0OP9s

Corporate environments (where client hardware is more standardize) has higher 6 GHz adoption, BYOD (universities) environments have lower adoption.

So I'm not sure how you define "a while" as, but it's probably already the majority at most workplaces, and will be for personal stuff with-in a year or so.

Re: Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

#69

Post by throw0101a »

ssl-3 wrote: post #36
dylan604 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does any of it have to do with the spectrum becoming available? After 2.4GHz and 5GHz, I have no idea what else the latest/future gens of WiFi are using. As some tech like 2G is no longer in operation, that spectrum was opened up. There are other frequencies that have become available where operating the older equipment that used to operate there is a big no-no now. There was a frequency range used by old wireless mi…

In regulatory regions where it is usable, Wifi 6 (802.11ax) added some 6GHz channels. Wifi 6e extended that to roughly the entire 6GHz band, for ~1GHz of contiguous RF bandwidth in that area alone. The "old" cellular bands aren't generally open, at least in the States. We tend to use them for newer licensed stuff in cellular-land instead of the old licensed stuff we used to do. (Old modulation techniques die out and…

> In regulatory regions where it is usable, Wifi 6 (802.11ax) added some 6GHz channels.

'Plain' Wifi 6 (non-E) had zero 6 GHz. If you think otherwise can you produce a citation?

Edit:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

Re: Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)

#70

Post by fireflash38 »

niobe wrote: post #31
anyfoo wrote: post #12

> Wi-Fi signal strength decreases at an exponential rate as you move further away from a router. This is surprising to me. I'd have guessed it decreases quadratically (i.e. due to the inverse square law), not exponentially. The paragraph below seems to contain an explanation, but I don't really understand it (namely because I don't know what that percentage "Coverage" column actually means, or what we mean with "the…

So that table is using distance as a proxy for signal to noise ratio. SNR is what really matters. Each data rate in the standard uses a different encoding technique. "Faster" encoding techniques cram more data into a given transmission interval but require a higher signal to noise ratio to be received without error. Since SNR declines with distance you can have a rough idea at what distance from a transmitter you wil…

Do most clients do a constant throughput or do they do bursts? Because speed does matter a lot if it's burst (send 100MB to fill a buffer, then wait). The faster you fill whatever buffer, the faster you can let another client use the connection.

Correlated, but obviously bad code can really fuck with neighbors. And each client has an incentive to be greedy so users of that client get a better experience. So you fall back again to QOS for what you care about..

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