You are fussing about channels and bandwidth within your own flat when the environment is chock full of other routers and other wifi devices all overlapping and interfering with your network, and you can't do a thing about it. And you're concerned about bandwidth within your own home network when what you do will probably never reach the limits of your network, whether wired or wifi.
Do you have tens or hundreds of devices all streaming simultaneously or sending large multi-gb files across the network at the same time within your home?
Asus AIMesh works the same as TP-Link's Deco mesh.
You just set up the main node and all the rest will become satellite nodes.
All share the same SSID and the roaming between nodes will depend on the brand and what features it has to configure the level when it switches nodes. Same for channels.
If there's ethernet, it can be used for backhaul.
If not, one of the wifi bands will be used for backhaul.
You'll probably touch the channels just to use one that is slightly less crowded than the others.
Asus more configurable depending on model/firmware.
Deco doesn't let you do so and automates many things.
Don’t have so many devices lah, also not sending gigabytes of files simultaneously.
But it shouldn’t stop us from still trying to get the best speeds we can right? Most people on this forum are trying to do that too.
It’s the same with the argument: we only have a 1 Gbps Internet at home, what’s the point of buying a very expensive AX11000 class router with advertised speeds of up to 11 Gbps?
A speed test from an iPhone at a distance of around 32 feet, will only get us around 450 Mbps (±45 Mbps). Same for iPad Pro. Same for Samsung Galaxy S8. Same for a laptop computer. Same for most wireless clients. Why? Because that is the speed expected from these (2×2 MIMO) devices.
And since in the market there are only 2x2 MIMO clients, even with iPhone 15 and the new Apple Silicon MacBooks. Then why waste money on a 4x4 MIMO AX router?
Well, that’s because it can deliver full speeds to two 2x2 clients simultaneously.
The point I’m making is that with understanding, we can make informed decisions in our purchase.
Another example is router advertising. Understanding MCS Index will help us cut through advertising crap.
For example, an advert for a AC4000 tri-band 3x3 spatial streams router says it supports speed up to 750 (2.4GHz), 1625(5 GHz), and 1625 (5GHz) Mbps.
Sounds very impressive until one realises that for AC routers, the typical channel width used for 5GHz is 80 MHz and at 80MHz 3x3 streams, the max speed of 1625 Mbps is at 1024-QAM which is really not supported by AC routers. A more realistic max speed is 975 Mbps at 64-QAM modulation and coding.
But that’s not all. Going back to what I said above about MIMO, the max speed our wireless client like our iPhone and MacBook won’t be 975 Mbps because they are only 2x2 clients. The realistic max speed for our clients will be 650 Mbps at 64-QAM.
Having an understanding like this helps us buy the kind of router that meets our needs at a price point we want.
Again when I ask network contractor, they only say higher spec router sure better speed. Which is not true because the fastest speed is based on the wireless client.
How then do we determine what bandwidth we need and could realistically achieve at home with a 1Gbps plan?
From Dong: Here's simple math in figuring out which router is good enough.
Take two-thirds of the total 5GHz bandwidth of a router, and that's its ballpark sustained local speed. (I know there are the 2.4GHz and 6GHz bands, too, but the 5GHz is the most popular for now.)
Divide that number by your family members to get an idea of how much bandwidth each will get when everyone is online at the same time.
For example, the Asus RT-AX86U has the top speed on the 5GHz band of 4800 Mbps (160 MHz), or 2400 Mbps (80 MHz) if you're conservative -- most devices don't use 160 MHz.
Consequently, you can expect a sure sustained bandwidth of 1600 Mbps. So if you have four in your family, each will get an allotment of 400 Mbps.
That doesn't mean all of you will connect at that speed or even close, but you'll have an idea of everyone's portion of your network's capacity. Also, note that you can also use the router's 2.4 GHz for some extra bandwidth.
By the way, 400 Mbps is way more than anything you'd need for Internet access, so the RT-AX88U can easily handle a house of dozen or so members and still give everyone speedy access.
Note that this doesn't mean each person will not use more than their bandwidth allotment. A heavy BitTorrent user in a home can hog all the bandwidth, no matter how fast your Internet is. But this is the case where you need the help of QoS.
So again, knowing more can help in purchasing decisions. That’s all I’m saying.
