11ax or Wifi 6 Device density

[derselia]

11ax is supposed to address the problem of density.

Does 11ax router really help if you have a whole house full of 11n 2.4ghz IoT devices?

Personal experience: 50 wireless device is like the upper limit my trusty ac86u can handle. Reliable operations is closer to 30 before some devices gets disconnected.

Would the ax88u solve that?

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[thiggins]

The 11ax standard is supposed to address efficiency, not density.

Basically, no. OFDMA enables multiple devices to share the bandwidth of a single transmit frame. But the devices must support OFDMA, which 11n devices do not.

The only benefit N and AC devices get from OFDMA is that they get more bandwidth due to the efficiency of OFDMA devices. In other words, if you had 4 OFDMA devices and 4 N/AC devices running similar traffic, total available bandwidth should increase. Theoretically.

 

[sfx2000]

The 11ax standard is supposed to address efficiency, not density.

Basically, no. OFDMA enables multiple devices to share the bandwidth of a single transmit frame. But the devices must support OFDMA, which 11n devices do not.

The only benefit N and AC devices get from OFDMA is that they get more bandwidth due to the efficiency of OFDMA devices. In other words, if you had 4 OFDMA devices and 4 N/AC devices running similar traffic, total available bandwidth should increase. Theoretically.

Yep - this might be an interesting thing to check - WiFi6 in a mixed 11n environment for 2.4GHz - most folks attention has been on the 11ac/VHT to High Efficiency.

It's similar to the non-standard VHT deployments down in the 2.4GHz, where there isn't much improvement in capacity or performance.

Until companies like Espressif and similar that do the very lost cost wireless microcontrollers, WiFi6 is going to be primarily smartphones and laptops, IMHO...

 

[Trip]

Would the ax88u solve that?

Not likely. And potentially not worth finding out for $335, when, if you have the skill set, you could simply solve the problem with a product purpose-built for density, on the cheap; ie. refurb Ruckus. A working pull R710 is $240 on eBay currently, or for more radios in favor of bleeding edge, two (or more) working pull R500's for $75/ea. running Unleashed in SmartMesh. Either setup would likely end your issues. The 710 alone lists 512 max clients on the spec sheet; I've observed 150+ in real life, functioning just fine.

All of that is assuming, of course, you're open to the idea and have enough basic networking knowledge, or would be willing to learn, of how to setup the AP(s) to work in conjunction with the router (on which you'd want to disable as much wireless functionality as possible, perhaps even swap it out for a wired router later on).

Obviously the above idea is a no-go if you must stick with an all-in-one, and/or Asus, for whatever reason. Otherwise, that's the route I'd go.

 

[derselia]

On a separate location, I have used 2 x Xirrus X2 to setup Wifi. It solved the device density issue, but the performance for the high end device are meh and the roaming handover is poor. I was kinda disappointed.

Not likely. And potentially not worth finding out for $335, when, if you have the skill set, you could simply solve the problem with a product purpose-built for density, on the cheap; ie. refurb Ruckus. A working pull R710 is $240 on eBay currently, or for more radios in favor of bleeding edge, two (or more) working pull R500's for $75/ea. running Unleashed in SmartMesh. Either setup would likely end your issues. The 710 alone lists 512 max clients on the spec sheet; I've observed 150+ in real life, functioning just fine.

All of that is assuming, of course, you're open to the idea and have enough basic networking knowledge, or would be willing to learn, of how to setup the AP(s) to work in conjunction with the router (on which you'd want to disable as much wireless functionality as possible, perhaps even swap it out for a wired router later on).

Obviously the above idea is a no-go if you must stick with an all-in-one, and/or Asus, for whatever reason. Otherwise, that's the route I'd go.

 

[Trip]

Got it. So competency is likely not a challenge for you.

I haven't used Xirrus, but I do know that 802.11/r/k/v works as it should with Ruckus, in both Unleashed and ZoneDirector firmware trains. A quick look in /r/networking and /r/sysadmin at Reddit corroborates those findings fairly well. As far as pure endpoint bandwidth goes, yeah, these platforms are optimized more for client count, but I do find Ruckus still does well with bandwidth maximization and latency throughout the load range. This is likely due to well optimized GRE tunneling and airtime awareness, in combination with PD-MRC, BeamFlex+, etc. Just an all round better product when it comes to the physical connection experience, especially for mobiles. I'd say still worth the consideration, if you're so inclined.