STA-to-STA OFDMA issue?

[souflyy]

Hi guys, sorry to bring this topic up again, but my question fits perfectly into this topic.

Is this issue still present today when OFDMA / 802.11ax + MU-MIMO is enabled?

I have a GT-AX11000 and I want to use Playstation 5 Remote Play to stream to my Surface Pro 8 (both connected with Wifi 6), and it runs very very bad.
I have read all your tests and I think the reason is that the PS5 and Surface is up and downloading at the "same" time, and therefore the bad performance.

I tried it also with OFDMA and MU-MIMO completely disabled, then it runs surprisingly good, but what is the benefit then, that I have a monster Wifi6 router where I have to disable the OFDMA and Mu-MIMO?

Even with OFDMA DL-only I get some little stuttering during using remote play.

Thanks all

 

[Tech9]

but what is the benefit then

The reality - in typical home environment with mixed N/AC/AX clients the benefit is minimal to none. Mostly used by home router manufacturers for marketing purposes. Your monster router is mostly non-functional Gaming plastic with RGB lights and about $100 hardware inside with somewhat working firmware.

 

[souflyy]

Thanks for your input, unfortunately, this is what I already expected

I am using my network like this:
2g = all my IOT and legacy stuff
5g1 = all my n and ac devices
5g2 = ax only

So I thought that I can have the full OFDMA benefits in 5g2.
But I am not scared to disable those things again, if they are known to be buggy.

Primary I bought the router to have 4x4 MIMO, because I have some 4x4 devices at home.

For the professional settings:
- Implicit and explicit beamforming seems to work ok, I can see a benefit in signal quality and I see in Wifi logs more throughput in theory, but I have not tested if the throughput gain is real.
- Airtime fairness I have off, because, I had some troubles with some of my devices (connection loss), and I think this is no Wifi standard?
- MU-MIMO I have actually on, because I have a lot of 2x2 MU-MIMO devices, but I dont know if it will harm or help, or if it is even working.
- OFDMA I have set to OFDMA / 802.11ax + MU-MIMO, because I have some ax devices, but it looks like, that this setting is harmful.

What professional settings do you guys use in your home environment?

Thanks!

 

[Tech9]

What professional settings do you guys use in your home environment?

Multiple threads around about Wi-Fi settings. Leave everything close to default and enjoy your life. There is no universal best settings. You have to find what works best in your environment and with your clients.

 

[leerees]

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but I've had a number of messages regarding OFDMA and this is the initial thread I replied to.

OFDMA is only necessary if you have a large number of stations on your network.

The purpose of OFDMA is not to make an individuals download speed faster, it's to distribute resources more efficiently so everybody gets lower pings and faster throughput in a high traffic environment. With this in mind, the high calibre lab tests conducted here will of course show OFDMA to have worse performance. The reason for this is because they are being conducted in an environment that wouldn't benefit from this technology.

The reason it works for me is because we are essentially operating a commercial LAN with many STA's using consumer grade hardware (Asus routers). It's an edge case, and realistically most people would just buy enterprise grade hardware. The only reason I didn't, is because it's just a bunch of holiday lets, so I went for the cheap solution which paid off.

We still have the same hardware operating in the same configuration as when I initially participated in this thread. As a test, yesterday I disabled OFDMA-UL/DL and MU-MUMO. The internet has been working flawlessly for years but today I now have a bunch of complaints about slow internet, so I've promptly re-enabled it and the network is now back up to performing great.

If you run a small home internet, you are better off disabling OFDMA and MU-MIMO. A better solution (for lower pings and higher throughput) would be to split your network bands up and / or manually assign specific STA's depending on bandwidth use. As an example, my home network has phones and laptops on the AX band, streamers on the AC band and IOT / smart home on 2.4 ghz. Everything else is wired as ethernet.

The only home based scenario I could think of where you'd get a boost is if you have a repeater or a shared (with STA's) wireless backhaul. Enabling OFDMA-DL and / or MU-MIMO could reduce buffer bloat for the STA's on the end of the chain. Even this isn't a guarantee, you'd still have to test it as you may find there's enough bandwidth anyway. If this is the case, disabling OFDMA would get you better pings.

Tech9 said it better than me "leave everything close to default and enjoy your life". You would know if you needed OFDMA, and almost every home network, doesn't.