What's Missing From Your Wi-Fi 6 Router? OFDMA

[Calian]

Hello I am new to the site and still trying to learn (comprehend) all the intricacies of routers. I first saw OFDMA (and MU Mimo) mentioned when looking for a new router after upgrading my internet to fiber-optic. I am still trying to understand the actual real world implications for it, but first I saw it mentioned with the TP-Link AX6000 and was under the impression that that router already has it.

After reading the the article though it seems that no routers have it fully implemented yet, which leaves me wondering if I am missing something? And also, how significant it is compared to say more antennas, more processors or even just gigabit capacity?

 

[L&LD]

How significant can it be if support between routers and client devices is hit and miss?

Better router:

More antennae? Yes!

More processors? No, not really.

Faster processors? Yes!

More RAM? Yes!

More/faster and built-in Storage (JFFS as SSD)? Yes!

Marketing fluff?

 

[thiggins]

MU-MIMO has proven to be of little practical use. OFDMA may end up being a similar technology. But I can't say for sure because it is not supported in most consumer Wi-Fi 6 products.

Unfortunately, you cannot believe vendor spec sheets or product information for either MU-MIMO or OFDMA in Wi-Fi 6 routers. They are either hiding disclaimers or making them very hard to find or not providing any disclaimers at all.

 

[name99]

MU-MIMO has proven to be of little practical use. OFDMA may end up being a similar technology. But I can't say for sure because it is not supported in most consumer Wi-Fi 6 products.

Unfortunately, you cannot believe vendor spec sheets or product information for either MU-MIMO or OFDMA in Wi-Fi 6 routers. They are either hiding disclaimers or making them very hard to find or not providing any disclaimers at all.

This (MU-MIMO, and OFDMA) seems like a "too early to say" statement.
There are two issues
- first the benefits primarily arise in large group settings. So conferences, music concerts, situations like that. These technologies are practically irrelevant for homes (in spite of idiotic advertising). Yes, you may well have thirty WiFi devices at home, but most of them are silent most of the time...
- second the benefits can only kick in when enough people in these crowds are all capable of using the new tech. So you're gated (not completely, but mostly) by the speed at which the slowest upgraders upgrade their equipment. To create enough MU-MIMO packets to represent a significant fraction of the overall number of bits transmitted requires a significant fraction of devices be MU-MIMO capable. The same will be true of OFDMA.

Ignore what advertisers say! At the engineering level, these technologies DO result in improved throughput WHEN THEIR USAGE CONDITIONS are met.
The fact that those conditions are currently rarely met sucks, but what are you going to do? The only way we get to an environment of, say, 80% device penetration, is by shipping the client chipsets early (even though it may take five years before enough clients have moved over) and the base station chip sets early (because businesses will only change their base stations maybe once every five years).
This is no different from anything else. When your old laptop only had USB-2 ports, it seemed irrelevant that the external hard drive you bought had USB-3. But a few years later, when you upgraded your laptop you sure were glad that hard drive could now deliver 3-4x the sequential throughput...

 

[thiggins]

My comments were about MU-MIMO in consumer use, for the reasons you cite. The AC form has been out long enough for users to notice any improvement.

My OFDMA testing so far has shown total throughput gain only under very specific conditions. It will take years for AP engineers to tweak OFDMA. But, in the end, I expect it to be of little practical use in consumer settings.

 

[Pak Kriss]

Maybe not your preferred language nor a Asus router, but a good test re-WiFi 6 and real world performance

https://www.techstage.de/ratgeber/Ratgeber-Wi-Fi-6-am-PC-ab-33-Euro-nachruesten-4662602.html

My comments were about MU-MIMO in consumer use, for the reasons you cite. The AC form has been out long enough for users to notice any improvement.

My OFDMA testing so far has shown total throughput gain only under very specific conditions. It will take years for AP engineers to tweak OFDMA. But, in the end, I expect it to be of little practical use in consumer settings.

Sent from my SM-T805 using Asus RT-AC86U & Merlin 384.13

 

[name99]

My comments were about MU-MIMO in consumer use, for the reasons you cite. The AC form has been out long enough for users to notice any improvement.

My OFDMA testing so far has shown total throughput gain only under very specific conditions. It will take years for AP engineers to tweak OFDMA. But, in the end, I expect it to be of little practical use in consumer settings.

What do you mean by "consumer use"? It seems like the point you mean is "home use"?

For home use I think we are on the same page: MU-MIMO and OFDMA are of extremely limited use.
But, as I said, "consumers" attend large gatherings -- conventions, stadia, universities, hotels -- and I would expect that, in time, the benefits of these more efficient sharing modalities will start to be visible in those environments.

 

[exxr]

Tim,

I notice you're using Magic Iperf on Android, that app hasn't seen an update since 2015 and runs Iperf version 3.1

The latest is 3.7 and there have been bug fixes since. Official site is https://software.es.net/iperf/ by the way not iperf.fr that's only a third party hosting various old binaries.

I run an app called Termux that lets you install packages including latest build of Iperf3 version 3.7

 

[thiggins]

@exxr Thanks for the info. I do know about the later versions. My requirements are pretty simple and it appears that Magic Iperf handles them for now.

I installed Termux on one of my S10e's when I was trying to get netperf installed.

I would need a way to start/stop iperf3 on the S10e's via adb commands. Can I do that with iperf3 running on Termux?

 

[exxr]

Well I'm no expert on Android but assuming if you can run the iperf binary from the Magic Iperf app there's no reason not to be able to run it from the Termux app directory here
/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/iperf3

 

[thiggins]

Well I'm no expert on Android but assuming if you can run the iperf binary from the Magic Iperf app there's no reason not to be able to run it from the Termux app directory here
/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/iperf3

Yep. I suppose I could ssh using Termux? Does it support public key authentication?

 

[exxr]

Yep, sure does, see https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Remote_Access

 

[thiggins]

Yep, sure does, see https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Remote_Access

Thanks. Good to know.

 

[digitalfreak]

It's fun to stay at the O.F.D.M.A.

 

[tim]

After reading the article my question would be:

Due to the complexity of OFDMA, will it ever be reliable and produce real world benefits?

 

[thiggins]

After reading the article my question would be:

Due to the complexity of OFDMA, will it ever be reliable and produce real world benefits?

I will have a new article soon that will attempt to answer that question.

What I can say is that it is proving very difficult to find test parameters that show consistent, significant improvement in either total throughput or reduced latency. In other words, real-world improvement may be difficult to detect, as it has been with MU-MIMO.

 

[tipstir]

WIFI-6 not much use for that yet most of us on WIFI-4 or 5 and yet all my smart devices will only use 2.4GHz it was tough haul on Onhub to trick to think Guest was 2.4GHz. Tp-Link Business AP seems to hold it's weight so far. I got it mounted to AP stand I made it's all the way to the ceiling.