You can always combine a WAN and LAN port into dual WAN to double the throughput. I have an ASUS RT-AX88U connected to an ARRIS SB8200 with Link Aggregation to take advantage of a 1.2Gbps internet connection.
at my place you can get either from 250/50 Mb/s to 1000/50 Mb/s from anyone that is quite cheap or 3000/500 from one for insane price (~20x more). I am planning for now to use that for both reliability of the uplink (I know ISP's use different nodes when they leave my place) and faster bandwidth (I have fiber to my place and cat 6 (5GB/s) internally.
1Gbs outside may actually be 1Gbs. Inside 1Gbs isn't 1Gbs because of overhead when you have multiple connections. So with aggregation you can benefit multiple connections going outside.
this is getting really ridiculous. wired lan is going from "slower" than wifi to "much slower" than wifi. If aliens came down to earth i am not sure what they would think of this lunacy.
This isn't the case. 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps Ethernet has been out for a while now, it's just not propogating to consumer hardware because it isn't needed in most scenarios. Ethernet can maintain these high data rates over very long distances. This article showed that even wifi 6 across a few rooms drops to below 500Mbps. Higher wifi speeds are needed in order to compete with Ethernet over a long distance, but it's still far more stable (though not easier) to drop Ethernet throughout your place to get near 1Gbps with older routers.
10gb, 25gb, 40gb and 100gb are commonplace in the business space, they just havent filtered down to consumers due to lack of demand.
Keep in mind also that wifi is simplex (or half duplex) meaning that it can only send or receive but not both at the same time. You also have a lot of overhead on wifi that leads to these numbers not being as good in practice as you might think. Take a normal AC router for example, and lets say you are connected at 867mbps, thats for the entire link, not just the payload. You have WPA2 overhead, errors, retransmitted frames, interference with your neighbors/other devices, TCP/IP overhead (which is present on ethernet also) to contend with and you are going at 1/2 duplex. All of this together means that you are going to actually see about a 400mbps connection for payload.
This is not to snub wifi, its getting very good very fast. But to say that it even comes close to competing with a hardwired connection is just not understanding the technology and whats out there.
You might have mistaken the use of OFDMA as multiple-acces scheme, but OFDMA does not make it full-duplex, it still is entirely and strictly half-duplex.
AX is NOT full duplex, its still half duplex. There is talk, but none that I've seen yet, of AX routers using 4x4 antenna. Most consumer routers are still 2x2 (dual band), or 3x3 (tri-band). 4x4 (quad band?), while not true full duplex, will emulate as much.
You also forgot to mention that it's shared. your WIFI router can go 3.6gb/s, but your devices even in a perfectly isolated environment all have to share that bandwidth. You don't get 3.6gb/s to each device.
It sounds faster on paper. If you ACTUALLY look at the speed of wifi on the AC 5GHz band with 2 of the same AC routers connected to each other, it is not faster than hard wire gigabit connection. Look at some router reviews.
this is just one of those rare inflection points (fast ethernet with 802.11n was similiar), which brought gigabit ethernet into mainstream.
I have been running 10 Gb ethernet on copper, mixed cat 5e and '7' + Wifi 5 (802.11AC) network in the house for the past 4 years, if you are patient, you can find deals on 10 Gb stuff here and there. Market acceptance on 10 Gb is still quite slow, but I am hoping 5 or 2.5 Gb will be better at getting down to affordable price points.
wow did u just compare fast ethernet to 802.11n ?? one of the most ignorant comments i have read in all of internet. u have no idea what you are talking about gigabit ethernet existed in mainstream (sub 1000$ desktop) in 1999. 802.11n wasnt in the mainstream until no less than a decade after that
gigabit ethernet existed, but gigabit routers does not, at least not at the affordable, mainstream price point. It is not until 'n' that you get gigabit for essentially no premium.
Nah, most access points only have a 1Gbit link, and latency and packet loss are always going to be shit on wifi compared to a wired connection. Also, 2.5, 5, 10 and 40 Gbps Ethernet have been A Thing for a while if you go out of your way.
Unless you live in chattanooga or have access to AT&T fiber or google fiber or fios you are pretty much stuck with Cable/dsl for options which are data capped.
Most of our major ISP's in Canada got rid of data caps years ago.
Trust me when I tell you Canadian internet is generally better than what you can get in the US.
That's the problem with relying on aggregated national data rather than per-market pricing. I can get 1Gbps fiber for $130/mo in my suburb, but 10 miles north of me the only option is dial-up (cheap/slow) or satellite (expensive/slow). 10 miles west of me, there's a smaller fiber ISP offering 2.5Gbps for $150/mo that I can't get. It's not rocket science, just infrastructure and economics.
Even out here in the rural midwest we have fiber to the home available. It isn't inexpensive for the higher speeds, but it is available. Our connection was upgraded to fiber at no cost, but we are on a low speed cheap plan! :)
where in the midwest are you? That is certainly not true in Minnesota. I'm about 40 miles from Minneapolis and 200 Mbps is the best I can get. For family about 10 miles out of St Cloud, 40 is the best they can get. further out it goes down from there. Likewise with cellular. the carriers are hyping 5g when there are vast areas in the northern half of MN and WI that cant even get reliable 4G and when the can its only one carrier to choose from.
True but using a 4 year old article in this example failed. In 2016 I was already using a Docsis 3.0 250/20 Cable connection. Yet that article shows 16mbps as the national average..
By 2017 I was on a Docsis 3.1 500/20 cable connection and now in 2019 I moved up to a 1Gbps/750Mbps fiber connection.
The majority of cable providers in the US are still using Docsis 3.0 modems and within the last year or you are finally starting to see docsis 3.1 modems mostly because Comcast started to push them out.
"True but using a 4 year old article in this example failed. In 2016 I was already using a Docsis 3.0 250/20 Cable connection. Yet that article shows 16mbps as the national average"
Anecdote vs Aggregated data? I know which one I prefer.
However most of the users on that cable ISP in canada I was using went thru the same Docsis 3.0-3.1 progression and that is one the biggest Cable ISP in Canada. And everyone sent from 250mbps connection to the eventual 3.1 Docsis with 1Gbps cable. So the numbers are bigger than just my example.
I have 350 down/15 up which is plenty fast for streaming and even downloading DVD size games 'updates', and I am not data capped. I can get up to 1Gb down, but I don;t want to pay more. I still pay the same as I did when I moved in when it was 200Mb down, speed has been upped 3 times with no change in the bill.
The social trust index in the US is half of that in Canada. We made us 320 million sociopaths, So no matter what you say - the Murican will tell you that everything is better here. The murican actually believes this against better knowledge - while the facts tell that the american project is now the first and foremost failed state on this planet. Yep, internet here means gouging, unkept promises, lousy service at elevated pricing. Its ridiculously bad for the big majority. No dont trust the voice of an murican on the internet - and we should build a higher wall around the US - to keep them in.
Not gonna lie, Canada's cellphone coverage is phenomenal compared to anything in the US. I can be in the middle of the trans-canadian highway in Saskatchewan and still have at least 3G. I go 30 miles outside of chicago and I don't have any signal.
Ontario remained, by far, the most populous province in Canada with 13.4 million people calling it home in 2016, representing 38.3% of the Canadian population. This share was down slightly from the 100-year high of 38.5% in 2006.
So for american's you would consider Ontario the state.
Buddy, something like ~25% of Canada lives within 2 hours drive of Toronto. There's millions of houses with access to gigabit connections.
I'm in Canada and I'm on gigabit (Cogeco UltraFibe) and Bell is coming to lay fiber, so we'll have 2 gigabit ISPs competing in my city (lowly Hamilton)
Sure, if you go to the artic or the middle of our vast Canadian farmlands, it's crappy Internet. But if you go to populated Canada, there's lots of good Internet connections in urbanized Northeast Corridor now.
So they both have super fast internet compared to the where I live - the US. I only get 1.5 Mbps from the only ISP available in my area which is AT&T. Only basic internet available, no fiber. Don’t believe me? Open google maps and pick an address around Harbor Blvd. & Westminster Ave. CA. 92843. This is a super crowded area and we can only get 1.5 Mbps. All the subsidizes they got the government to upgrade their broadband towers have gone into their own pockets and the government do nothing. What a fucking joke.
Terrible for people in farmland sure. Got 100mbps around 12 years ago. 3 years ago I moved to a new ISP that uses FTTH. 500/500mbps for $70 a month. I can get 1gbps for another $20 a month, but see no reason for it. Even when downloading movies, large games, etc 500mbps is fast enough for me. Been quite pleased with it. Chicagoland overall has pretty good access to high speed offerings. Even the satellite cities are getting fiber now since prices on infrastructure has dropped so much the last 10 years.
say WHERE not just "in Canada" as I know am from and living in..Fiber is far far more promised than readily available A and B for the most part (meaning most of Canada) internet and telecoms overall are wickedly overpriced with moronic staging for the price point
lets see, get rid of majority of DSL that took a long time to even offer unlimited option, while also being on average ~$65/mth (including, sometimes without tax) for often sub 5/.768 connections, then they jack up price of standard phone lines (too expensive to maintain)
then they turn around pretty much make all other "we will call" high speed, sometimes 10/1 more often than not, lucky to stable 5/0.5, unless you were "very fortunate" to live in major city (even then) hit and miss STABLE above 20+DL 1-2UL ~$50-$110/mth plus tax only when in bundles.
Now they are wanting everyone on "wireless" to get away from all other types as although infrastructure is pricey (initially) after that, is dirt cheap to support thousands of customers per "tower" with few antennas to handle it (due to MIMO style)
when Fiber (which seems to be all over the country is actually "wired up" that would be one thing, but for now, generally quite overpriced (even when federal and provincial govt.) gave the telecoms many 10s of millions to "wire up the country by X date) and of course, things like CRTC seem to not give 2 shits.
...maybe because we all have full time bring in $100k per year in pocket jobs or something....yeh @#$ right.
as far as major ISP got rid of data caps in Canada years ago...I want some of that #$% you smoking, unless you the expensive (very limited) offerings, sorry, but no ALL telecoms in Canada still VERY MUCH have data caps....not everyone can afford $80+ per month internet PLUS phone + TV just to get the "unlimited" (to a point) bandwidth (data) allowance.
more often than not, folks living in Rural (which I currently do) NO LONGER have this option, unless you want to massively downgrade speed available, for the same price right around ~90 after tax.
folks should be far more "legit" in what they say (myself included) such as "I live in a condo in Vancover, or Montreal where internet is dirt cheap, sorry the rest of you @#$ do not"
And I was a rogers internet customer for about 15 years I haven't had a data capped connection in 10+ years. I cannot speak for your experience.
And you sound like you suffer from living in a small town which is a problem the US shares. If you want good internet you are screwed living in Rural in North America, so either move or stay and deal.
Right, I have a Gigabit, full duplex (980/960) uncapped connection from AT&T Fiber for $70/mo in Chicago...I don't see any limitation of using a router with a Gigabit LAN port.
Are there any beyond Gigabit ISP providers on the planet for residential use?
Minneapolis has had 10gbps fiber at $400/month for a while now. Not sure on specifics but they were apparently the first in the US to offer it to consumers.where I live with about 100k in the metro area (small area I know) in the city we are stuck with one cable provider midco. They do have fiber to the node but not the home because if cost, but a government subsidized company that offers ftth isn’t allowed in city limits and offer gbps speeds at much cheaper prices. In fact I worked for a company that did a lot of the underground work in the western half of my state and even the rural areas (including farms and ranches)have fiber to the home while the city centers don’t. So the times of rural areas either having satellite or dsl are long gone, at least in my state.
Well sure, I have clients downtown with Gigabit fiber from Cogent, who offers speeds up to 10Gbps, but that isn't residential. The install alone is $5000 and it only covers the 'loop' (downtown business district.)
I live 15 miles outside of the loop, technically in a Chicago suburb (Evergreen Park) and get AT&T Fiber, run inside my house from the pole, to a media converter that converts it to Ethernet.
I've read some peoples installs only use one strand of fiber (so half duplex) but report identical speeds with just slightly higher latency (around 10ms) so it really depends on the ISP's implementation.
But again, I doubt there is anywhere in the US you could find an ISP offering 'residential' internet service at beyond gigabit speed. And the router in question here is a consumer router with a gigabit uplink, so I think that's probably fine...for now :)
In Australia, I pay more than that for a rubbish 50mbs connection. Not even joking. About US$50. Our federal Govt is so full of flat-earthers it nixed FTTH as being a threat to existing news and cable companies. Sigh.
My ex lives in Canada. Bell offers a max of 1.5mbit and a there is a 20GB per month cap. This is just south of Ottawa so I don't think your experiences can be fairly applied to the entire nation.
I'm in the US and I used to get 12Mb from Frontier but the phone line got knocked down so Frontier just tied it to a tree instead of replacing the pole and now I get 9Mb. (true story)
Because ping spikes? Because of larger buffers, TCP windows tend to size themselves to your link rate and not your sustained provisioned rate. If your wifi device is consuming 3Gb/s for 30ms to upload that picture you just took, packing it up and sending to the AP. Then you AP attempts to send that data at 1Gb/s, now you have a 100ms ping spike, even if your average rate is 83Mb/s for one second.
I can generate ping spikes and packetloss on a 1Gb/s connection streaming videos with an "average" of 30Mb/s. Micro-bursts. I've fixed this at my home by smoothing out the bursts with traffic shaping. You drop and delay a few strategic packets to prevent a massive burst of loss and latency.
ping spikes are a huge issues on Cable internet because of its asynchronous nature of it. Saturate that 30mbps upload bandwidth on that 1Gbps connection and everything gets affected. You need room just for the ACK packets. And glad I don't to deal with that anymore.
The small town ISP here only sells dedicated symmetrical FTTH connections. They have enough trunk and peering bandwidth to allow microbursts. I've seen 1Gb microbursts all the way from YouTube Europe and I'm in the middle of the USA.
Actually, higher RTT routes tends to have higher bursting. Current TCP implementations are only paced by ACKs. If the TCP connection is idle and data is to be sent, the sender will send an entire TCP window worth of data instantly at full line rate. You can feel it when a 100Gb/s youtube server attempts to send you a 250KiB chunk of a video stream.
Is internet that fast really only available to 10% of the US population or was that an off the cuff "stat"...
I'm surprised it's still that bad if that's accurate, I used to weep along with everyone else when I'd see comments like this but I've had 1Gbps (up/down) fiber at home for over a year now in a US territory that isn't exactly known for having it's stuff/infrastructure together (Puerto Rico)... For $70/month, no clue how competitive that is but it's affordable enough for me and well worth it (nor any more expensive than a lower speed package from the cable ISP).
Cable company is doing it's own fiber rollout to compete and they already offer 500Mbps over coax (tho 250-300Mbps is really what's sanely priced, the premium for the top tier isn't worth it). I was actually complacent with my 250mbps service with them but I'm glad to see some competition in the market.
Obviously those services aren't available island wide tho, I really dunno what % the rollouts are at... The fiber ISP has taken an interesting approach where they poll neighborhoods to decide where to build next.
I see this as a potential problem: "The devices would adapt their power levels for transmission to avoid them actively interfering with each others’ transmissions."
It's like two people starting to talk to friends with them in a soft voice instead of shouting louder and louder and making both conversations impossible to understand.
That's how enterprise gear works, it's to avoid interference, which is worse than modulating power. boosting signal introduces noise, the less boosting you need to do, the better.
And no more than a couple of dozen people in the entire UK can get over 1gbps. And even if you could get it, what, as a consumer, would you use it for? Unless you have a houseful of individuals all watching different 4k streams it's got absolutely no use case.
Many routers, including the Asus they're using as their testbed, include a >1Gb port that can be used as either LAN *OR* WAN. If you set the 2.5Gb port to WAN, the "nominally WAN" port becomes another 1 Gbit LAN port.
Yes, I'd prefer *TWO* >1Gb ports, one for WAN and one for LAN (or configurable,) but hey, one is better than none.
Most, even the ones without a >1Gbit port, also support bonding the WAN and one (or more) LAN ports.
Note that most >1Gbit internet services' modems don't yet have >1Gbit ports! The one available locally to me has a modem with two 1Gbit ports that if you want faster than 1 Gbit, you *HAVE* to use them bonded. (It also has a built-in WiFi router, and if you use the built in router, it allows >1Gbit *TOTAL* bandwidth, just not >1Gbit to any individual device.)
I have yet to see a residential media converter that has >1Gbps throughput, let alone >1Gbps port. I have AT&T Fiber here in Chicago and get 980Mbps\960Mbps from my Gigabit connection and it's mostly bragging rights...no sites, even my private torrent community, can actually feed my connection.
Though that could be a limitation of the AT&T backend for residential service. I have no clients in the city with commercial gigabit connections so I have nothing to compare it too.
because in any realistic scenario you aren't going to hit 1 Gps data rate. The 160 MHz tests in the article are next to useless in anything but the most remote scenarios. While Wifi 6 with 160 channels and devices a few feet away can exceed 1 Gbps under any realistic scenario (80 MHz, 15 feet away, wall between device and ap) you are going to be in the 300 to 600 Mbps range.
My usual question is, can the WIFI 6 advantages be of use if there are less advanced devices in the same network? It used to be that even if both the AP and Device support the highest standard as long as there exist other devices that use the same network that don't support the new features they end up not usable.
Those devices that support Wi-Fi 6 does benefit even if there Also Are those older devices. The router can handle both / all types of trafic at the same time.
WiFi hardware is supposed to blend in the environment. Why does nobody produce a successor to the AirPort Extreme line that has secure firmware and high performance. Miss those days where you could simply buy an AirPort and it would be the most secure and least ugly solution.
I have a thought that every vendor nowadays kinda treats firmware updates and security over the lifetime of the product like an afterthought, it's not even easy to compare these vendors because most consumers wouldn't care too much (or even know that there is something like embedded firmware in the first place).
The closest to the Apple experience these days appears to be Amplifi, the home version of Ubiqiti. Same aesthetics, ease of use, mostly bullet-proof. (And same lack of interest in weird tweaks and claims of things that are supposed to improve games or whatever, but mostly don’t work.)
They released an ax box maybe six weeks ago. I don’t have direct experience with it, but their ac box has been mostly trouble-free for me.
On this topic: the link is only as stable as the channel. Twisted pair running at 250 MHz won't even feel your microwave turning on. On 2.4 GHz it will turn your SNR to shit. And at 5 GHz someone walking near your WAP will cause issues. Consumer ethernet might be slower (for all that it matters at 1 Gbps) but it's reliable.
Ugh, on the first page you use the word "leverage" when you really want to say "use".
I remember in the 1980s when there was a brash young real estate developer from New York who used the word "leverage" a lot, most because he used debt (leverage) to expand his real estate empire. People started using "leverage" as a synonym for "use".
By the 1990s, that brash real estate developer had many of his projects fail and go bankrupt because he used too much "leverage". The misuse of the word "leverage" fell out of favor in most places, except for people who wrote technical-marketing material for the Microsoft ecosystem.
That brash real estate developer grew old and became a reality TV star, than a politician. You still see people misuse the word "leverage", but he is busy misusing other words today.
No consumer routers offer true OFDMA. This means if you have multiple devices, your throughput drops through the floor. This is something you really didn't test for.
In other words, wait. It's just like MIMO. It's broken.
Sad but true. I'd say OFDMA is the most important feature in Wifi-6, and it's still not working on ANY router. Hopefully in a year or two we'll start seeing one or two routers that have received an appropriate firmware update.
Interesting, I had no idea. I was waiting for a Ubiquiti Wifi6 device to hit the market before shopping for anything anyway. Hopefully this is part of the delay... (probably not).
Ubiquiti devices work as normal routers. You take your normal internet connection, wired ethernet coming out of your modem, and plug it into the WAN port of the Ubiquiti router.
I run a custom pfSense router/firewall/gateway, so it would run as an AP only. It's incredible how terrible most consumer/prosumer routers are compared to a pfSense install on basic hardware.
Most home routers don't have the interfaces to link directly into the feed, nor the proper security creds to get connections, but more often than not, their modem can be configured in Bridge Mode, which then the modem acts as the bridge between your network and the ISP network. The modem turns off all routing and NAT features, and basically hopes the router next to it does that work. I recently configured mine in Bridge Mode because I now have a Fortinet Firewall.
OFDMA isn't necessarily broken, it's a compatibility issue though. This is from Tim on smbforums.
"But the larger problem appears to be compatibility problems with older legacy devices that have not had driver updates. Some devices don't understand the new information in beacon frames, so they either don't associate at all or don't stay associated.
There are more problems with 2.4 GHz devices than 5 GHz, but both bands have problems. Routers makers are very reluctant to enable OFDMA and break their customers' Wi-Fi."
So it looks as though OFDMA could work, but by doing so it may reduce the devices that can connect if you have older devices. I've seen this commented before from others that have done testing.
If the issue is drivers for legacy devices, I suspect the only work around on time scales shorter than the next decade (or longer if some OEMs can save a penny/unit by using a crappy chipset that doesn't support it) will be to run 2 parallel 5/6 ghz wireless connections (one with and one without) similar to how we currently run both 2.4 and 5ghz service; one for the legacy devices that will never be updated and one for modern hardware.
Funny enough, Asus just finally turned on OFDMA support in the GT-AX11000 in the latest firmware, which was released last month. So that landed just as we got the hardware.
Not only that. ( OFDMA It has compatibility problems and remains to be seen whether it works given the limitation ) It will likely end up like MU-MIMO where the benefits drops once you have non-MU-MIMO devices in the same location. ( i.e useless )
160Mhz and 80+80Mhz are still optional. Meaning you wont get those sort of speed in vast majority of cases, no current 802.11ax Smartphone support 160Mhz or 80+80Mhz Channel. ( Both Samsung and iPhone ) Although Intel ( if I remember correctly ) do support 160Mhz, but then they decided to stop making 3x3 config for Laptop.....
WiFi 6E had the best chances to remedy all of this. But nope, all those features are still optional.
There were a few other features missing from the spec, oh I forgot to mention the spec is still in Draft as it has been delayed yet again.
My experience with WiFi performance in the real world is that nothing beats having multiple access points and spreading the clients between them. Performance is just so much better when clients aren't fighting each other for access to the net, and this counts particularly for internet connections to the outside, where the most important WiFi parameter is packet loss.
I am waiting for UNBT to come out with a WiFi 6 access point which is reasonably priced, and for that matter, to get any cliets that support WiFi 6.
True Paul. I segment my network. I have a subnet for smart devices with it's own AP running on a unique frequency. I have another subnet for my streaming devices with it's own AP. It not only allows me to save bandwidth for more critical devices, but also allows me to monitor on a more granular level for data usage and potential hacking hijinx.
The only disadvantage to this method is my android devices can no longer directly access devices like Roku.
This article is so silly. First the title says "why you want it". Then later it says "maybe". Then it shows "benchmark" for unrealistic speeds, with limited devices to test.
Then it totally glosses of the fact that its not worth it AT ALL if other devices are not the same spec.
Considering %99 of devices that come out are 2.4Ghz still, including top of the line cameras zero reason to upgrade to this.
I'm thinking the article was just put up for the ad revenue for the clicks.
Oh lets not even go over how they talk about the progression of the wireless standard that takes forever to ratify, it its speeds are still really weak when it comes to LAN.
Unless you live in an area impossible to wire with LAN, no reason to go wireless. I'm my experience in a PoE camera is even better than wireless camera setup!
Yes, the article title is was poorly thought out to say the least. I'd prefer if the facts were presented as facts and the decision about whether or not I wanted something would reside in opinions I form after the fact. Telling me I want something is somewhat narrow thinking.
This is a problem with the whole "thought leader" aspect of journalism. At least they could leave open the possibility that you might *not* want it. Right now, on the face of it, that's not an option.
What does some walls mean? Can you please tell us how many walls, what kind of wall, height of ceiling, and the distance? In my mind you are saying that you are 3 rooms away? How big are the rooms? Or is it a hallway wall without doors?
If you are going to have a "test bed" it would be nice to know the layout so we can judge if it matches our environment.
agreed. Arstechnica posts floorplan diagrams for their wifi testing articles; which comes in particularly useful for testing mesh network kits with variable numbers of boxes.
how does dynamic fragmentation work? i.e, are packets reassembled before being sent to the internet, or are the fragments reassembled at the destination? most systems try to avoid fragmentation, as it requires reassembling packets, and actively try to identify the largest packet that can be sent without fragmentation. dsl usually required smaller packets to avoid fragmentation, as i recall. Gigabit "ethernet" is switched. no interference from others using the same network. store and forward, almost always delivers packets. wifi is more old school csma/ca, which isn't even as good as old fashioned csma/cd ethernet. collisions detected in hardware rather than waiting for ack/nak. No matter how fast your wifi is, there are still shared resources that may very well limit your throughput and latency to resources on the internet.
That all sounds great but I will wait for someone serious like Ubiquiti to release a device. Combo Router/WAN devices are silly. I don't need a new router. I only need new WAN devices with WI-FI6.
I would want WiFi 6 if I could use it for anything. At the moment, the only broadband provider in my area is Century Link DSL at 10mbit. Internally device-to-device data transfer happens rarely. I had an old phone with a microSD card running as a file server for quick transfers, but I mainly use a 1TB 2.5 inch HDD in a USB 3.0 casing since its faster even on my one laptop that only has USB 2.0 ports. None of my computers supports anything newer than 802.11n either. No smart home devices here. I've worked as a tech professional for more than two decades so things are as analog and offline as possible at my place.
Lol @ people in this commenct section complaining about having only 200mb/s Internet. Poor you with a connection that can only deal with 10 4k streams of netflix.
You guys have to understand that wired connections are on their way out because with wireless, you can split more spectrums in the air for more thoroughput. Air fiber will be faster than your wired 1gb connection. 3 SSD's in a raid 0 would more than handle 3gbps. So it's your wireless card you want to upgrade. There are still purposes for wired, like linking to a database server with link agragation, but for majority of people, a good wireless card will get you speeds way above 1gbps so you can download those torrents faster lol
Wired (copper) is already capable of 10 Gbps and 40 Gbps speed. Fiber even more than that. Let me know when wifi can do 40 Gbps or even 10 Gbps. Not in a lab but real world with congestion from neighbors wasting bandwidth running their inefficient 802.11b/g devices.
Hint: If it's in the air, it's not a fibre. Such fibres are also known as cables. "Air fiber" doesn't exist.
If you're the *only* person using a wireless connection, you may achieve a reasonable fraction of its maximum performance - in one direction. But it doesn't come close to what you can get wired. The real question is whether you are willing to pay for that performance. Most consumers don't need to, and therefore consume kit doesn't have it. When there is a need for it, it'll be available, because as others mentioned the capability is there - and it has been for over a decade.
Also remember phone lines and cable lines are on their way out. I'd be looking into Elon Musk satellite project starlink and the cell phone companies 5G networks for fastest internet over next few years. Remember air is faster, more spectrums can be used than you can get on a wired connection. I'd keep them around anyways, I prefer gaming on wired especially when raiding in ff14, but wireless one day will be the way to download those 50gb files for your 8k TV on torrents faster so keep that in mind. Air is faster, wired from phone lines and cable lines will be slower.
"air is faster" Except when there's Cloud Rain Snow Pollution EM interference Congestion Solar flares Unlike a completely unobstructed piece of glass or copper. Which, oddly,is why we hook up all our critical stuff with.... Copper & glass.
Indeed, it's all about use case and environment. I got an Asus RT-AX88U last year and have been gaming a lot over WiFi. It's rock solid, never a single disconnect and latency to the router is sub 1ms - all significant latency for gaming is further out in the network. I couldn't say the same about my old Netgear R7000.
I also get ~100MB/s from my NAS which is great for the work I do at home.
If only a few major countries would open up more channels close to 2.4 (below 2.4 or above 2.5), we could have had the best of both worlds - performance and range. Who is hoarding 2.5-3GHz range for example?
Below 2.4 GHz is a number of military bands. In the US above 2.5 GHz (well above 2.495 GHz) is the cellular band allocated to Sprint (now T-Mobile after the merger). I don't see the 2.4 GHz ISM band (which is what wifi uses) getting expanded.
Looking at the table that defines the max speeds of the various versions, I'm a bit disappointed that my 2x2 AC wifi can only get ~100Mbit 2 metres away with direct line of sight. It's only off by an order of magnitude...
That isn't disappointing for 2.4GHz performance, that sounds like something is wrong, like it is fat channel intolerant enabled or something similar. I'd trouble shoot more or talk to Intel on what's wrong.
By comparison older 802.11ac Intel network cards (7260, 7265) on 2.4GHz 40Mhz 2:2 I can generally get around 200-215Mbps. Which is well over double the performance that you are seeing with the AX200 Intel card. That to me says either something is dropping it down to 20Mhz (which still isn't a strong showing, even for 20Mhz), or else there is some kind of bug in the firmware. I'd expect better than 802.11ac/802.11n performance in the 2.4Ghz space. Like around 240-280Mbps because of the higher QAM encoding.
At this point in time I think most will be well served to wait for Wifi 6e. Clients should be coming along right now and the added channels that "e" will make available really give Wifi 6 the room to deliver on the speed increases.
I find typically anything stronger than a -40 has worse performance.
Also another client radio may give better results. I've found Intel to be quite problematic in the past. Qualcomm Atheros, Realtek or Broadcom have generally performed better than Intel, though you have to test with what is available.
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Mccaula718 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Why is the WAN port only 1 Gbps?5080 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
You can always combine a WAN and LAN port into dual WAN to double the throughput. I have an ASUS RT-AX88U connected to an ARRIS SB8200 with Link Aggregation to take advantage of a 1.2Gbps internet connection.Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Sounds like you are on a 1Gbps cable connection why bother with Link Aggregation?do you actually see the slight over provision on the connection?
deil - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
at my place you can get either from 250/50 Mb/s to 1000/50 Mb/s from anyone that is quite cheap or 3000/500 from one for insane price (~20x more).I am planning for now to use that for both reliability of the uplink (I know ISP's use different nodes when they leave my place) and faster bandwidth (I have fiber to my place and cat 6 (5GB/s) internally.
5080 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
It peaks at about 1.1Gbps on LAG and 0.85Gbps on one.Dug - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
1Gbs outside may actually be 1Gbs. Inside 1Gbs isn't 1Gbs because of overhead when you have multiple connections. So with aggregation you can benefit multiple connections going outside.azfacea - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
this is getting really ridiculous. wired lan is going from "slower" than wifi to "much slower" than wifi. If aliens came down to earth i am not sure what they would think of this lunacy.zshift - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
This isn't the case. 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps Ethernet has been out for a while now, it's just not propogating to consumer hardware because it isn't needed in most scenarios. Ethernet can maintain these high data rates over very long distances. This article showed that even wifi 6 across a few rooms drops to below 500Mbps. Higher wifi speeds are needed in order to compete with Ethernet over a long distance, but it's still far more stable (though not easier) to drop Ethernet throughout your place to get near 1Gbps with older routers.RadiclDreamer - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
10gb, 25gb, 40gb and 100gb are commonplace in the business space, they just havent filtered down to consumers due to lack of demand.Keep in mind also that wifi is simplex (or half duplex) meaning that it can only send or receive but not both at the same time. You also have a lot of overhead on wifi that leads to these numbers not being as good in practice as you might think. Take a normal AC router for example, and lets say you are connected at 867mbps, thats for the entire link, not just the payload. You have WPA2 overhead, errors, retransmitted frames, interference with your neighbors/other devices, TCP/IP overhead (which is present on ethernet also) to contend with and you are going at 1/2 duplex. All of this together means that you are going to actually see about a 400mbps connection for payload.
This is not to snub wifi, its getting very good very fast. But to say that it even comes close to competing with a hardwired connection is just not understanding the technology and whats out there.
Makaveli - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Wifi being half duplex only applies to everything Pre Wifi 6 (AX).AX is full duplex.
PyroHoltz - Monday, February 17, 2020 - link
This was my understanding as well, AX = full duplexthomasg - Thursday, March 5, 2020 - link
802.11ax is NOT full-duplex.No practical full-duplex radio system exists at this point in time.
thomasg - Thursday, March 5, 2020 - link
You might have mistaken the use of OFDMA as multiple-acces scheme, but OFDMA does not make it full-duplex, it still is entirely and strictly half-duplex.jeads - Tuesday, April 6, 2021 - link
AX is NOT full duplex, its still half duplex. There is talk, but none that I've seen yet, of AX routers using 4x4 antenna. Most consumer routers are still 2x2 (dual band), or 3x3 (tri-band). 4x4 (quad band?), while not true full duplex, will emulate as much.Vorl - Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - link
You also forgot to mention that it's shared. your WIFI router can go 3.6gb/s, but your devices even in a perfectly isolated environment all have to share that bandwidth. You don't get 3.6gb/s to each device.Gasaraki88 - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
It sounds faster on paper. If you ACTUALLY look at the speed of wifi on the AC 5GHz band with 2 of the same AC routers connected to each other, it is not faster than hard wire gigabit connection. Look at some router reviews.PEJUman - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
this is just one of those rare inflection points (fast ethernet with 802.11n was similiar), which brought gigabit ethernet into mainstream.I have been running 10 Gb ethernet on copper, mixed cat 5e and '7' + Wifi 5 (802.11AC) network in the house for the past 4 years, if you are patient, you can find deals on 10 Gb stuff here and there. Market acceptance on 10 Gb is still quite slow, but I am hoping 5 or 2.5 Gb will be better at getting down to affordable price points.
azfacea - Saturday, February 15, 2020 - link
wow did u just compare fast ethernet to 802.11n ?? one of the most ignorant comments i have read in all of internet. u have no idea what you are talking about gigabit ethernet existed in mainstream (sub 1000$ desktop) in 1999. 802.11n wasnt in the mainstream until no less than a decade after thatPEJUman - Monday, February 17, 2020 - link
gigabit ethernet existed, but gigabit routers does not, at least not at the affordable, mainstream price point. It is not until 'n' that you get gigabit for essentially no premium.yetanotherhuman - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Nah, most access points only have a 1Gbit link, and latency and packet loss are always going to be shit on wifi compared to a wired connection.Also, 2.5, 5, 10 and 40 Gbps Ethernet have been A Thing for a while if you go out of your way.
levizx - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Because affordable 1Gbps connection isn't a thing for even 90% of high-end buyers yet, let alone > 1GbpsMakaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
If you are in the US then yes internet is terrible in america.Fortunately for me I live in Canada and on a 1Gbps Fiber connection.
triphoppingman - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
This article from 2016 actually says Canadia is barely faster than Mexico.https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinmurnane/2016/09/...
Wikipedia agrees:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
lol you believe a Wiki Article then.Unless you live in chattanooga or have access to AT&T fiber or google fiber or fios you are pretty much stuck with Cable/dsl for options which are data capped.
Most of our major ISP's in Canada got rid of data caps years ago.
Trust me when I tell you Canadian internet is generally better than what you can get in the US.
imaheadcase - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Thats pretty subjective though considering Canada population is mostly in one area vs the US.Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Subjective or not its the truth.not trying to get in a population density argument like the Europeans that come in trying to do the same thing lol.
nathanddrews - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
That's the problem with relying on aggregated national data rather than per-market pricing. I can get 1Gbps fiber for $130/mo in my suburb, but 10 miles north of me the only option is dial-up (cheap/slow) or satellite (expensive/slow). 10 miles west of me, there's a smaller fiber ISP offering 2.5Gbps for $150/mo that I can't get. It's not rocket science, just infrastructure and economics.Flipper34 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Even out here in the rural midwest we have fiber to the home available. It isn't inexpensive for the higher speeds, but it is available. Our connection was upgraded to fiber at no cost, but we are on a low speed cheap plan! :)Ratman6161 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
where in the midwest are you? That is certainly not true in Minnesota. I'm about 40 miles from Minneapolis and 200 Mbps is the best I can get. For family about 10 miles out of St Cloud, 40 is the best they can get. further out it goes down from there. Likewise with cellular. the carriers are hyping 5g when there are vast areas in the northern half of MN and WI that cant even get reliable 4G and when the can its only one carrier to choose from.pjcamp - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
For anything not controversial, Wikipedia articles are pretty accurate. I'm a physicist and I'm thoroughly impressed by the physics articles.Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
True but using a 4 year old article in this example failed. In 2016 I was already using a Docsis 3.0 250/20 Cable connection. Yet that article shows 16mbps as the national average..By 2017 I was on a Docsis 3.1 500/20 cable connection and now in 2019 I moved up to a 1Gbps/750Mbps fiber connection.
The majority of cable providers in the US are still using Docsis 3.0 modems and within the last year or you are finally starting to see docsis 3.1 modems mostly because Comcast started to push them out.
triphoppingman - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
"True but using a 4 year old article in this example failed. In 2016 I was already using a Docsis 3.0 250/20 Cable connection. Yet that article shows 16mbps as the national average"Anecdote vs Aggregated data? I know which one I prefer.
Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
haha well played sir.However most of the users on that cable ISP in canada I was using went thru the same Docsis 3.0-3.1 progression and that is one the biggest Cable ISP in Canada. And everyone sent from 250mbps connection to the eventual 3.1 Docsis with 1Gbps cable. So the numbers are bigger than just my example.
rrinker - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I have 350 down/15 up which is plenty fast for streaming and even downloading DVD size games 'updates', and I am not data capped.I can get up to 1Gb down, but I don;t want to pay more. I still pay the same as I did when I moved in when it was 200Mb down, speed has been upped 3 times with no change in the bill.
triphoppingman - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
No, frankly, I don't trust an anonymous Internet poster. Not when the facts are not on your side. How is the weather up there?808Hilo - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
The social trust index in the US is half of that in Canada. We made us 320 million sociopaths, So no matter what you say - the Murican will tell you that everything is better here. The murican actually believes this against better knowledge - while the facts tell that the american project is now the first and foremost failed state on this planet. Yep, internet here means gouging, unkept promises, lousy service at elevated pricing. Its ridiculously bad for the big majority. No dont trust the voice of an murican on the internet - and we should build a higher wall around the US - to keep them in.Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
What facts?AdhesiveTeflon - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Not gonna lie, Canada's cellphone coverage is phenomenal compared to anything in the US. I can be in the middle of the trans-canadian highway in Saskatchewan and still have at least 3G. I go 30 miles outside of chicago and I don't have any signal.JKflipflop98 - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
I get 1gig speeds from comcast for $45 a month over cable here in Oregon.flyingpants265 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
50% of the entire "Canada" lives pretty close to Toronto.It's kinda rare to have somewhere that won't get 50mbps as a minimum. Places in big cities get 1gbit+. No data caps either.
Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Not quite that high.Ontario remained, by far, the most populous province in Canada with 13.4 million people calling it home in 2016, representing 38.3% of the Canadian population. This share was down slightly from the 100-year high of 38.5% in 2006.
So for american's you would consider Ontario the state.
And Ontario is a pretty big land mass 415,600 mi²
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/17...
Flunk - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Look up a population map, the vast majority of Ontario is sparsely populated, the area around Toronto & Hamilton is densely populated.andrewaggb - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
In western canada your fastest options from the major providers are Telus gigabit 940/940 or Shaw Cable 600/20Neither needs more than a gigabit port. I'm sure telus could do faster but they aren't offering it.
mdrejhon - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
Buddy, something like ~25% of Canada lives within 2 hours drive of Toronto. There's millions of houses with access to gigabit connections.I'm in Canada and I'm on gigabit (Cogeco UltraFibe) and Bell is coming to lay fiber, so we'll have 2 gigabit ISPs competing in my city (lowly Hamilton)
Sure, if you go to the artic or the middle of our vast Canadian farmlands, it's crappy Internet. But if you go to populated Canada, there's lots of good Internet connections in urbanized Northeast Corridor now.
sonny73n - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
“Canada is barely faster than Mexico”So they both have super fast internet compared to the where I live - the US. I only get 1.5 Mbps from the only ISP available in my area which is AT&T. Only basic internet available, no fiber. Don’t believe me? Open google maps and pick an address around Harbor Blvd. & Westminster Ave. CA. 92843. This is a super crowded area and we can only get 1.5 Mbps. All the subsidizes they got the government to upgrade their broadband towers have gone into their own pockets and the government do nothing. What a fucking joke.
Holliday75 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Terrible for people in farmland sure. Got 100mbps around 12 years ago. 3 years ago I moved to a new ISP that uses FTTH. 500/500mbps for $70 a month. I can get 1gbps for another $20 a month, but see no reason for it. Even when downloading movies, large games, etc 500mbps is fast enough for me. Been quite pleased with it. Chicagoland overall has pretty good access to high speed offerings. Even the satellite cities are getting fiber now since prices on infrastructure has dropped so much the last 10 years.Dragonstongue - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
say WHERE not just "in Canada" as I know am from and living in..Fiber is far far more promised than readily availableA
and
B
for the most part (meaning most of Canada) internet and telecoms overall are wickedly overpriced with moronic staging for the price point
lets see, get rid of majority of DSL that took a long time to even offer unlimited option, while also being on average ~$65/mth (including, sometimes without tax) for often sub 5/.768 connections, then they jack up price of standard phone lines (too expensive to maintain)
then they turn around pretty much make all other "we will call" high speed, sometimes 10/1 more often than not, lucky to stable 5/0.5, unless you were "very fortunate" to live in major city (even then) hit and miss STABLE above 20+DL 1-2UL ~$50-$110/mth plus tax only when in bundles.
Now they are wanting everyone on "wireless" to get away from all other types as although infrastructure is pricey (initially) after that, is dirt cheap to support thousands of customers per "tower" with few antennas to handle it (due to MIMO style)
when Fiber (which seems to be all over the country is actually "wired up" that would be one thing, but for now, generally quite overpriced (even when federal and provincial govt.) gave the telecoms many 10s of millions to "wire up the country by X date) and of course, things like CRTC seem to not give 2 shits.
...maybe because we all have full time bring in $100k per year in pocket jobs or something....yeh @#$ right.
as far as major ISP got rid of data caps in Canada years ago...I want some of that #$% you smoking, unless you the expensive (very limited) offerings, sorry, but no ALL telecoms in Canada still VERY MUCH have data caps....not everyone can afford $80+ per month internet PLUS phone + TV just to get the "unlimited" (to a point) bandwidth (data) allowance.
more often than not, folks living in Rural (which I currently do) NO LONGER have this option, unless you want to massively downgrade speed available, for the same price right around ~90 after tax.
folks should be far more "legit" in what they say (myself included) such as "I live in a condo in Vancover, or Montreal where internet is dirt cheap, sorry the rest of you @#$ do not"
^.^
Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I live in Toronto.And I was a rogers internet customer for about 15 years I haven't had a data capped connection in 10+ years. I cannot speak for your experience.
And you sound like you suffer from living in a small town which is a problem the US shares. If you want good internet you are screwed living in Rural in North America, so either move or stay and deal.
Samus - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
Right, I have a Gigabit, full duplex (980/960) uncapped connection from AT&T Fiber for $70/mo in Chicago...I don't see any limitation of using a router with a Gigabit LAN port.Are there any beyond Gigabit ISP providers on the planet for residential use?
Willx1 - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
Minneapolis has had 10gbps fiber at $400/month for a while now. Not sure on specifics but they were apparently the first in the US to offer it to consumers.where I live with about 100k in the metro area (small area I know) in the city we are stuck with one cable provider midco. They do have fiber to the node but not the home because if cost, but a government subsidized company that offers ftth isn’t allowed in city limits and offer gbps speeds at much cheaper prices. In fact I worked for a company that did a lot of the underground work in the western half of my state and even the rural areas (including farms and ranches)have fiber to the home while the city centers don’t. So the times of rural areas either having satellite or dsl are long gone, at least in my state.Samus - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Well sure, I have clients downtown with Gigabit fiber from Cogent, who offers speeds up to 10Gbps, but that isn't residential. The install alone is $5000 and it only covers the 'loop' (downtown business district.)I live 15 miles outside of the loop, technically in a Chicago suburb (Evergreen Park) and get AT&T Fiber, run inside my house from the pole, to a media converter that converts it to Ethernet.
I've read some peoples installs only use one strand of fiber (so half duplex) but report identical speeds with just slightly higher latency (around 10ms) so it really depends on the ISP's implementation.
But again, I doubt there is anywhere in the US you could find an ISP offering 'residential' internet service at beyond gigabit speed. And the router in question here is a consumer router with a gigabit uplink, so I think that's probably fine...for now :)
Mvs321 - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
I live in Denmark, I pay around 36 dollars per month for a 1GB connection, to me it seems pretty cheap, but what do you pay?asfletch - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
In Australia, I pay more than that for a rubbish 50mbs connection. Not even joking. About US$50. Our federal Govt is so full of flat-earthers it nixed FTTH as being a threat to existing news and cable companies. Sigh.PeachNCream - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
My ex lives in Canada. Bell offers a max of 1.5mbit and a there is a 20GB per month cap. This is just south of Ottawa so I don't think your experiences can be fairly applied to the entire nation.29a - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
I'm in the US and I used to get 12Mb from Frontier but the phone line got knocked down so Frontier just tied it to a tree instead of replacing the pole and now I get 9Mb. (true story)bcronce - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Because ping spikes? Because of larger buffers, TCP windows tend to size themselves to your link rate and not your sustained provisioned rate. If your wifi device is consuming 3Gb/s for 30ms to upload that picture you just took, packing it up and sending to the AP. Then you AP attempts to send that data at 1Gb/s, now you have a 100ms ping spike, even if your average rate is 83Mb/s for one second.I can generate ping spikes and packetloss on a 1Gb/s connection streaming videos with an "average" of 30Mb/s. Micro-bursts. I've fixed this at my home by smoothing out the bursts with traffic shaping. You drop and delay a few strategic packets to prevent a massive burst of loss and latency.
Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
ping spikes are a huge issues on Cable internet because of its asynchronous nature of it. Saturate that 30mbps upload bandwidth on that 1Gbps connection and everything gets affected. You need room just for the ACK packets. And glad I don't to deal with that anymore.Billy Tallis - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I think you mean asymmetric, not asynchronous. But yeah, anything beyond about a 20:1 ratio is basically false advertising on the downstream speed.Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Yes you are correct I noticed it after but no edit in comments :(bcronce - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
The small town ISP here only sells dedicated symmetrical FTTH connections. They have enough trunk and peering bandwidth to allow microbursts. I've seen 1Gb microbursts all the way from YouTube Europe and I'm in the middle of the USA.Actually, higher RTT routes tends to have higher bursting. Current TCP implementations are only paced by ACKs. If the TCP connection is idle and data is to be sent, the sender will send an entire TCP window worth of data instantly at full line rate. You can feel it when a 100Gb/s youtube server attempts to send you a 250KiB chunk of a video stream.
Impulses - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
Is internet that fast really only available to 10% of the US population or was that an off the cuff "stat"...I'm surprised it's still that bad if that's accurate, I used to weep along with everyone else when I'd see comments like this but I've had 1Gbps (up/down) fiber at home for over a year now in a US territory that isn't exactly known for having it's stuff/infrastructure together (Puerto Rico)... For $70/month, no clue how competitive that is but it's affordable enough for me and well worth it (nor any more expensive than a lower speed package from the cable ISP).
Cable company is doing it's own fiber rollout to compete and they already offer 500Mbps over coax (tho 250-300Mbps is really what's sanely priced, the premium for the top tier isn't worth it). I was actually complacent with my 250mbps service with them but I'm glad to see some competition in the market.
Obviously those services aren't available island wide tho, I really dunno what % the rollouts are at... The fiber ISP has taken an interesting approach where they poll neighborhoods to decide where to build next.
oynaz - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
1Gbps internet is around 50 euro/month in quite a few parts of Europe.Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
The GT-AX11000 has a 2.5Gbps port that can be turn into a WAN Port.YB1064 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I see this as a potential problem:"The devices would adapt their power levels for transmission to avoid them actively interfering with each others’ transmissions."
evilspoons - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
It's like two people starting to talk to friends with them in a soft voice instead of shouting louder and louder and making both conversations impossible to understand.Xyler94 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
That's how enterprise gear works, it's to avoid interference, which is worse than modulating power. boosting signal introduces noise, the less boosting you need to do, the better.Whiteknight2020 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Because who has greater than 1Gbit ISP connections?Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
My ISP provides 1.5Gbps Fiber connection with a plan to offer 5Gbps in the future.Whiteknight2020 - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
And no more than a couple of dozen people in the entire UK can get over 1gbps. And even if you could get it, what, as a consumer, would you use it for? Unless you have a houseful of individuals all watching different 4k streams it's got absolutely no use case.CharonPDX - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Many routers, including the Asus they're using as their testbed, include a >1Gb port that can be used as either LAN *OR* WAN. If you set the 2.5Gb port to WAN, the "nominally WAN" port becomes another 1 Gbit LAN port.Yes, I'd prefer *TWO* >1Gb ports, one for WAN and one for LAN (or configurable,) but hey, one is better than none.
Most, even the ones without a >1Gbit port, also support bonding the WAN and one (or more) LAN ports.
Note that most >1Gbit internet services' modems don't yet have >1Gbit ports! The one available locally to me has a modem with two 1Gbit ports that if you want faster than 1 Gbit, you *HAVE* to use them bonded. (It also has a built-in WiFi router, and if you use the built in router, it allows >1Gbit *TOTAL* bandwidth, just not >1Gbit to any individual device.)
Samus - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
I have yet to see a residential media converter that has >1Gbps throughput, let alone >1Gbps port. I have AT&T Fiber here in Chicago and get 980Mbps\960Mbps from my Gigabit connection and it's mostly bragging rights...no sites, even my private torrent community, can actually feed my connection.Though that could be a limitation of the AT&T backend for residential service. I have no clients in the city with commercial gigabit connections so I have nothing to compare it too.
TheUnhandledException - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
because in any realistic scenario you aren't going to hit 1 Gps data rate. The 160 MHz tests in the article are next to useless in anything but the most remote scenarios. While Wifi 6 with 160 channels and devices a few feet away can exceed 1 Gbps under any realistic scenario (80 MHz, 15 feet away, wall between device and ap) you are going to be in the 300 to 600 Mbps range.hescominsoon - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Because not many folks have multi-gig for their wan connections so the invested the money into a 2.5 gig lan port instead.valinor89 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
My usual question is, can the WIFI 6 advantages be of use if there are less advanced devices in the same network? It used to be that even if both the AP and Device support the highest standard as long as there exist other devices that use the same network that don't support the new features they end up not usable.haukionkannel - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Those devices that support Wi-Fi 6 does benefit even if there Also Are those older devices. The router can handle both / all types of trafic at the same time.5080 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Make sure your router support DL OFDMA. Some WiFi 6 router need a firmware update to add OFDMA.Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I'm also using an RT-AX88U on Merlin firmware i'm picking up a Galaxy S10 today which is has AX so will be testing that tonight.spamcops - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I dont want 802.11ax, I want 802.11ayhaukionkannel - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Just wait some years and you have it!spamcops - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
yep, that will be revolution!Nokiya Cheruhone - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Can't these things not look like turds?WiFi hardware is supposed to blend in the environment. Why does nobody produce a successor to the AirPort Extreme line that has secure firmware and high performance. Miss those days where you could simply buy an AirPort and it would be the most secure and least ugly solution.
ABR - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I was running an AEBS from 2009 until a few weeks ago. Last month I got a firmware update for it from Apple.Dug - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I agree. Netgear Orbi isn't bad though. Just too expensive at $650-700 for two units.Nokiya Cheruhone - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I have a thought that every vendor nowadays kinda treats firmware updates and security over the lifetime of the product like an afterthought, it's not even easy to compare these vendors because most consumers wouldn't care too much (or even know that there is something like embedded firmware in the first place).Nokiya Cheruhone - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
How was your experience with Netgear devices?Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I will only use Netgear router if I can load Asus merlin on it lol.They are slow at patching exploits and the stock firmware isn't great.
Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
And this is why I like Asus hardware that support Merlin firmware.He often release updates for exploits before even Asus can for the stock firmware.
I've been using Merlin firmware for 4+ years now on various routers and his timely updates is what has kept me there.
Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Agreed with you here boss I hate the spider looking routers.name99 - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
The closest to the Apple experience these days appears to be Amplifi, the home version of Ubiqiti. Same aesthetics, ease of use, mostly bullet-proof. (And same lack of interest in weird tweaks and claims of things that are supposed to improve games or whatever, but mostly don’t work.)They released an ax box maybe six weeks ago. I don’t have direct experience with it, but their ac box has been mostly trouble-free for me.
vFunct - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
No latency measurements?Holliday75 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
This is my main contention with ever using WiFi on a desktop. I game. Latency and connection stability is everything.Stochastic - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Yeah, that would be nice. These days I care about latency/jitter a lot more than raw bandwidth.willis936 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Name checks out.On this topic: the link is only as stable as the channel. Twisted pair running at 250 MHz won't even feel your microwave turning on. On 2.4 GHz it will turn your SNR to shit. And at 5 GHz someone walking near your WAP will cause issues. Consumer ethernet might be slower (for all that it matters at 1 Gbps) but it's reliable.
PaulHoule - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Ugh, on the first page you use the word "leverage" when you really want to say "use".I remember in the 1980s when there was a brash young real estate developer from New York who used the word "leverage" a lot, most because he used debt (leverage) to expand his real estate empire. People started using "leverage" as a synonym for "use".
By the 1990s, that brash real estate developer had many of his projects fail and go bankrupt because he used too much "leverage". The misuse of the word "leverage" fell out of favor in most places, except for people who wrote technical-marketing material for the Microsoft ecosystem.
That brash real estate developer grew old and became a reality TV star, than a politician. You still see people misuse the word "leverage", but he is busy misusing other words today.
Holliday75 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I just leveraged the "REPLY" button to leave this response.willis936 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Somebody fire this guy.digitalgriffin - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
No consumer routers offer true OFDMA. This means if you have multiple devices, your throughput drops through the floor. This is something you really didn't test for.In other words, wait. It's just like MIMO. It's broken.
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-...
heffeque - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Sad but true. I'd say OFDMA is the most important feature in Wifi-6, and it's still not working on ANY router. Hopefully in a year or two we'll start seeing one or two routers that have received an appropriate firmware update.nathanddrews - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Interesting, I had no idea. I was waiting for a Ubiquiti Wifi6 device to hit the market before shopping for anything anyway. Hopefully this is part of the delay... (probably not).FunBunny2 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
" I was waiting for a Ubiquiti Wifi6 device to hit the market before shopping for anything anyway. "hmmm... what, if any, ISPs allow the 'client' to hook up any old router to their signal?
evilspoons - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Ubiquiti devices work as normal routers. You take your normal internet connection, wired ethernet coming out of your modem, and plug it into the WAN port of the Ubiquiti router.nathanddrews - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
I run a custom pfSense router/firewall/gateway, so it would run as an AP only. It's incredible how terrible most consumer/prosumer routers are compared to a pfSense install on basic hardware.Xyler94 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Most if not all?Most home routers don't have the interfaces to link directly into the feed, nor the proper security creds to get connections, but more often than not, their modem can be configured in Bridge Mode, which then the modem acts as the bridge between your network and the ISP network. The modem turns off all routing and NAT features, and basically hopes the router next to it does that work. I recently configured mine in Bridge Mode because I now have a Fortinet Firewall.
gobaers - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Yep, this. I refuse to allow the ISP to have a device on my internal network, they are and should remain dumb pipes.Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I do this on Fiber.ISP provider modem/router is in the closet.
Router Asus AX88U using a Media converter.
Bell Canada uses GPON
So Fiber going directly into media converter then Ethernet from converter to Asus router and its runs great.
Dug - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
OFDMA isn't necessarily broken, it's a compatibility issue though. This is from Tim on smbforums."But the larger problem appears to be compatibility problems with older legacy devices that have not had driver updates. Some devices don't understand the new information in beacon frames, so they either don't associate at all or don't stay associated.
There are more problems with 2.4 GHz devices than 5 GHz, but both bands have problems. Routers makers are very reluctant to enable OFDMA and break their customers' Wi-Fi."
So it looks as though OFDMA could work, but by doing so it may reduce the devices that can connect if you have older devices. I've seen this commented before from others that have done testing.
DanNeely - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
If the issue is drivers for legacy devices, I suspect the only work around on time scales shorter than the next decade (or longer if some OEMs can save a penny/unit by using a crappy chipset that doesn't support it) will be to run 2 parallel 5/6 ghz wireless connections (one with and one without) similar to how we currently run both 2.4 and 5ghz service; one for the legacy devices that will never be updated and one for modern hardware.Whiteknight2020 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Well, according to that link there are some that do, Asus ax88 for one (on 5ghz).Makaveli - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
What is your definition of True OFDMA.The article you posted which I've already read since i'm a member of the SNB forum.
Shows its enabled on the AX88U but only on the 5Ghz. Which would be fine for me as I don't use 2.4ghz for anything.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Funny enough, Asus just finally turned on OFDMA support in the GT-AX11000 in the latest firmware, which was released last month. So that landed just as we got the hardware.ksec - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Not only that. ( OFDMA It has compatibility problems and remains to be seen whether it works given the limitation ) It will likely end up like MU-MIMO where the benefits drops once you have non-MU-MIMO devices in the same location. ( i.e useless )160Mhz and 80+80Mhz are still optional. Meaning you wont get those sort of speed in vast majority of cases, no current 802.11ax Smartphone support 160Mhz or 80+80Mhz Channel. ( Both Samsung and iPhone ) Although Intel ( if I remember correctly ) do support 160Mhz, but then they decided to stop making 3x3 config for Laptop.....
WiFi 6E had the best chances to remedy all of this. But nope, all those features are still optional.
There were a few other features missing from the spec, oh I forgot to mention the spec is still in Draft as it has been delayed yet again.
The whole thing is a bloody pile of mess.
PaulHoule - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
My experience with WiFi performance in the real world is that nothing beats having multiple access points and spreading the clients between them. Performance is just so much better when clients aren't fighting each other for access to the net, and this counts particularly for internet connections to the outside, where the most important WiFi parameter is packet loss.I am waiting for UNBT to come out with a WiFi 6 access point which is reasonably priced, and for that matter, to get any cliets that support WiFi 6.
digitalgriffin - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
True Paul. I segment my network. I have a subnet for smart devices with it's own AP running on a unique frequency. I have another subnet for my streaming devices with it's own AP. It not only allows me to save bandwidth for more critical devices, but also allows me to monitor on a more granular level for data usage and potential hacking hijinx.The only disadvantage to this method is my android devices can no longer directly access devices like Roku.
imaheadcase - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
This article is so silly.First the title says "why you want it". Then later it says "maybe". Then it shows "benchmark" for unrealistic speeds, with limited devices to test.
Then it totally glosses of the fact that its not worth it AT ALL if other devices are not the same spec.
Considering %99 of devices that come out are 2.4Ghz still, including top of the line cameras zero reason to upgrade to this.
I'm thinking the article was just put up for the ad revenue for the clicks.
Oh lets not even go over how they talk about the progression of the wireless standard that takes forever to ratify, it its speeds are still really weak when it comes to LAN.
Unless you live in an area impossible to wire with LAN, no reason to go wireless. I'm my experience in a PoE camera is even better than wireless camera setup!
PeachNCream - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
Yes, the article title is was poorly thought out to say the least. I'd prefer if the facts were presented as facts and the decision about whether or not I wanted something would reside in opinions I form after the fact. Telling me I want something is somewhat narrow thinking.GreenReaper - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
This is a problem with the whole "thought leader" aspect of journalism. At least they could leave open the possibility that you might *not* want it. Right now, on the face of it, that's not an option.Dug - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
What does some walls mean? Can you please tell us how many walls, what kind of wall, height of ceiling, and the distance? In my mind you are saying that you are 3 rooms away? How big are the rooms? Or is it a hallway wall without doors?If you are going to have a "test bed" it would be nice to know the layout so we can judge if it matches our environment.
Thanks.
DanNeely - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
agreed. Arstechnica posts floorplan diagrams for their wifi testing articles; which comes in particularly useful for testing mesh network kits with variable numbers of boxes.ascott.neu.edu - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
how does dynamic fragmentation work? i.e, are packets reassembled before being sent to the internet, or are the fragments reassembled at the destination? most systems try to avoid fragmentation, as it requires reassembling packets, and actively try to identify the largest packet that can be sent without fragmentation. dsl usually required smaller packets to avoid fragmentation, as i recall. Gigabit "ethernet" is switched. no interference from others using the same network. store and forward, almost always delivers packets. wifi is more old school csma/ca, which isn't even as good as old fashioned csma/cd ethernet. collisions detected in hardware rather than waiting for ack/nak. No matter how fast your wifi is, there are still shared resources that may very well limit your throughput and latency to resources on the internet.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
"Wi-Fi 6 And Why You Want It"I don't actually want this.
Axiomatic - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
That all sounds great but I will wait for someone serious like Ubiquiti to release a device. Combo Router/WAN devices are silly. I don't need a new router. I only need new WAN devices with WI-FI6.yeeeeman - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
This is only the beginning. Next wifi client solutions will get concurrent dual band and ultra high bands like 6Ghz.flyingpants265 - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I don't.PeachNCream - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
I would want WiFi 6 if I could use it for anything. At the moment, the only broadband provider in my area is Century Link DSL at 10mbit. Internally device-to-device data transfer happens rarely. I had an old phone with a microSD card running as a file server for quick transfers, but I mainly use a 1TB 2.5 inch HDD in a USB 3.0 casing since its faster even on my one laptop that only has USB 2.0 ports. None of my computers supports anything newer than 802.11n either. No smart home devices here. I've worked as a tech professional for more than two decades so things are as analog and offline as possible at my place.regsEx - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
What about ODFMA? Does it work? How well?Vitor - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
Lol @ people in this commenct section complaining about having only 200mb/s Internet. Poor you with a connection that can only deal with 10 4k streams of netflix.Dodozoid - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
I didn't get it. Does it make sense to get wifi 6 AP for wifi 5 clients in wifi 4 and 5 infested residential building?syleishere - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
You guys have to understand that wired connections are on their way out because with wireless, you can split more spectrums in the air for more thoroughput. Air fiber will be faster than your wired 1gb connection. 3 SSD's in a raid 0 would more than handle 3gbps. So it's your wireless card you want to upgrade. There are still purposes for wired, like linking to a database server with link agragation, but for majority of people, a good wireless card will get you speeds way above 1gbps so you can download those torrents faster lolPeachNCream - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
Are you aware there are faster than 1gbit connection speeds available over twisted pair copper?Dug - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
No offense, but you need to learn about networking before assuming what you do.TheUnhandledException - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Wired (copper) is already capable of 10 Gbps and 40 Gbps speed. Fiber even more than that. Let me know when wifi can do 40 Gbps or even 10 Gbps. Not in a lab but real world with congestion from neighbors wasting bandwidth running their inefficient 802.11b/g devices.GreenReaper - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Hint: If it's in the air, it's not a fibre. Such fibres are also known as cables. "Air fiber" doesn't exist.If you're the *only* person using a wireless connection, you may achieve a reasonable fraction of its maximum performance - in one direction. But it doesn't come close to what you can get wired. The real question is whether you are willing to pay for that performance. Most consumers don't need to, and therefore consume kit doesn't have it. When there is a need for it, it'll be available, because as others mentioned the capability is there - and it has been for over a decade.
Makaveli - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
lol there is always someone like this.Keep on dreaming.
syleishere - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
Also remember phone lines and cable lines are on their way out. I'd be looking into Elon Musk satellite project starlink and the cell phone companies 5G networks for fastest internet over next few years. Remember air is faster, more spectrums can be used than you can get on a wired connection. I'd keep them around anyways, I prefer gaming on wired especially when raiding in ff14, but wireless one day will be the way to download those 50gb files for your 8k TV on torrents faster so keep that in mind. Air is faster, wired from phone lines and cable lines will be slower.Whiteknight2020 - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
"air is faster"Except when there's
Cloud
Rain
Snow
Pollution
EM interference
Congestion
Solar flares
Unlike a completely unobstructed piece of glass or copper. Which, oddly,is why we hook up all our critical stuff with.... Copper & glass.
Korguz - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
syleishere...yea ok sure.. could you share what ever it is you are on.. so the rest of us can believe the same nonsense you do ?
GreenReaper - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Both mediums have their place. Wireless's place is in the kitchen - not gaming or the datacenter.Hyper72 - Saturday, February 15, 2020 - link
Indeed, it's all about use case and environment. I got an Asus RT-AX88U last year and have been gaming a lot over WiFi. It's rock solid, never a single disconnect and latency to the router is sub 1ms - all significant latency for gaming is further out in the network. I couldn't say the same about my old Netgear R7000.I also get ~100MB/s from my NAS which is great for the work I do at home.
peevee - Thursday, February 13, 2020 - link
If only a few major countries would open up more channels close to 2.4 (below 2.4 or above 2.5), we could have had the best of both worlds - performance and range. Who is hoarding 2.5-3GHz range for example?TheUnhandledException - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Below 2.4 GHz is a number of military bands. In the US above 2.5 GHz (well above 2.495 GHz) is the cellular band allocated to Sprint (now T-Mobile after the merger). I don't see the 2.4 GHz ISM band (which is what wifi uses) getting expanded.Gonemad - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Nah. I just decided to get my home cabled. When the wireless get faster than the cables, I will consider it.Very few devices stuck with wifi 4 or 3, for example my aging PS3. I got it cabled. Great blu-ray and netflix player.
Gonemad - Friday, February 14, 2020 - link
Cabling my home was more cost-effective for aging gear. New gear will demand a new router, eventually.Gigaplex - Monday, February 17, 2020 - link
Looking at the table that defines the max speeds of the various versions, I'm a bit disappointed that my 2x2 AC wifi can only get ~100Mbit 2 metres away with direct line of sight. It's only off by an order of magnitude...zepi - Monday, February 17, 2020 - link
What is your test device actually? You talk of ”typical laptop 2x2” etc. But please write out what exactly.I already have 3x3 AP + laptop for AC with 80MHz. Actually many people do.
azazel1024 - Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - link
That isn't disappointing for 2.4GHz performance, that sounds like something is wrong, like it is fat channel intolerant enabled or something similar. I'd trouble shoot more or talk to Intel on what's wrong.By comparison older 802.11ac Intel network cards (7260, 7265) on 2.4GHz 40Mhz 2:2 I can generally get around 200-215Mbps. Which is well over double the performance that you are seeing with the AX200 Intel card. That to me says either something is dropping it down to 20Mhz (which still isn't a strong showing, even for 20Mhz), or else there is some kind of bug in the firmware. I'd expect better than 802.11ac/802.11n performance in the 2.4Ghz space. Like around 240-280Mbps because of the higher QAM encoding.
Schumway7 - Saturday, February 22, 2020 - link
Can I upgrade my current wi-fi with new WIFI 6 or need a new service,with a new bill?FXi - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
At this point in time I think most will be well served to wait for Wifi 6e. Clients should be coming along right now and the added channels that "e" will make available really give Wifi 6 the room to deliver on the speed increases.0ldman79 - Tuesday, March 10, 2020 - link
Isn't -21dB overdriving the receiver?I find typically anything stronger than a -40 has worse performance.
Also another client radio may give better results. I've found Intel to be quite problematic in the past. Qualcomm Atheros, Realtek or Broadcom have generally performed better than Intel, though you have to test with what is available.
pirspamela90 - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
Very original and specific model but thank you for your review.