I have an ASUS RT-AX86U wfi 6 router. I have a home built desktop PC with an MSI Z590M mainboard with an Intel AX210 wifi 6E. My Intel NUC has an Intel AX201 wifi 6. One of my laptops (ASUS Zenbook) has an Intel AC8265 and the other laptop (Lenovo) has a Qualcom 9377 with dual band wifi. Add in a couple of iPads with AC dual band wifi and a couple of phones. I forgot the 3 TVs all with AC dual band wifi and the two Google Nest mini devices.. There are also a couple of Brother printers which can work wifi. The 2.4GHz radio in the router is permanently turned off. I only ever use the 5GHz radio.
All devices get a wifi connection at 877 megabits except the Qualcom which only gets 433 megabits. However, all devices except the two laptops, the two iPads, and the two Google devices are on a gigabit wired network which is configured with 3 gigabit ether switches. The Asus router is a peripheral on one of the switches. Not all of the cabled devices get to gigabit speeds.
The laptops and the iPads are rarely used simultaneously. Given all of this wifi 6 is rarely used. When I first got the router I did some wifi 6 speed tests and the results were underwhelming. I ended up turning off MU-MIMO in the router because it appeared to add variable amounts of latency (subjective evaluation) even when only a single wifi 6 device was running. That was a while back. I will check on that again as the router firmware has been updated multiple times since. Asus router support is superb.
My thoughts are that wifi 6 and 6E are still a work in progress and we may see the full benefits in several years when the device firmware matures and some of the older devices are obsoleted. However, that may take a while for me. One of my iPads is a year old and the other is still going after 7 years and still getting updates. Both are wifi 5.
Excellent feedback. Thanks for sharing it Bob. 🙂 I agree that Wi-Fi 6 and especially Wi-Fi 6E ar work in progress. However, they will mature much faster than we think. 🙂
2 Responses to “Wi-Fi 6 is an ecosystem, not just a router”
I have an ASUS RT-AX86U wfi 6 router. I have a home built desktop PC with an MSI Z590M mainboard with an Intel AX210 wifi 6E. My Intel NUC has an Intel AX201 wifi 6. One of my laptops (ASUS Zenbook) has an Intel AC8265 and the other laptop (Lenovo) has a Qualcom 9377 with dual band wifi. Add in a couple of iPads with AC dual band wifi and a couple of phones. I forgot the 3 TVs all with AC dual band wifi and the two Google Nest mini devices.. There are also a couple of Brother printers which can work wifi. The 2.4GHz radio in the router is permanently turned off. I only ever use the 5GHz radio.
All devices get a wifi connection at 877 megabits except the Qualcom which only gets 433 megabits. However, all devices except the two laptops, the two iPads, and the two Google devices are on a gigabit wired network which is configured with 3 gigabit ether switches. The Asus router is a peripheral on one of the switches. Not all of the cabled devices get to gigabit speeds.
The laptops and the iPads are rarely used simultaneously. Given all of this wifi 6 is rarely used. When I first got the router I did some wifi 6 speed tests and the results were underwhelming. I ended up turning off MU-MIMO in the router because it appeared to add variable amounts of latency (subjective evaluation) even when only a single wifi 6 device was running. That was a while back. I will check on that again as the router firmware has been updated multiple times since. Asus router support is superb.
My thoughts are that wifi 6 and 6E are still a work in progress and we may see the full benefits in several years when the device firmware matures and some of the older devices are obsoleted. However, that may take a while for me. One of my iPads is a year old and the other is still going after 7 years and still getting updates. Both are wifi 5.
Excellent feedback. Thanks for sharing it Bob. 🙂 I agree that Wi-Fi 6 and especially Wi-Fi 6E ar work in progress. However, they will mature much faster than we think. 🙂