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Comparison of WiFi 6 802.11ax and WiFi 802.11ac in real life.
Comparison of WiFi 6 802.11ax and WiFi 802.11ac in real life.
  sildid:
  06/04/2020

We wanted to see with our own eyes the effect of the various innovative technologies used in WiFi 6 and how it affects the end-user experience.

We compared WiFi 6 devices with the previous 5th generation WiFi devices. WiFi access points or access points were under testing. We did not change any devices other than APs during the test.

Our test

In our test we used a WiFi 6 (ax standard) access point Ruckus R750 and a WiFi 5 (ac standard) access point Ruckus R720. We used an HP server with a 10G network card as the server, and the client device was a laptop with an ax ax-compliant network card Intel ax200. It should be noted that the speeds in WiFi6 are already so high that this test cannot be performed without a 10G network card - the cable network will be too slow!

We performed the tests at the same location in a short time, the access points also had identical settings.

This test has been performed between one client device and the AP, but the real progress of Wi-Fi 6 can be seen when there are many clients connected to the AP at the same time. The OFDMA modulation technique used in WiFi 6 allows multiple clients to communicate simultaneously. This increases the number of clients per access point to 500 (real number, theoretical 1000). Also, hundreds of users are not in trouble moving their low traffic when one user transmits a large amount of data.

Next month, we'll get some 11ax Wi-Fi 6 flaps and show how OFDMA modulation and very low latency work in reality when the load is high.

Our equipment

If the laptop is connected to the coverage area created by the WiFi 5 device, the Windows command 'netsh wlan show all' will also indicate the standard used.

SSID 1 : speedtest
     Network type            : Infrastructure
          Signal             : 99%
          Radio type         : 802.11ac

If your WiFi device is an R750, you can immediately see it on your computer:

SSID 1 : speedtest
     Network type            : Infrastructure
          Signal             : 96%
          Radio type         : 802.11ax

In addition to using a different standard, Windows also shows the estimated link speed. For WiFi 5, this is 866.7 Mbps:

However, at WiFi 6 the speed is 1.5 times higher, up to 1.2Gbps:

To evaluate the real user experience and WiFi speed, we used the popular iperf3 test, which can measure the data transfer rate between two devices. During the test, as much data as possible is transferred between the two devices according to the predefined settings. Everyone can download the software used for testing here.

Results

R750 conference room, 2m from AP


[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.05 GBytes   901 Mbits/sec                  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.05 GBytes   899 Mbits/sec                  receiver
R720 nõukar
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   839 MBytes   703 Mbits/sec                  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   837 MBytes   702 Mbits/sec                  receiver

R750    Name                   : Wi-Fi 3
    Description            : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
    GUID                   : e360f0c6-1d39-4033-872b-c08a5f3db3f0
    Physical address       : 50:e0:85:f3:6b:c3
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : kiirusetest
    BSSID                  : 4c:b1:cd:13:f5:1c
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11ax
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Profile
    Channel                : 116
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 1201
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 1201
    Signal                 : 84%
    Profile                : kiirusetest

R720
    Name                   : Wi-Fi 3
    Description            : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
    GUID                   : e360f0c6-1d39-4033-872b-c08a5f3db3f0
    Physical address       : 50:e0:85:f3:6b:c3
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : kiirusetest
    BSSID                  : 8c:fe:74:22:52:8c
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11ac
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Auto Connect
    Channel                : 116
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 866.7
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 866.7
    Signal                 : 98%
    Profile                : kiirusetest

R750 desk 15m behind slight wall.


[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   904 MBytes   758 Mbits/sec                  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   903 MBytes   758 Mbits/sec                  receiver
R720 TOM laud
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   433 MBytes   364 Mbits/sec                  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   433 MBytes   364 Mbits/sec                  receiver

R750:   Name                   : Wi-Fi 3
    Description            : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
    GUID                   : e360f0c6-1d39-4033-872b-c08a5f3db3f0
    Physical address       : 50:e0:85:f3:6b:c3
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : kiirusetest
    BSSID                  : 4c:b1:cd:13:f5:1c
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11ax
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Profile
    Channel                : 116
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 1081
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 1081
    Signal                 : 85%
    Profile                : kiirusetest

R720
 Name                   : Wi-Fi 3
    Description            : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
    GUID                   : e360f0c6-1d39-4033-872b-c08a5f3db3f0
    Physical address       : 50:e0:85:f3:6b:c3
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : kiirusetest
    BSSID                  : 8c:fe:74:22:52:8c
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11ac
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Auto Connect
    Channel                : 116
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 433.3
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 433.3
    Signal                 : 81%
    Profile                : kiirusetest

R750 at about 30m distance.


[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   355 MBytes   298 Mbits/sec                  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   355 MBytes   298 Mbits/sec                  receiver
R720
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   276 MBytes   232 Mbits/sec                  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   276 MBytes   232 Mbits/sec                  receiver

R750 Name                   : Wi-Fi 3
    Description            : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
    GUID                   : e360f0c6-1d39-4033-872b-c08a5f3db3f0
    Physical address       : 50:e0:85:f3:6b:c3
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : kiirusetest
    BSSID                  : 4c:b1:cd:13:f5:1c
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11ax
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Profile
    Channel                : 116
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 432
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 432
    Signal                 : 67%
    Profile                : kiirusetest

R720

    Name                   : Wi-Fi 3
    Description            : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
    GUID                   : e360f0c6-1d39-4033-872b-c08a5f3db3f0
    Physical address       : 50:e0:85:f3:6b:c3
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : kiirusetest
    BSSID                  : 8c:fe:74:22:52:8c
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11ac
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Auto Connect
    Channel                : 116
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 390
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 390
    Signal                 : 54%
    Profile                : kiirusetest

At about 30m through thick walls.


R750
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  16.6 MBytes  13.9 Mbits/sec                  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  15.4 MBytes  12.9 Mbits/sec                  receiver
R720
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  8.00 MBytes  6.71 Mbits/sec                  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec   345 KBytes   283 Kbits/sec                  receiver

R750
    Name                   : Wi-Fi 3
    Description            : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
    GUID                   : e360f0c6-1d39-4033-872b-c08a5f3db3f0
    Physical address       : 50:e0:85:f3:6b:c3
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : kiirusetest
    BSSID                  : 4c:b1:cd:13:f5:1c
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11ax
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Auto Connect
    Channel                : 116
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 17
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 17
    Signal                 : 10%
    Profile                : kiirusetest

R720
 Name                   : Wi-Fi 3
    Description            : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
    GUID                   : e360f0c6-1d39-4033-872b-c08a5f3db3f0
    Physical address       : 50:e0:85:f3:6b:c3
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : kiirusetest
    BSSID                  : 8c:fe:74:22:52:8c
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11ac
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Auto Connect
    Channel                : 116
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 19.5
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 19.5
    Signal                 : 15%
    Profile                : kiirusetest


Autor: Support
LOE EDASI
support@3kgroup.ee