Netgear hyping STREAMS in Wi-Fi 6 routers is nonsense

Question

Wow, 12 streams in the RAX120.&nbsp; Complete nonsense and meaningless (and computed wrong; there are 8 antennas).
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Kudos to the first person that explains to the community (the correct answer) why streams in 802.11ax don't matter that much anymore.
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Clue: In Wi-Fi 6, why will a 4x4 AP perform the same as an 8x8 AP to 100 Wi-Fi 6 2x2 clients all downloading at the same time.

schumaku · Answer

It's not about MU-MIMO&nbsp;vs. OFDMA my friend.
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MU-MIMO is a mandatory feature on 802.1ax - very different from 802.11ac. You are trying to hype OFDMA - a feature very helpful when it comes to many clients requiring&nbsp;smaller data rates, or in environments with a large number of concurrent wireless clients/IoTs.When it comes to the naked throughput, serving a small number of capable clients, a single 802.11ax 8x8:8 system radio (QCN5154) with a max rate of 9.6 Gb/s&nbsp;will outperform a 802.11ax 4x4:4 radio (BCM42684) at&nbsp;4.8 Gb/s.Some oddities remain - for the moment it appears the Qualcomm has to fall back to 4x4:4 for a 160 MHz channel coverage, and there must be shortcomings when it comes to DFS handling obviously - as reflected that the initial AX12 firmware won't support&nbsp;DFS.My heart would go more for an design with two 5 GHz radios&nbsp;80 MHzin 4x4:4&nbsp; and with a workable DFS support - while the freeky perfromance geeks will continue to look for the 8.8:8 system.

schumaku · Answer

FWIW&nbsp;12 stream are implemented&nbsp;&nbsp;4x 2.4GHz and&nbsp;8x 5GHz

duckware · Answer

MU-MIMO does have a lot of benefits, but you almost never get those benefits in the real world (you will get benefits in a static test setup; something you can configure with patience at home).&nbsp; In an enterprise setup, I have not seen anyone say that it works (in fact the opposite: everything I see says that it does not work in the enterprise).&nbsp; The achilles heel of MU-MIMO is that it requires spatial diversity between the 'multiple' devices, and the overhead of the management frames.
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The point of this post was to try to educate people that 802.11ax changes the game.&nbsp; In 802.11ax, there are TWO multi-user mechanism.&nbsp; MU-MIMO and MU-OFDMA.&nbsp; They are not the same thing (which most people like likely overlook and not fully realize).&nbsp; MU-OFDMA is multi-user support baked into the 802.11ax protocols.&nbsp; Up to nine users can be supported per 20 Mhz channel (so up to 36 in 80 Mhz).&nbsp; So in very dense environments (classrooms, stadiums, etc) 802.11ax does a large advantage (but only with 802.11ax clients).&nbsp; So a 'four' stream 802.11ax router can actually transmit to lots of users at the same time.
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Of course, the only way to take full advantage of Wi-Fi 6 benefits is with Wi-Fi 6 clients -- which will not happen for many years.
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I agree -- two (band) 4x4 is way better than one 8x8 -- for most people.
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freaky performance geeks: Well, the fact that Netgear's max speed for 8x8 RAX12 is the same as Netgear's max speed for 4x4 RAX8 (both are AX6000) will hopefully make the geeks go 'hmmmm'.

schumaku · Answer

All these new wireless standards were abused by (consumer) marketing for years if not decades. When I think on how lazy multiple interfaces were simply added to create ACnnnnnnnnn and nobody ever cared. And buddy, the equation one antenna == on stream is certainly wrong.

I've seen the internals of another vendor device using the same Qualcomm platform - there were four 2.4 GHz and four 5 GHz antennas. And indeed, the Qualcomm platform can handle 12 streams.

duckware · Answer

Yes.&nbsp; But why does that not matter for 802.11ax for the situation described?&nbsp; That is the point.&nbsp; Why is Netgear hyping something that really does not matter.&nbsp; 802.11ax is a game changer for the reason why.
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A clue: Even a 2x2 802.11ax AP would be just as capable.

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Netgear hyping STREAMS in Wi-Fi 6 routers is nonsense

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