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Forum Discussion
why does wifi OFDMA degrade performance so badly?
my concern is with two PCs, filesharing to each other, both on the same wifi channel. I would upload a clear well-composed video illustrating it, but this forum doesn't support it. so I expect n...
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it's not urgent.
my Xfinity XB8 gateway is working fine in the meanwhile.
I'd like to replace it with something better.
but I don't think any Netgear equipment exists presently that justifies replacing it.
that would've been my next question.
Retired_Member wrote:
my Xfinity XB8 gateway is working fine in the meanwhile.
I'd like to replace it with something better.
but I don't think any Netgear equipment exists presently that justifies replacing it.
These are about the performance numbers you can expect from a modern WiFi 6 router - as simple as that:
Appears there is a bigger problem on the RAX70 installation. Not that I expect some more than 950 Mb/s speed (like the almost symmetrical 2 Gb up and downlink speed), the limit is here on the RAX70 with "just" a GbE WAN port, and GbE LAN ports), something in the range of 950 Mb/s up and down is feasible without massive interferences or concurrent load on the wireless channels.
Completely buffed about the poor performance numbers on the RAX70, including 160 MHz bandwidth and a decent 802.11ax platform... and I have not talked about the odd non-standard user accessible controls for OFDMA (undoubted default for WiFi 6 and up).
A modern high-end router with a MultiGig WAN can provide similar numbers like this XB8. Yes, this makes it questionable if there is a future in middle-class routers - an are where the industry is massively loosing market share.
Difficult to replace a modern carrier CPE nowadays - excellent from what I see here. Nothing in the ~250 USD range for now anyway, worth to pay a monthly rental on it.
Sorry Netgear: A lot of homework for you these Christmas days of 2023.a
I assume the atrocious OFDMA performance shown in the two RAX70 video clips
they result from the router thoughtlessly allocating minuscule Resource Units (RUs) to the PCs
which bottlenecks traffic between the two PCs worse than had OFDMA not been enabled at all.
that's completely contrary to the intent of OFDMA
which is to improve performance by granting each device exclusive use of a group of subcarriers.
that is, each gets its own exclusive use of a hunk of the 160MHz or 80MHz channel width.
so it's just poor implementation.
either Netgear firmware, its chipset, or the intel AX210.
THAT was my question. who's to blame?
and, is there any Netgear product that does a better job.
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the XB8 likewise gets poor performance filesharing between two PCs on the same wifi channel.
my XB8 screenshots don't show that degraded performance case.
the high wifi speed shown (1900Mbps) is with one PC on wifi, the other on ethernet.
(so they're not competing for the wifi resource)
but still, when I look at reviews like on amazon, I never see that XB8 kind of performance from Netgear.
(2000/200 Mbps ethernet, 1900 Mbps wifi)
only 5-star subjective hype and marketing misinformation (like OFDMA) to wow consumers.
Retired_Member wrote:
either Netgear firmware, its chipset, or the intel AX210.
Inhell AX210, just like AX200, BE200, and BE202 do work brilliant with recent Netgear's SMB APs, as well as most other business AP brands I can get a hands-on. No idea if the the same applies to the consumer models.
Retired_Member wrote:
and, is there any Netgear product that does a better job.
Sure, certainly all WAX6xx (all Qualcomm based) and WAX220 (MediaTek MK7986AV/MT7978DM based) - all very nice products supporting multi VLAN/multi SSID clients very well. Sorry friends, this is more my competency area - Netgear does think the same, they share many SMB units with me for Beta testing, but NUL NIL ZERO fancy consumer devices. Therefore, I can't talk more about these consumer units.
Some oddities in common to certain Qualcomm (WAX630E) and according to reports also on WAX220 and some other MediaTek based units like the MR60/MS60 troubles with what I would designate as a bug in the VLAN L2 communication between different VLANS, leading to the situation that WiFi clients on one radio (6 GHz vs other on the 630E) and 5 GHz vs. 2.4 GHz on the Nighthawk Mesh MR60/MK60 struggle under some well documented conditions. Some issues ref. WAX630E are confirmed and somewhere in between "we don't fix" (early Netgear response) to "we fix when we figure out" as of today. Let's hope it's work in progress for Q1/2024 8-)
