I've replaced an aging Orbi (RBR50 and satellites) with a new Nighthawk MR80 with 2 satellites.
My home internet fiber comes into the living room. Off the AT&T modem (bridge) I have my main Nighthawk in router mode. I have a satellite in the front office where the desktop PCs are (they're wired into it). I have a satellite one floor up as well.
I can't move the fiber entry point and the PCs are in the best place right now. The house isn't wired for CAT-anything so that's off the table in all circumstances.
My wife and I game on the desktop PCs. The catch is that we like to stream from the desktops to laptops so we're not constantly in the office when gaming, i.e. we're upstairs. This streaming is accomplished via Steam... i.e. the game runs on the desktop and streams its audio/video out to a laptop. We play WoW so it isn't high-framerate FPS stuff but it also isn't Wordle.
Any tips on maximizing local streaming performance? QoS is enabled. MU-MIMO is enabled, and our two laptops use Intel Wifi 6 AX200 cards in them. We have about 20 devices across the network... video doorbell, a streambar on a TV, some wifi smartbulbs... nothing intense, most are 2.4ghz devices. The streaming devices are 5ghz.
When we're on the same satellite i.e. we're both upstairs, performance is decent at best. I expected better with this upgrade honestly -- a day in and I'm considering returning this and going back to the Orbi. We're not streaming anything else i.e. TV on the network when playing, usually.
Gaming doesn't take super fast speeds. Its more about latency. And both devices (mr/rbk) had dedicated backhaul that helps keep latency low. And with the 50 series even having an 4x4 antenna setup with 1733mbps backhaul. Its a pretty solid kit. The MK system has a 1800mbps backhaul over 3x3 antenna setup. So the older AC system is going to have similar performance over the backhaul. And the fronthauls were pretty similar. Basically upgrading gets you a little faster in certain circumstances and newer security.
If it was me? I'd go back to the 50 series and wait on the newer wifi 7 devices or look at the 8/9 series. They're really the ones that might show improvements but even that isn't going to be much (because its not a speed issue).
I think there's a little more than latency involved because of us streaming video/audio from our desktops to another PC in the house (laptops). That's pumping ~60FPS video across at least one backhaul (satellite where the PCs are wired in -> satellite where the laptops are wirelessly connected). The only data going back from the laptops to the desktops is control inputs... left, right, swing the camera this way, etc.
I guess the best comparison is a really intense Remote Desktop Protocol session 🙂
And Steam handles this pretty well overall but there are occasional dips. I just want to check if there's any better experience we could be getting with a setting or two, IF anyone here has a similar setup. I know. It's somewhat unorthodox. I think Steam uses this setup more for "Big Picture" mode which people use to stream gaming from a desktop to a very large display i.e. a TV.
