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What does the spectrum analyzer plot of a Wi-Fi 6 connection look like?

I wanted to see what the channel spectrum looks like for a Wi-Fi 6 connection. So I used my Ekahau sidekick spectrum analyzer to look at a connection between a iPhone 11 pro and a Ruckus 8×8 11ax R730 and here is what I saw.

I ran iPerf to fully load the channel you can see the R730 is on channel 149 @ 80Mhz channel width.

There is no indicator on the iPhone 11 to show a Wi-Fi 6 connection like there is on a Samsung Galaxy S10. However if we look at the client list on the Ruckus Zonedirector we see it is connected at 11ax.

Next I captured a video of the iPhone 11 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S10 both running iPerf servers against different wired clients. You can see the OFDMA Resource Units in action

Lastly I ran the same test again with a 20Mhz channel here is that video zoomed in.

For more information on the Ekahau Sidekick click here

For more information on the Ruckus R730 click here

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Exactly How Fast is the Wi-Fi 6 in the iPhone 11?

With the release of the iPhone 11 it will quickly push the installed base of Wi-Fi 6 clients over 180 million by 2020. We know that the iPhone 11 pro and max have a 2×2 MU-MIMO 802.11ax Wi-Fi chipset. So how fast is it exactly?

To figure this out I started with 2 of the best Wi-Fi 6 Access Points currently on the market the EnGenius EWS377AP and the Ruckus R730. I took the iPhone out of it’s case connected to power and held horizontal at about 5 feet from the AP for the fastest speeds. I used a IPerf server on a iPhone 11 pro and a JPerf client on gigabit wired desktop and here are the results.

First I tested with the EnGenius EWS377AP it is a 4×4 MU-MIMO Wi-Fi 6 AP. I averaged 800Mbps with spikes as high as 845Mbps.

Next I tested against the Ruckus R730 it is a 8×8 MU-MIMO Wi-Fi 6 AP. I averaged 750Mbps with spikes over 800Mbps.

So how does this compare to the iPhone 10 with a Wi-Fi 5 chipset? You can see my testing here it averaged around 600Mbps so we are getting a solid 200Mbps gain with the iPhone 11! This is similar to what I saw with the Samsung Galaxy S10.

Short range speed is one advantage of Wi-Fi 6 but another one of the real benefits is increased speed at distance see my testing here.

For more information on the Wi-Fi 6 AP’s I used during this testing go here

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EnGenius SkyKey brings your managed Wi-Fi system into the cloud

The EnGenius Skykey is a hybrid cloud device running the ezMaster Access Point and Switch management software. The Skykey is is a PoE powered device connect it to a switch for both power and data it has a secondary ethernet port, a micro SD slot for local backups, and a magnet for easy mounting .

If you are already running ezMaster you can backup your configuration and load it into the Skykey . The Skykey will manage up to 100 devices you can access it remotely from the EnGenius Cloud or by local IP address. And as with all EnGenius cloud devices there is no subscription fee!

Once the SkyKey is configured you can onboard Access Points and switches across multiple sites with projects and AP groups.

The EnGenius Skykey is now shipping click here for more information

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EnGenius launches Cloud Wi-Fi products with no subscription cost!

EnGenius technologies has just launched a line of cloud managed Wi-Fi access points and PoE switches with no subscription cost! These are business class Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 5 access points that can handle traffic from many users in both large and small venues including outdoors. You can manage your chain of coffee houses from one interface or your entire school campus. There is a 48 port Cloud managed PoE switch available for large businesses and the enterprise down to 8 port desktop switch for small businesses. The hybrid cloud skykey will also bring EnGenius EWS access points and Switches into the cloud. See the full lineup of products here

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The iPhone 11 doesn’t have 5G, and that’s totally fine because it has Wi-Fi 6!

The iPhone 11 specs were just announced and as expected it doesn’t support 5G. While 5G is all the rage right now, the technology is still very much in its infancy don’t expect coverage in anything but the largest city’s until 2021. Furthermore adding 5G to a phone requires bulky antennas and power hungry chipsets and this point.

More importantly all iPhone 11’s support Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)! Wi-Fi 6 will give the iPhone 11 super fast gigabit speeds while increasing range, speed at range and battery life. See our testing of the Samsung Galaxy S10. Offloading your data from the costly cellular networks to Wi-Fi 6 will always be faster and will not incur a monthly charge per device.

Now to use the iPhone 11 at its full potential you will need Wi-Fi 6 access points. We have been testing several and the EnGenius EWS377AP is very good. For high density situations look at the Ruckus R730 or new R750.

Contact me with any questions about designing your Wi-Fi network to be optimized for Wi-Fi 6.

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8×8 MIMO Wi-Fi 6 Range Testing with the Ruckus R730

I wanted to test if the additional MIMO radio chains on a Wi-Fi 6 Access Point improve speed at distance even for a 2×2 MIMO Wi-Fi client like a smartphone. I setup a Ruckus R730 802.11ax Access Point with zonedirector firmware 10.3 using a external power supply for full 8×8 capability on a clear 80Mhz channel at 5Ghz. This is currently the highest capacity Wi-Fi 6 AP on the market.

Next I placed a Samsung Galaxy S10 at my 50 foot indoor test location running a iperf server app. Here are the results I saw an average of 200Mbps throughput with spikes to 230Mbps and lows of 150Mbps.

When we compare this to my test with the EnGenius 4×4 Wi-Fi 6 EWS377AP where we saw a 160Mbps average at the same location we can see those additional radio chains do not go unused. We saw a 40Mbps bump in single client performance with the Ruckus R730! Some of this can be attributed to the beamflex antenna elements I am sure.

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Wi-Fi 6 Access Point Client Speed at Range Testing

To continue with my real world Wi-Fi 6 testing series with the EnGenius EWS377AP I wanted to do some indoor speed at distance tests. I am testing actual throughput using a iperf client on a GbE wired desktop and a iperf server app on the smartphone.

I first tested the Wi-Fi 6 Samsung Galaxy S10e I placed it 50 feet from the EWS377AP the Wi-Fi was passing through several walls furniture etc here are the results. I saw average of 160Mbps with spikes to to 176Mbps. Plenty of throughput to stream netflix at 4k (25Mbps) or do just about anything else over Wi-Fi.

Next I wanted to see the difference with a Wi-Fi 5 client the iPhone Xs. I placed the iPhone in the same position an reran the throughput test. This time we averaged 150Mbps with spikes up to 159Mbps.

So in real world distance testing a Wi-Fi 6 AP / Wi-Fi 6 Client edges out Wi-Fi 6 AP / Wi-Fi 5 client with a gain of ~10Mbps not as drastic as the 200Mbs difference we saw at 5 feet but still an improvement. And as we saw in our Wi-Fi 6 AP vs Wi-Fi 5 AP testing having a Wi-Fi 6 AP like the EnGenius EWS377AP can improve overall speed for all Wi-Fi devices.

To back up the Wi-Fi 6 AP testing I went back and did the same test with a Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) AP a 4×4 MIMO Ruckus R720. Here are the are the results at the same location.

First I tested the Wi-Fi 5 client the iPhone Xs I was only able to average about 35Mbps.

Next I tested the Samsung Galaxy S10 the Wi-Fi 6 client this did better at 65Mbps average.

So in conclusion we see a big speed at range improvement with a Wi-Fi 6 AP even with a Wi-Fi 5 client we saw over 100Mbps throughput improvement over a similar Wi-Fi 5 AP!

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Intel unveils its first 10th-gen laptop CPUs all with Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)

Intel released the details of their 10th generation ice lake CPU’s today and they all come with gig + Wi-Fi 6! We should start to see these hitting the market very soon Dell and Acer have already announced laptops based on this new chipset.

Another reason to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 and get ready for the onslaught of devices with faster better Wi-Fi. We have the 4×4 Wi-Fi 6 EWS377AP and the 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 EWS357AP in stock today.

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Wi-Fi 6 Client Speed Testing With Samsung Galaxy S10

I wanted to do some throughput testing with the Wi-Fi 6 EnGenius EWS377AP Access Point at close range with a Wi-Fi 6 client the Samsung Galaxy S10e and see how it compared to a Wi-Fi 5 client on the same Access Point.

I setup the EnGenius EWS377AP a 4×4 Wi-Fi 6 Access Point on a clear channel in 80Mhz mode. I placed the S10 within five feet of the Access Point in a horizontal orientation for the best results. The S10 is a 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 device the fastest speed I was able to maintain was 907Mbps or (256-QAM with a 1600 ns GI) but I briefly saw 960Mbps (256-QAM with a 800 ns GI)

I ran iPerf2 for android on the S10 in server mode and jPerf on my workstation in client mode.

Here are the results I was able to maintain 800Mbps with bursts up to 831Mbps pretty good!

If we compare these to a high end Wi-Fi 5 client the iPhone Xs I got around 600Mbps average with spikes up to 613Mbps

So this testing show a single 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 client can maintain 800Mbps at short range. We might need to utilize the 2.5Gbe capability of the EWS377AP sooner than we thought!

Range will be a different test but is is very hard to replicate every environment is different while my results for speed are easily reproduced

The EWS377AP is available here for under $300! https://www.keenansystems.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=564

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Can Wi-Fi 5 clients perform better with a Wi-Fi 6 Access Point?

With many Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) AP’s being released and relatively few Wi-Fi 6 clients in the wild I wanted to do some throughput testing on a non Wi-Fi 6 client device the iPhone Xs.

Like all current iPhones the top of the line Xs has a 2×2 Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) radio. I used the iperf app and put it in server mode and then ran the jperf on my desktop. I made sure the spectrum was clear with my WiPry 2500x, Wi-Fi Spectrum Analyzer and put both AP’s in 80Mhz mode at a 5 foot range.

First I tested against a 4×4 Wi-Fi 5 AP these are the results I got around 375Mbps

Next I tested against the EnGenius EWS377AP and I got the results below averaging about 610Mbps.

So this shows that a Wi-Fi 5 client device can get a performance benefit from a using the latest Wi-Fi 6 Access Point. Since the EWS377AP is using the latest Wi-Fi chipset with faster CPU and more memory many existing Wi-Fi devices will get a throughput increase. The 4×4 radio chains also allow for better range and speed at range.

As more Wi-Fi 6 devices are released later this year like the Intel 10th generation ice lake laptop processors and possibly the iPhone 11 we will see even more performance benefits especially in high density situations.