WiFi 6/6E Uplinks

[fatalXerror]

Hi Guys,

I believed Wifi 6/6E to unleash its capability needs to be connected to an mGig (2.4/5/10G) Cu port at the access switch. May question now is, is it mandatory to have 10G uplinks in my access level switch up to core switch and the others to support the 6/6E technology or 1G will do as well depending on how many users will connect to the wireless?

Thank you

[Leo Laohoo]

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@fatalXerror wrote:
I believed Wifi 6/6E to unleash its capability needs to be connected to an mGig (2.4/5/10G) Cu port at the access switch. May question now is, is it mandatory to have 10G uplinks in my access level switch up to core switch and the others to support the 6/6E technology or 1G will do as well depending on how many users will connect to the wireless?

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Realistic Answer:  Multi-Gig ports is "nice to have" but not really mandatory. 

Question:  Does anyone know of any affordable 802.11ax wireless client that can process >3 Gbps of traffic? 

Answer:  None.  

[JPavonM]

To add more on @Leo Laohoo answer, been able to connect using a link speed beyond 1Gbps is too hard to get, as you should be using a channel @160MHz width with a 2x2 MIMO client device (there are no adapters on the consumer market supporting more MIMO streams to date). And that speed would be hard to get on 5GHz band due to channel coexistence, so only possible on 6GHz band.

Additionally, that link speed would be the negotiated speed, but not the real throughput speed, which could be around 60-70% at maximum, and only under certain conditions with non-overlapped BSS, all clients been dot11ax capable, and all clients been really close to the AP to get the SNR needed to be able to use the proper modulation:

[Rich R]

So the others have pretty much answered already so I'll just add:
Yes that would be ideal in an absolutely optimised, high performance installation but the reality of current performance is that APs very rarely exceed 1Gbps access port requirement.  And as Leo said the costs of delivering that ideal install can be prohibitive for most customers.  We've yet to see a customer who has specified multi-gig ports to the APs.

However 10G uplinks from your access switches is a realistic necessity in my opinion.  If you have eg. 24 or more APs on 1G ports on the switch there's a high probability that a 1G uplink will be oversubscribed.  Depending on number of APs you might need more than one 10G (port-channel).