Wireless Data Rates

[kmcdonald1973]

Hello,

I was hoping someone could answer this question for me. I have a hypothetical wireless network consisting of 3 1142 802.11N Access Points, all with only 1 Radio.

They are configured for 802.11N in 5Ghz band (so lets assume a perfect world and each AP is offering 150 mbps connection rates and they are overlapping completely (different channels).

If you had 6 clients, and they are all being load balenced (by a controller i would assume) what would each ones max bandwidth be? Would it be 75mbps? Is each Access Point only able to transmit or recieve a total of 150mbps across all mobile devices, so as to say they will be competing for a 150mbps uplink to the network?

Thanks in advance and sorry if this is a dumb question?

Kevin

[Nicolas Darchis · Accepted solution]

That's pretty correct.

When the data rate is "300Mbps", the real throughput can go up to 150Mbps or a bit more. So let's say each AP offers 150Mbps on a specific channel (bonded channels in order to reach 300mbps theoretical rate). So if you have 3 APs and 6 clients spread 2 on each AP, then yes, they all get 75 real Mbps. Wireless is a "Free for all", so it's not the AP dividing the throughput in half. Meaning if one PC is surfing the web and the other one doing an FTP transfer, the PC doing FTP will enjoy most out of the 150Mbps since the other PC doesn't need so much.

Just think of the AP has a hub offering 150Mbps for all connected clients to that AP.

Nicolas.

[kmcdonald1973]

Thanks for confirming that for me Nic.

Have a good one,

Kev