Wi-Fi performance on UltraBEAM 1000 (900Mb/s) service

Giganet offers our UltraHub 2 router as standard for all home full fibre broadband connections.

This router is a high-end Wave 2 802.11ac router. This means that if you have a Wave 2 802.11ac device too, you should be able to receive speeds approaching 900Mb/s+ when connected on Wi-Fi under ideal conditions (i.e. no interference, low noise & good signal). 

Not many devices support this high-end Wi-Fi performance or Wave 2 capability however. Going more technical, you need a device that is capable of 4x4 MIMO on the 5GHz frequency, and using a 160MHz channel width.

Do you have a supported "Wave 2" device?

If you have one of these devices, then bandwidths over 1,500Mb/s theoretical are possible over Wi-Fi under ideal conditions. The theoretical rates is heavily caveated though.

Sadly however, most high-end laptops and mobile devices bought in 2020 do not support 4x4 MIMO or 160MHz channel widths.

Wi-Fi is Half-duplex, so a percentage of the max theoretical speed will be lost by the inefficiencies.

It's also worth noting that with Wi-Fi, both the send and receive signals all happen on the same frequency, and therefore when you are receiving data, you can't send data. This is called half-duplex, or simplex. It's similar to how a walkie talkie 2-way radio works.

With a wired-Ethernet connection, there are wires in the cable that allow you to transit and receive at the same time, so full-duplex, or like a telephone call.

This fact also goes to explain why these headline rates that the router manufacturers talk about are not seen in speedtests.

Our UltraBEAM 1000 service is quoted as offering speeds of up to 900Mb/s down to account for internet packet overheads on the 1Gb/s full fibre service.

For best performance, please use a 1Gb/s cabled Ethernet connection to the router.

To take full advantage of the UltraBEAM 1000 throughput, please consider if possible hard-cabling your device into the router using a 1Gb/s Ethernet cable. You must have a device that supports a 1Gb/s cabled connection. Most devices purchased in the past 5 years have this as standard. Please check your device manufacturer for further details.

I don't have a Wave 2 802.11ac device, and I connect on Wi-Fi only, so is the UltraBEAM 1000 package pointless for me?

Not necessarily.

If you are a busy household with lots of Wi-Fi devices all simultaneously accessing the internet at the same time, and you are heavy internet users, then another technology in our UltraHub 2 router will help you out and ensure that collectively that you can take advantage of the top bandwidth of 900Mb/s. This is called MU-MIMO.

MU-MIMO or Multi-user Multiple-In, Multiple-Out is a Wi-Fi (802.11ac) technology that allows for increased wireless speeds by using multiple antennas in the router (3 antennas for the 2GHz spectrum, and 4 antennas for the 5GHz spectrum), to communicate to different devices at the same time. 

For instance, if you were downloading a large file on your laptops, whilst your daughter is streaming 4k UHD TV, whilst your partner is on a video call, whilst your son is downloading a massive game update, then MU-MIMO technology helps to make this all work in parallel. Theoretically, this means that collectively, all your Wi-Fi usage will max out the 900Mb/s speeds even if a single device is not capable of that throughput on its own.

Example real-world Wi-Fi performance with the UltraHub 2 router

Within the UltraHub 2 configuration pages you can see the wireless client statistics.

This page reveals information about what the client (your phone/laptop/etc) supports in terms of Wi-Fi capabilities, including the current Wi-Fi device's Wi-Fi performance/speeds/stats/signal levels/technical 802.11 capabilities. Some of this is quite techie. 

Macbook Pro 2018

• Only supports 3x3 MIMO Wi-Fi, and not 4x4 or 4x4 MU-MIMO.
• Only supports 80MHz channel width and not 160MHz.
• Maximum PHY rate of 1300Mb/s which roughly equates to a maximum theoretical TCP/IP speeds of 650Mb/s, but in reality this means around 500Mb/s accounting for real-world conditions.
• Conclusion:
  • This Macbook Pro will only ever see a max speed of around 500Mb/s of throughput when connected on Wi-Fi under the most ideal radio frequency (RF) conditions.

iPhone 11 Pro

• Only supports 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi, and not 4x4 or 4x4 MU-MIMO.
• Only supports 80MHz channel width and not 160MHz.
• Maximum PHY rate of 866Mb/s which roughly equates to a maximum theoretical TCP/IP speeds of 433Mb/s, but in reality this means around 350-400Mb/s.
• Conclusion:
  • This iPhone 11 Pro will only ever see a max speed of around 400Mb/s of throughput on Wi-Fi under the most ideal radio frequency (RF) conditions.

iPad Pro 2020

• Only supports 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi, and not 4x4 or 4x4 MU-MIMO.
• Only supports 80MHz channel width and not 160MHz.
• Maximum PHY rate of 866Mb/s which roughly equates to a maximum theoretical TCP/IP speeds of 433Mb/s, but in reality this means around 350-400Mb/s.
• Conclusion:
  • This iPad Pro 2020 will only ever see a max speed of around 400Mb/s of throughput on Wi-Fi under the most ideal radio frequency (RF) conditions.

Wi-Fi Term Glossary

PHY Rate

The PHY rate is the rate often quoted by manufacturers of Wi-Fi devices/routers to describe the throughput speed of any Wi-Fi access point. PHY rate is the theoretical link rate that is determined by the number of spatial streams, modulation type, channel bandwidth, and the like. In reality, usable data transmission is usually at best about one-half of the PHY rate due to overhead in the 802.11 protocol (headers, retransmissions, management frames) that are carried as Wi-Fi data in addition to the user data.