Difference between these 2 MU-MIMO settings?

[SkippyP]

Hello. I have an AX86U Pro. Can someone please explain the difference between the two MU-MIMO settings under the professional tab for the 5GHz band? Is the first one for AC and the second one for AX? If so, I feel Asus messed that up by combining the second one with OFDMA…meaning it can only be enabled by also enabling OFDMA (and can’t be enabled on its own while keeping OFDMA disabled). Thanks.

 

[Tech9]

Is the first one for AC and the second one for AX?

Yes. They don't do much anyway.

 

[SkippyP]

Thank you for the quick reply.

 

[Tech9]

I would leave 802.11ac/ax Beamforming enabled and disable both MU-MIMO and OFDMA. This usually results in better throughput to individual clients. Home networks have few active clients at the same time and MU-MIMO/OFDMA potential advantages are minimal. Modern radios can time share few clients easily without stream splitting.

Experiment and see what works better in your environment and with your clients. Something for you to do on the weekend.

 

[SkippyP]

Thanks again. That’s currently how I have it configured.

 

[sfx2000]

Can someone please explain the difference between the two MU-MIMO settings under the professional tab for the 5GHz band?

MU-MIMO is downlink MU-MIMO that is compat with WiFi5/6/7

The OFDMA/802.11axMU-MIMO is uplink support for WiFi6/7 only.

Makes sense, but Asus could label this better I suppose...

 

[SkippyP]

Ah ok. That makes more sense and I can see why Asus combined them now. Nevertheless, I’ll keep both of those options disabled (but with beamforming enabled) as Tech9 suggested.

Thanks.

 

[SkippyP]

UPDATE

I’ve been doing some testing…nothing crazy…just some speed tests from various devices (iPhone 14, WiFi6 Lenovo laptop, and WiFi5 Dell laptop). For some reason, I’m not seeing any signal range or throughput benefits with AC/AX beamforming enabled (under the 5GHz pro settings) on either of the laptops. And on the iPhone, I’m actually seeing a slight increase in both signal strength and throughput (particularly in a few hard-to-reach areas of my house) with beamforming DISABLED!! I’m keeping beamforming disabled (along with MU-MIMO and OFDMA disabled) for a while and will continue testing. Just wanted to share my observations from testing over the last few days.

 

[Tech9]

Beamforming may work eventually to stationary clients. Won't work well to mobile devices moving around. And even when it is doing something - don't expect miracles.

 

[SkippyP]

MU-MIMO is downlink MU-MIMO that is compat with WiFi5/6/7

The OFDMA/802.11axMU-MIMO is uplink support for WiFi6/7 only.

Makes sense, but Asus could label this better I suppose...

@sfx2000 I had reached out to Asus support regarding this and they finally replied back. They told me that the “Multi-user MIMO” setting is for AC only and the “OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO” setting is for AX. But I’m not so sure I believe them because the agent didn’t know what I was talking about at first

Doesn’t matter much at this point since I’ve disabled both, but just curious to know where you found this info?