Is there a Guide to Wireless Concepts (Airtime Fairness, MU-MIMO, Beamforming)

[Logi]

Where can I get a comprehensive guide to the Professional wireless parameters (Airtime Fairness, Multi-User MIMO, 802.11AC Beamforming, Universal Beamforming, etc.) configuration for the Asus RT-AC5300 router, I would like to understand which ones I have to enable vs disable. In my current setup I use mostly 5Ghz-1 for all my AC devices (iPhone, iPad, ATV, Roku, Surface Book, MacBook, Hue, Invoke, etc.) and the 2.4Ghz for 10 old wireless security cameras that are N. 5Ghz-2 it is being used by a couple of streaming devices (ATV and Roku) I've seen multiple recommendations and I am confused, any feedback will be appreciated, thanks

 

[wouterv]

A simple first advice is: leave the Professional settings default.
Most of these settings just enable router features, which may be used or not depending of the features supported at the client end.
Sometimes firmware versions do break features and you will find guidelines here to disable certain features in certain firmware versions.
There is anyway no guide that suits all: Internet can give answers to all different settings but will not give you the one and only best combined setting.
Most advantage you already take care for: distributing clients over the available 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios.

• 802.11n to 2.4 GHz, using the least used channel out of 1, 6 or 11 and set to 20 MHz.
• 802.11ac is anyway 5 GHz, the only thing to bother there is sometimes DFS.

 

[Treadler]

Where can I get a comprehensive guide to the Professional wireless parameters (Airtime Fairness, Multi-User MIMO, 802.11AC Beamforming, Universal Beamforming, etc.) configuration for the Asus RT-AC5300 router, I would like to understand which ones I have to enable vs disable. In my current setup I use mostly 5Ghz-1 for all my AC devices (iPhone, iPad, ATV, Roku, Surface Book, MacBook, Hue, Invoke, etc.) and the 2.4Ghz for 10 old wireless security cameras that are N. 5Ghz-2 it is being used by a couple of streaming devices (ATV and Roku) I've seen multiple recommendations and I am confused, any feedback will be appreciated, thanks

I am no expert, but advice in this forum has led me to configure as follows.....
Airtime fairness, MU-MIMO, & Universal Beamforming all disabled.
2.4Ghz band channel width manually set to 20.
(AC Beamforming I leave enabled).
YMMV, this has worked for me.

 

[Logi]

Here are the print screen for the 2.4Ghz band, please could you provide feedback, thanks

 

[Logi]

Here are the print screen for the 5Ghz-1 band, please could you provide feedback, thanks

 

[Logi]

Here are the print screen for the 5Ghz-2 band, please could you provide feedback, thanks

 

[Treadler]

Here are the print screen for the 5Ghz-2 band, please could you provide feedback, thanks

Yes, that’s how I’ve got my unit set up. As per both 2.4 & 5.

 

[Keenan]

There's some good info in this post here,

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/n...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573

 

[st3v3n]

Logi, Treadler and Keenan are spot on, there's a lot of info on the forum if your search-fu doesn't fail you

The first two snb links reference the RT-AC3200 tri-band and might be be of some reference and use for the AC5300:
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/asus-rt-ac3200-smart-connect-rules-fine-tuning.22823/ and
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wir...us-rt-ac3200-smart-connect-the-missing-manual
From Asus; https://www.asus.com/us/support/faq/1011438/

There's a swamp of non-5300 AC wireless info out there added to by the day as you've no doubt discovered in your own searches; here are a few that may help (including photos and illustrations);
https://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/542159/how_set_up_fast_802_11ac_wireless_network/
A Cnet five-part series, https://www.cnet.com/how-to/home-networking-explained-part-1-heres-the-url-for-you/
Wikipedia has a graph and many Asus references https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac
A link for the Cisco pdf: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/a...rk/pdf/Cisco_IT_Wireless_LAN_Design_Guide.pdf

Keep searching, the truth for the AC5300 is out there. Eventually the snb wizards will come through. Cheers.

 

[DummyPLUG]

Airtime Fairness: Different device connect at different speed and they send data to router in turn, some of them which is slow will need more time to send the same amount of data, for example a device connect at 866Mbps will need half of the time of a 433Mbps sending 10Mb of data. If Airtime fairness is disable device will take all the time they need for their turn to send data, when enable all device will get the same amount of time as the faster one can use that airtime "steal from slower device" to send more data. But some device will not work with this function or when you need to ensure the slower device can be as fast as it can.

Multi-User MIMO: Old wifi standard only allow router communicate to one device at a time, if there are 2 or more they need to wait for their turn, the Multi-user MIMO allow your router communicate to 2+ device at the same time. If you need more details on this you better google it as it is very technical and need some graphic to explain it.

Beam forming: normally router will send out its signal evenly, with beam forming it will try to focus the signal to where the device locate, this allow stronger signal.

Universal Beamforming: old, non-standard beam forming before 802.11ac, usually not working well with most device, disable if you found your device not connect very well

802.11AC Beamforming: new standardize, optional beamforming standard come with 802.11ac, but as not every ac device have this function enable so it also a hit or miss, as the same as Universal beamforming, sometime it will not working well so disable it when you have problem.

 

[RMerlin]

Universal is also referred to as Implicit Beamforming.