That's QCA marketing-speak for its MU-MIMO chipset.
Go here if you want the full marketing treatment.
Linksys EA8500 Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Smart Wi-Fi Router Reviewed
- Thread starter mediatrek
- Start date
Go here if you want the full marketing treatment.
sfx2000
Part of the Furniture
Stopped by Fry's this morning over at Stoneridge/Aero Drive off the I-15 (San Diego), and they have EA8500's on the shelf at $279...
They also had a WRT1200ac's and WRT1900ac's on the shelf... 179 and 249 respectively...
Sidebar - not many Asus RT-68 series, slot was there, but nothing available, lots of RT3200's and RT87U's, and the D-Link odd-box (the 980L AC3200 unit)...
Asked the sales rep, what was getting traction - the EA8500's just showed up yesterday (5/15), they had a promo on the WRT1900ac @ 179 and blew out most of their stock last weekend, so perhaps new inventory is V2's for WRT1900ac
Asus was spiffing the reps directly for RTxxxx sales, which might explain why they were sold out of RT68 series...
FWIW - a lot of the ASUS RT3200's and RT87U's on the shelf had SOD's - "Stickers of Death", which means they were boomerangs, customer returns - not sure why...
Interestedly, not many Linksys, Netgear, and Buffalo boxes with SOD's in the router aisle.. either people are snapping them up, or they're not being returned...
They also had a WRT1200ac's and WRT1900ac's on the shelf... 179 and 249 respectively...
Sidebar - not many Asus RT-68 series, slot was there, but nothing available, lots of RT3200's and RT87U's, and the D-Link odd-box (the 980L AC3200 unit)...
Asked the sales rep, what was getting traction - the EA8500's just showed up yesterday (5/15), they had a promo on the WRT1900ac @ 179 and blew out most of their stock last weekend, so perhaps new inventory is V2's for WRT1900ac
Asus was spiffing the reps directly for RTxxxx sales, which might explain why they were sold out of RT68 series...
FWIW - a lot of the ASUS RT3200's and RT87U's on the shelf had SOD's - "Stickers of Death", which means they were boomerangs, customer returns - not sure why...
Fry's get dinged on returns if the vendor tests as no-fault found, so Fry's tests them, and repacks with the SOD at a discount - so some value to be had there... full warranty, etc...
Interestedly, not many Linksys, Netgear, and Buffalo boxes with SOD's in the router aisle.. either people are snapping them up, or they're not being returned...
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Canadian Linksys store has same price in Canadian $$$ which means it's little less expensive.
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Every day I learn something. One thing I learned from reading this review is that there are going to be single-stream 802.11ac adapters installed in laptops. For some reason, I thought that after the wireless-n fiasco, the hardware manufacturers will be required to use two stream wireless-ac adapters in laptops. (the fiasco by which the greedy hardware vendors loaded those garbage single-band single-stream wireless-n adapter into every PC, laptop, and even many business class notebooks and workstations sold at BestBuy and elsewhere). Granted, at least the single-stream ac is still capable of ~400Mbps link rate, which is above the speed of the two-stream N300 hardware.
The performance of the MU-MIMO router does seem impressive. I do wonder what does MU-MIMO bring to the table if you have a couple of two-stream MU-MIMO clients.
The performance of the MU-MIMO router does seem impressive. I do wonder what does MU-MIMO bring to the table if you have a couple of two-stream MU-MIMO clients.
Cnet tested the router with five clients, three of which had MU-MIMO adapters in them. Here's a portion of the review:
Full review here:
http://www.cnet.com/products/linksys-ea8500-max-stream-ac2600-mu-mimo-gigabit-router/
chadster766
Very Senior Member
Thanks for the link to the CNet review.
sfx2000
Part of the Furniture
Hmmm - totally get what you mean about OEM's skinning back WiFi to the bare minimum - understandable perhaps in the "budget" space, but when we see prosumer/business class laptops with what is essentially mobile phone level chipsets - single stream 802.11n 2.4GHz with Bluetooth...
Once one gets past that barrier, most dual band cards tend to be fairly decent... 2-stream across both bands, and they generally have a discrete BT adapter if present...
zerodegrekelvin
Regular Contributor
Unless I totally miss that, the reviewer from CNET did not disclose the clients cards he used for his test? especially the mu-mimo one?
Yes, it doesn't say. For the MU-MIMO devices, I think they probably came from Linksys since it's still impossible to get MU-MIMO devices otherwise. The smallnetbuilder's review notes that the MU-MIMO client devices it used were in the review kit sent by Linksys so they probably did the same thing for cnet. Smallnetbuilder's review says:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...mo-smart-wi-fi-router-reviewed-part-1?start=1
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...mo-smart-wi-fi-router-reviewed-part-1?start=1
sfx2000
Part of the Furniture
Client review samples, at the moment, must be hand-picked and perhaps even vendor one-offs, as there are no generally known MU-MIMO clients commercially available... such it is on the very leading end of the bleeding edge... nice to see QCA stepping up...
I'm curious to see how this device does in the General SNB tests outside of MU...my guess is that it'll do a decent job based on the radio/stream config...
I'm curious to see how this device does in the General SNB tests outside of MU...my guess is that it'll do a decent job based on the radio/stream config...
Review of the EA8500 from PC World. Also tested with Linksys-supplied Dell Inspiron laptops with Qualcomm MU-MIMO adapters.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2925...router-review-mu-mimo-works-more-or-less.html
Some interesting comparisons with the Asus RT-AC3200U as well as a torture test that put all the MU-MIMO laptops in the same room together. The result was the EA8500 assigned most of the bandwidth to a single laptop. The bandwidth breakdown between the three laptops in two tests:
What's puzzling is that smallnetbuilder's review had a similar test that placed the three laptops on a rack six feet in front of the router but the bandwidth was distributed much more evenly:
PC World reviewer Michael Brown's explanation for his test result is that beamforming collapses if clients are in close proximity to each other. I wonder how much tweaking in the router firmware/software can be done to alleviate this. He also downplayed the real world significance of the results, saying it's not an issue in "normal use" when devices are in separate locations. I'm not sure that people using multiple devices in the same room is all that rare, especially in a family setting that is most likely to benefit from this kind of router (of course, this is a utopian future when people other than tech reviewers have MU-MIMO devices). Assuming his review results and explanation are accurate, how much space does beamforming need to avoid tripping on itself.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2925...router-review-mu-mimo-works-more-or-less.html
Some interesting comparisons with the Asus RT-AC3200U as well as a torture test that put all the MU-MIMO laptops in the same room together. The result was the EA8500 assigned most of the bandwidth to a single laptop. The bandwidth breakdown between the three laptops in two tests:
What's puzzling is that smallnetbuilder's review had a similar test that placed the three laptops on a rack six feet in front of the router but the bandwidth was distributed much more evenly:
PC World reviewer Michael Brown's explanation for his test result is that beamforming collapses if clients are in close proximity to each other. I wonder how much tweaking in the router firmware/software can be done to alleviate this. He also downplayed the real world significance of the results, saying it's not an issue in "normal use" when devices are in separate locations. I'm not sure that people using multiple devices in the same room is all that rare, especially in a family setting that is most likely to benefit from this kind of router (of course, this is a utopian future when people other than tech reviewers have MU-MIMO devices). Assuming his review results and explanation are accurate, how much space does beamforming need to avoid tripping on itself.
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All EA8500 reviewers will be using the Linksys supplied Dell laptops as the MU-MIMO clients.
MU-MIMO relies on a special form of beamforming. So position, RF environment, physical environment and client motion all come into play.
I ran two in-room tests, one with the clients spaced as equidistantly around the router as my test room would allow, and the other with all three on a rack in front of the router. In both cases, throughput was pretty evenly distributed among the three clients with or without MU-MIMO enabled. You'd expect this with close distance and three identical clients.
The big test for MU-MIMO comes in how well it handles mixed client networks. Qualcomm told me that adding even a single MU-MIMO client into a mixed network should improve total throughput use. I had mixed results in my testing.
MU-MIMO is hellaciously complex technology. It's going to take awhile to tweak algorithms and more processing power will undoubtedly help. So, like all things WiFi, Gen2 MU-MIMO will likely be better than what you're seeing now.
This is NOT an area where you want to be an early adopter.
MU-MIMO relies on a special form of beamforming. So position, RF environment, physical environment and client motion all come into play.
I ran two in-room tests, one with the clients spaced as equidistantly around the router as my test room would allow, and the other with all three on a rack in front of the router. In both cases, throughput was pretty evenly distributed among the three clients with or without MU-MIMO enabled. You'd expect this with close distance and three identical clients.
The big test for MU-MIMO comes in how well it handles mixed client networks. Qualcomm told me that adding even a single MU-MIMO client into a mixed network should improve total throughput use. I had mixed results in my testing.
MU-MIMO is hellaciously complex technology. It's going to take awhile to tweak algorithms and more processing power will undoubtedly help. So, like all things WiFi, Gen2 MU-MIMO will likely be better than what you're seeing now.
This is NOT an area where you want to be an early adopter.
Was away this week. You'll see it sometime next week.
chadster766
Very Senior Member
Have you had a chance to do more testing with the EA8500? I'm noticing that LAN ping times start increasing with network traffic which may account for some delays seeing on network TCP communications. Can MU-MIMO scheduling somehow overflow onto LAN devices?
chadster766
Very Senior Member
I have done that. I want to make sure someone else is seeing the delays so I can be sure it's not just isolated my test network.
Ok, after vowing not to buy this router, I ended up getting it.
On the plus side, it has been a lot more positive experience than the Asus AC87R I had or the AC66U I was using because the 87R was so flaky. Range is much improved over the AC66U and the signal strength is more stable. My desktop uses an Asus 2T2R Dual Band 2.4/5GHz antenna that would regularly lose connection if a door was open or closed, among other things, when connecting to the AC66U. With the EA8500, the connection has been rock steady and hasn't dropped once since it was installed. My laptop also connects without losing internet access which was not always the case with the AC87R. I had the issue that's been reported by others with that router where the client device shows a wifi connection but without any internet access.
However, I'm a bit confused whether the EA8500 is a AC2600-class router in its current state because I don't see an option in the wireless network mode to set it to 802.11ac-only and select a channel width of 80 MHz. My understanding is that both 802.11ac-only / 80 MHz channel width (plus 4 spatial antennas) are needed to get the (theoretical) 1733 Mbps throughput on the 5GHz band that is part of the AC2600 class but nothing in the admin mode allows you to select either 802.11ac-only or 80 MHz channel width. Below are the four selectable wireless network modes:
Mixed, 802.11a/n Only and 802.11n Only have channel widths of 20/40 MHz while only 20 MHz channel width is available for 802.11a Only. Am I missing something? How can the EA8500 be an AC2600 class router without the option to set it to 802.11ac-only/80 MHz channel width?
Edited to add 1: @thiggins: Hi Tim, I see on page 4 of your review that the EA8500 was set to channel 153 and bandwidth mode was "in its default 80 MHz mode." How were you able to access 80MHz channel width? I just don't see it.
Edited to add 2: Here's another weird thing. MU-MIMO is 5 GHz only but in the advanced wireless settings for my router, there is an option to enable MU-MIMO for the 2.4 GHz band:
The 2.4 GHz MU-MIMO option is not there in the corresponding screenshot in the smallnetbuilder's review.
Edited to add 3: Mystery solved for the MU-MIMO option on the 2.4 GHz band - it was only available with the original 166556 firmware. Flashing to the latest 166845 removes the 2.4 GHZ MU-MIMO option. However, 802.11ac only/80 MHz channel width are still MIA with both the original 166556 and current 166845 firmwares. Was the review conducted with the 166747 firmware which was released April 21? Is it possible that 166747 - which is not available on the Linksys site anymore - added the 802.11ac only/80 MHz width options and then they were removed with the release of 166845?
On the plus side, it has been a lot more positive experience than the Asus AC87R I had or the AC66U I was using because the 87R was so flaky. Range is much improved over the AC66U and the signal strength is more stable. My desktop uses an Asus 2T2R Dual Band 2.4/5GHz antenna that would regularly lose connection if a door was open or closed, among other things, when connecting to the AC66U. With the EA8500, the connection has been rock steady and hasn't dropped once since it was installed. My laptop also connects without losing internet access which was not always the case with the AC87R. I had the issue that's been reported by others with that router where the client device shows a wifi connection but without any internet access.
However, I'm a bit confused whether the EA8500 is a AC2600-class router in its current state because I don't see an option in the wireless network mode to set it to 802.11ac-only and select a channel width of 80 MHz. My understanding is that both 802.11ac-only / 80 MHz channel width (plus 4 spatial antennas) are needed to get the (theoretical) 1733 Mbps throughput on the 5GHz band that is part of the AC2600 class but nothing in the admin mode allows you to select either 802.11ac-only or 80 MHz channel width. Below are the four selectable wireless network modes:
Mixed, 802.11a/n Only and 802.11n Only have channel widths of 20/40 MHz while only 20 MHz channel width is available for 802.11a Only. Am I missing something? How can the EA8500 be an AC2600 class router without the option to set it to 802.11ac-only/80 MHz channel width?
Edited to add 1: @thiggins: Hi Tim, I see on page 4 of your review that the EA8500 was set to channel 153 and bandwidth mode was "in its default 80 MHz mode." How were you able to access 80MHz channel width? I just don't see it.
Edited to add 2: Here's another weird thing. MU-MIMO is 5 GHz only but in the advanced wireless settings for my router, there is an option to enable MU-MIMO for the 2.4 GHz band:
The 2.4 GHz MU-MIMO option is not there in the corresponding screenshot in the smallnetbuilder's review.
Edited to add 3: Mystery solved for the MU-MIMO option on the 2.4 GHz band - it was only available with the original 166556 firmware. Flashing to the latest 166845 removes the 2.4 GHZ MU-MIMO option. However, 802.11ac only/80 MHz channel width are still MIA with both the original 166556 and current 166845 firmwares. Was the review conducted with the 166747 firmware which was released April 21? Is it possible that 166747 - which is not available on the Linksys site anymore - added the 802.11ac only/80 MHz width options and then they were removed with the release of 166845?
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Review was done with 166845 firmware, which was installed on the router and the only one released to the wild AFAIK on production (not beta test) product.
5 GHz channel width was left at its default Auto, which enables 80 MHz bandwidth mode. I've corrected that in the review.
There is nothing that says an AC2600 class (or any other class for that matter) router must have the ability to force mode and bandwidth mode.
5 GHz channel width was left at its default Auto, which enables 80 MHz bandwidth mode. I've corrected that in the review.
There is nothing that says an AC2600 class (or any other class for that matter) router must have the ability to force mode and bandwidth mode.
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