Netgear R-7000 Air time fairness ?

[Deleted member 22229]

Does this setting really do anything what do the experts here recommend enable or disable ? All devices on my network are N and one AC device. Any thoughts ?

 

[netwrks]

Does this setting really do anything what do the experts here recommend enable or disable ? All devices on my network are N and one AC device. Any thoughts ?

I disabled it in stock and Xvortex / Merlin Firmware. Depending on how many users you have in your environment, you may, or may not, see a difference.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Thats just it i have several people on the network mostly phones and ipads. That said i dont use those devices they belong to other family members so i was hoping someone would have first hand knowledge if air time fairness is worth leaving enabled or is it just another feature like beam forming that can sometimes actually make things worse.

 

[netwrks]

IMO, it's a marketing ploy...

 

[thiggins]

If it works correctly, it's not a marketing ploy and should be of more practical use than beamforming.

The simple explanation is that airtime fairness gives each connected client equal air time instead of equal frame access. This keeps slower devices from slowing down faster ones.

It's been on my to-do list to do an article illustrating this.

Airtime fairness helps most when you have a mix of slower and faster clients, say 11ac and 11n. But it also helps if you have all AC or N clients and some are far away and others much closer to the router/AP.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Thanks for the reply's all. I guess i will just have to play with it and see what happens so far i notice no difference if it's enabled or disabled.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the reply's all. I guess i will just have to play with it and see what happens so far i notice no difference if it's enabled or disabled.

That would be great. Please report back.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

That would be great. Please report back.

I will, and also looking forward to any testing and reviews you may do on this subject as well.

 

[netwrks]

Thanks for the reply's all. I guess i will just have to play with it and see what happens so far i notice no difference if it's enabled or disabled.

I have never seen any difference either, and, may be tricky to measure. Other forums, on the 7000 for instance, have discussed it, and general consensus is, leave it disabled.

If it works correctly, it's not a marketing ploy and should be of more practical use than beamforming.

The simple explanation is that airtime fairness gives each connected client equal air time instead of equal frame access. This keeps slower devices from slowing down faster ones.

It's been on my to-do list to do an article illustrating this.

Airtime fairness helps most when you have a mix of slower and faster clients, say 11ac and 11n. But it also helps if you have all AC or N clients and some are far away and others much closer to the router/AP.

Would be interesting the see the test results..

 

[ulaganath]

here it what it does. Same setup I have. Say even 1x1 ac have 433 Mb/s . Assume you have 3-5 n connecting between 65 to 150 or even 300.

AC client get the max bandwidth. More difference will be seen if you have very high speed internet say beyond 100Mb/s or 200Mb/s As max I seen ac client in close proximity can transfer upto 180Mb/s ie 12-33MB/s based on the file types.

So if you have a mix of local streaming and net based streaming and downloads. Then with 200Mb line you see the difference.

 

[bilboSNB]

I disabled it in stock and Xvortex / Merlin Firmware. Depending on how many users you have in your environment, you may, or may not, see a difference.

How do you find the RMERLIN/XVORTEX fw compares to stock Netgear firmware on this device. 5GHz seems good but the 2.4 seems not very good, up and down linkrates/throughput erratic, slower for sure than the N66U, I tried stock last night as i had not previously and the 2.4 seemed much improved. I dont plan to stay on stock as it is rubbish and basic compared to rmerlins flavour of asuswrt, it was just a test.

eg file transfer from my hardwired server to a wireless laptop around 4 or 5 MegaBytes a sec, occasional 8 or 9 when tried multiple times, on stock it is 12 to 15 MegaBytes same location.

 

[netwrks]

I don't use 2.4ghz on my 7000, (radio is disabled), which is now being used as an AP. I use a laptop and a Samsung phone on wireless. I'm not transferring files around. I use the wifi for some apps, and never have issues with it. I've used the DSL speedtest / buffer bloat test on my phone it gets around 30-59 Mbps D and 8.5 U. Wireless depends on a lot of things; depends on the wireless device, the drivers, the environment, the firmware version, how it was loaded, factory reset, no factory reset etc.. Personally, I like the Xvortex /Merlin port. More features than stock.

 

[RogerSC]

Yes, all of the third-party firmware for the R7000 is better than stock as far as I'm concerned. Dd-wrt, tomato ARM, and XVortex all give you a lot more information than stock about what your network is doing, and are more configurable and extensible if you want to add features. None of them has stand-out wireless coverage as far as I see here, so I have used strictly third-party firmware on my R7000 for a long time now. Right at the moment, I have the latest Kong dd-wrt firmware release on it. When Shibby releases v131, I'll most likely go and try that out for fun.

Oh yeah, since I don't see any effect here from Airtime Fairness *smile*, I usually leave it off to avoid using an extra feature. I have a couple of slow wireless-n clients, and they're exiled to 2.4GHz. The rest are fast, and are on 5GHz., which works well for me here.