WiFi 6 + Intel AX200. What to really expect?

Hello bros,

Today I pulled the trigger and bought a new router. I bought the Huawei AX3 PRO. I really don't have 100% clear what's the difference between the regular and the PRO version other than the fact that the regular is a dual core device and the PRO version is a quad core device. The difference was only $20 so I went for the PRO version.



I'm also going to buy an Intel AX200 M.2 2230. So what LAN speed should I expect? According to Intel the AX200 can go up to 2400 Mbps and according to Huawei it's AX3 can up to 2402 Mbps. But let's get real guys, do you think I could be able to get actually 1 Gbps of useful data rate?

* I'll be with less than 10 feet of distance from the wireless router.
* No walls will be in between the AX3 and my laptop.
* The server I'll be accessing will be connected through Giga Ethernet to the AX3

Any experience or thoughts are welcome.

 

I remember my Plex server spitting out 900Mbps for some obnoxiously high bit rate video transcode and my client actually sucked it up quite agreeably. No experience with that router though, I went with another brand that I cant remember at the moment, want to say D-Link

 

Actually my PC server which I'm connecting via wireless with my laptop has three main purposes:

• To run my algorithms of trading
• To run my Plex server
• To storage all my media content (movies, games installs, series, etc)

My Plex server is connected to the Apple TV 4K via gigabit ethernet network so I'm not aware of the bit rate when transcoding. But do the maths a 30 GB movie with a length of 2 hrs has an average bit rate of 34 Mbps. But that's the average, at moments it can easy go over 100 Mbps. A peak of 900 Mbps seems like an outlier, but not impossible.

The thing is it's not uncommon for me to move large amounts of data from my laptop to the PC server or vice versa and my current AC network is so unstable I hate it. I get most of the time speeds as low as 80 Mbps which is ridiculous, I have to disconnect and connect to the wireless network to speed up the bandwidth to 300 Mbps, which is also pretty slow to my taste, especially for a "866 Mbps" uplink

 

Its worth noting that I use the router in the room I primarily use while on my computer, so I dont have any obstructions and such. I do my cardio on a stationary bike so I like to use Steam streaming to my t440p (which is wired) and my desktop is wireless (AX200)

The 900Mbps was for some obnoxious anime with a high audio and video bit rate, I havent used it in a while but I plan to get that network back up and running again as I need to get back in shape (have been lazy)

I would wait for others to chime in about wireless distance and its potential woes.

 

I can get around 1200-1350 Mbps real world transfers to my NAS either 1 floor below or same floor with two walls. Same room as router it’s also about Mbps 1350 Mbps or so. My home is mostly drywall/wood interior. If you have more concrete walls or granite flooring expect a major hit though.

2400 Mbps is just a link rate, ie theoretical transfer rate. Real world will be at best about 65-75% of that. Speeds also depend on your router and how the antennas are on the client device, as in two laptops with the same card can have differing speeds based on antenna layout.

You can already cross gigabit speeds with HT160 on decent AC HT160 capable routers like the R7800 paired with the Intel AX200 or 9260AC. AX on 5Ghz will generally give you a 5-10% boost and at best around 20-25% over AC. AX real benefit is doubling of the 2.4 GHz throughout. Other stuff like spectrum sharing which is one AX biggest touted benefit, won’t really make difference till some years in the future when AX is actually more common. Another important thing is the AX3/AX3 Plus does not have a Multi-GiG (NBASE-T) Port ie capable of 2.5/5/10 Gbps so you will be limited to around 940-960 Mbps for anything that goes through the WAN or wired LAN. Only Transmitting between two WiFi devices might net you faster speeds.

TLDR: Same room expect to cross gigabit speeds using HT160 on the router ie 2400 Mbps mode. Even on HT80 you should be able to get peak sustained a little above 800 Mbps, at least in my environment it’s possible.

As for differences between the AX and AX3 Plus:
"The main difference is that the AX3 is equipped with two independent signal amplifiers, and the AX3 Pro uses a 2.4GHz / 5GHz amplifier (four in total). In addition, the AX3 Pro also supports one-touch networking. So turning on the NFC function of the smartphone and tapping the router’s NFC area will ensure a fast and secret-free connection."
Source: https://www.gizchina.com/2020/03/30/huawei-releases-two-wifi-6-routers-meet-ax3-and-ax3-pro/

 

That sound quite promising. 1 Gbps is my target, as I said my laptop would be most of the time pretty close to the router in the same room actually, so there is no much reason to expect otherwise. I blame either Windows 10 or the Intel 9260 for my poor AC performance. I say this because I have a fiber connection of 500 Mbps and 90% of the time when using speedtest to check speed connection my cellphone beats my laptop by easy 100 Mbps

 

In the past I got a functional 1.7gbps link rate with a R7800 and 9260 when all of the settings were correct on both sides.

The issue you will likely run into are
1. WAN is a single port and maxes at 1gbps
2. LAN same as 1 unless you can bridge the ports into a LACP / LAG to exceed 1gbps limitations
3. you can go adhoc and hit the speeds being marketed between 2 devices directly (wouldn't need the router to do)

The way to get around these limitations though is to make your own device with mutliport cards in a PC case or look into Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Pro + their PRO / HD AP's where you can bundle the ports on the WAN/LAN/AP to get a higher throughput along the path and then your bottleneck will be your ISP unless you're on a 2Gbps connection or higher.

 

What was your experience in terms of real throughput with the 1,7 Gbps uplink?

About LACP I'm not sure if it would be useful in my case. If I remember correctly in etherchannel you can bundle several switch ports and create one "big" virtual port, but every single speed "connection" is still limited to the speed of the single port speed. LACP is useful when you have multiple end points connected to a switch so they all can benefit of the port channel, i.e. several 1 Gbps connections at the same time, using the etherchannel but end to end connection will still be limited to 1 Gbps

 

Max I saw on he R7800 at a 1.7 Gbps link rate was 120 MB/s (960 Mbps) sustained even one floor below the router, the limiting factor is the gigabit ports. The RAX120 could hit ~140 MB/s (1,120 Mbps) in AC mode (AX mode adds another 100-200 Mbps at best), so I think theoretically the R7800 could reach around 1120 Mbps if it had a 2.5 or 5 Gbps port.

 

Well my LAN server (the desktop PC) has only mechanical disk drives, which are limited to about 700-800 Mbps write/read speed and has a gigabit ethernet connection to a gigabit switch. So my bottleneck will most definitely be the HDD. Or even worst my laptop has a pretty fast NVMe but also has a pretty slow 2 TB HDD which I've never seen go any faster than 600 Mbps. So if I can get a real 1 Gbps of real throughput over WiFi I'll be more than happy.

Probably in the future when SSD could compete in $/GB with HDD I'll migrate to a SSD storage server, buy a PCIe 10 Gbps ethernet card or SFP card and 10 Gbps switched network, but I don't see that happening in less than 5 years