Will WiFi 6/802.11ax be bottlenecked by gigabit ethernet?

802.11ac/WiFi 5 never got that fast in the real world, but will that change with 802.11ax/WiFi 6?

 

Wired gigabit in real world performance is like 940-960 Mbps.

Now WiFi 5 could exceed gigabit in real world.. if you had the right router & client. The R9000 (R7800 using the same wireless chipset is limited by the gigabit port itself not by the WiFi chipset) could hit like 1120 Mbps when paired with an HT160 client like the Intel 9260 AC.

Even my RAX120 & RAX80 are about the same in “AC” (WiFi 5 mode) and paired with a 9260ac or AX200. I test doing transfers to the USB storage in order to avoid bottlenecks.

The AX200 paired with a RAX80 or RAX120, best I’ve seen is like 1280-1320 Mbps (peak not sustained).

AX is more about better spectrum sharing in dense environments with lots of clients and overlapping Access Points not so much about raw speed increases. Biggest benefits will be in corporate environments. Biggest gain actually is in 2.4 GHz band where you can see a roughly 2x performance increase. On the faster 5Ghz band expect no more than like 20% increase over AC at best, probably more like maybe a 10% gain in every day use.