I’m not a wireless expert, but I do know a bit about Wi-Fi—how it works from a high-level perspective. In reality, Wi-Fi is a pretty complicated topic.
With the 802.11ac standard, we can achieve over 1 Gbps throughput for wireless connections. So, when an access point (AP) is connected to a 1 Gbps switch port, it’s not enough anymore. That’s why vendors developed switches with multi-gig ports (1, 2.5, and 5 Gbps) to handle the increased demand. Furthermore, with Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), it’s possible to reach almost 9.6 Gbps, and with the newest Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be), up to 46 Gbps. Of course, vendors insist that we need to upgrade legacy 802.11ac to achieve higher bandwidth, support current application requirements, and so on. Well, that’s the theory, but what about the practical perspective?
Everything vendors claim about throughput can be achieved in a lab environment, but not so much in real-world conditions. Achieving high throughput requires implementing wide channels—80 MHz, 160 MHz, and even 320 MHz. But wide channels mean fewer available channels overall:
In a production environment, like an office or a warehouse, using wide channels can cause interference, significantly degrading wireless performance. In practice, most configurations stick to 20 MHz or 40 MHz channels, depending on the environment. This makes it nearly impossible to exceed 1 Gbps throughput in real-world conditions. As I mentioned, vendors are selling multi-gig switches to support multi-gig wireless speeds, but in practice, it’s not really feasible. This is a good example of how vendors push customers to buy new hardware. In one of my recent projects, a customer’s requirement was to support 5 Gbps wireless throughput. When I asked why, the response was, “Because the new standard can do that:)”
What about misunderstandings from the customer’s perspective: I’ve often encountered situations where customers complain that Wi-Fi from vendor X doesn’t work, and they want to switch to vendor Y because they heard Y is better. In 99% of cases, the problem with wireless performance comes down to poor design or no design at all. Sometimes it’s well-designed, but the implementation wasn’t verified — because a site survey was never done. A site survey at the end of the project is crucial to confirm the simulation’s accuracy and ensure APs are installed as planned. Construction teams can do some pretty unexpected things!
To sum up, most environments don’t need ultra-high wireless throughput or multi-gig switches. Wireless networking is primarily about efficiency—remember, it’s a half-duplex communication system. Proper design and implementation are what every environment truly needs.