Wi-Fi AC with MU-MIMO: Everything you need to know
Currently home routers with Wi-Fi AC support 3 and 4 simultaneous data streams to provide higher wireless speeds, thus if we connect a client who also supports these multiple streams, we will use all the bandwidth the router allows. However, there are many devices that incorporate only one flow such as smartphones and tablets, which makes wireless network much slower affecting faster clients. With MU-MIMO technology we will optimize the overall performance of the network.
MU-MIMO (Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output) is a technology that is part of the standard 802.11ac and uses beamforming technology to focus the signal on wireless clients, it is also capable of allowing simultaneous transmissions to clients.
If we have a three-stream router but we connect customers that are 1-stream, wireless network instead of working at the maximum speed provided by these 3 data streams, will work at the maximum speed that one stream provides. So far, it’s logical to think the wireless network will always run at the maximum speed that the client supports, but in this scenario we connected two other clients, the best performance will be divided among the three users connected and transferring data in the network because one will transfer information first and then the other (in series).