Materials and Methods
Speed Test Tool
Xfinity’s speed test site was used as this site gave me the most consistent result for my home internet speed test in the past. At each testing spot, three to five speed tests were conducted and took the best of three for average and maximum speed. This is to reduce the trailing speed at the first. If the first 3 tests looked fairly constant, no additional testing were conducted. At each spot, three devices were used to measure the speed.
Wireless Clients
| MBP 15’’ 2016 | iPad Pro 11’’ (2018) | iPhone 11 Pro | |
| Wi-Fi version | AC (5) | AC (5) | AX (6) |
| MIMO | 3×3 | 2×2 | 2×2 |
Wireless Physical link speed (PHY) was confirmed either from MacBook’s Option Wi-Fi function or UniFi controller’s menu for iPhone and iPad. All tests were tried to connect to 5GHz by giving sufficient time for AP roaming; however, this is not explicitly selected. For this test, I used only a single SSID with 2.4 and 5 GHz bands and client/AP chose the best band.
Single vs. Separate SSID
Although which is superior has been debated for having separate or single SSID for 5GHz and 2.4GHz, I have used single SSID here.
Access Point/Network Setting
Lastly, as for custom setting, I have done bare minimum change, which is I changed from default VHT 40 to VHT 80 on 5 GHz band i.e. 80 MHz channel rather than 40 MHz.
For the channels, I used auto-select including use of UniFi WiFi AI function, which supposedly tries to automatially minimize interference. At the time of testing, UniFi selected distinct channels for 5 GHz for each APs using DFS channels. Automatically selected 2.4 GHz channel were 1 and 11 with 11 used on two APs. But later I found channel 6 were highly congested and this is the channel used by hidden/left-over 2.4 GHz only router in my home by previous owner that I cannot get rid of.
Also, for the power level, I have also kept the Auto-select setting.