What is MU-MIMO?
The number of connected devices in the average home or office is increasing. At the same time more and more devices are being used to support more bandwidth-intensive activities. As a result, the connected devices experience low Wi-Fi performance.
Why MU-MIMO?
For purpose of enhancing Wi-Fi performance, the "SU-MIMO" mode needs to be changed and evolved. Most Wi-Fi routers with Single-User MIMO serve only a single user at a time, even if the router provides 3 data streams or more, most users actually only receive only 1~2 data streams at a time (such as smart phone, tablet, notebook, or even your apple TV). For this exact reason, users cannot make the best use of the routers capacity. For example, a 3x3 11ac Wi-Fi router, with Single-User MIMO, can support a peak Wi-Fi speed of 1.3Gbps. However a smartphone or tablet with one antenna only supports a peak rate of only 433 Mbps, leaving 867 Mbps capacity being wasted.
What is MU-MIMO?
The traditional Wi-Fi routers with Single-User MIMO serve only one user at a time while other users that rely on that connection are forced to wait, which diminishes performance and overall capacity. This effect is even stronger when more than one user attempts to access multi-media content, such as HD video.
MU-MIMO solves this problem by creating 3 simultaneous connections to serve several users with 3 data streams at the same time. With technological development MU-MIMO can provide more spatial streams and serve more users simultaneously.
What are the benefits of MU-MIMO for us?
Multi-Performance - Increased throughput and reduced latency
Since a MU-MIMO network does not require its client devices to time-share connections with other clients on the network, each device experiences less wait time, enabling a more responsive network and client devices.
Multi-User - More users
Router with MU-MIMO unlocks previously unused capacity by serving 3 users at a time.
Multi-Efficiency - More traffic over the network
For Multi-User clients, the network has more free time or capacity to serve legacy clients, which means even legacy clients benefit with MU-MIMO.
What does TP-LINK offer?
At present, the Archer C2600 is equipped with MU-MIMO technology. MU-MIMO technology will be applied in more products in future.
You can view the Archer C2600 here: http://shop.dbg.co.za/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=488
