Ah. So just a couple of whale hunting seasons away from extinction.

Yeah well… Nuclear is too expensive and now I heard another rethoric on how renewables are not making enough profit to be worth it for the big companies. We’re going in circles before these people admit that coal and gas won’t be replaced by anything.

It isn’t really about the maximum number of client devices, it’s what they do, what type of standard are they a part of, how far away, the interference (!). This is why it’s pretty much impossible to put a number and say: hey, this TP-Link router will handle 30 client devices, while this Asus router goes up to 100… In a sense, a multi-client stress test kind of addresses this issue, but it kind of doesn’t. It’s because it’s extremely dependent on the conditions that the tester has in their lab/office/home.

One thing to check on a review could be the attenuation as a better factor than the distance (this way, you can reproduce the result in your house even if just with a single-client test).

I am not really a fan of self promotion and I would really like Lemmy to be free of it, as much as possible. If you want to check what I did so far, just write “router review multi-client stress test” in any browser. You really won’t find anybody else trying out these tools at the moment, even Arstechnica seems to have moved away from wireless router reviews.

I understand perfectly where you’re coming from and I would love to find some way to objectively test wireless networking hardware which can be easily replicated in pretty much any other site. The Octoscope tools (now assimilated by Spirent) may be the closest since we get to put the wireless AP/router in a box and then simulate the conditions we want. But, for those that don’t have fat wallets, I guess these open-source tools are good enough, even if the results are heavily subjective. I know that people don’t like good enough, but at this point in time, even the fine edge between realistic and unrealistic is better than nothing.

And funny thing, WiFi 6 is not really that much better than WiFi 5, unless some very specific conditions are met - I’ve seen it in testing. So yes, I know what hype and advertising can do…

Gamer Nexus are my favorite when it comes to PC hardware as well and I would love to see them give it a try at testing wireless networking hardware. Who knows, maybe they’ll create a standard for testing these non-enterprise wireless routers.

You’re talking about real-world scenarios, but I am just trying to get something simulated that resembles general real-life conditions. So, no CDN, the modem and even the ISP don’t matter in this particular scenario. You have written a phenomenal response, so I am sorry that I ask to take some more of your time and check out this article: smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/2x2-ac-access-point-roundup-part-2/ This is pretty much what I am trying to accomplish and it does seem that the APs can be stressed by fewer client devices than expected. or maybe again, there’s something that I am missing.

Can your ISP? If so, yes. Because ~25 Mbps * 4 is not a lot of data. And the NAT for four clients mapped to the same firewall/router is pretty trivial. And no, adding “browsing” is not going to be an issue.

On paper, it is not a lot of data, but then adding more clients requesting 25Mbps continuously and then adding some spontaneous, but intensive web browsing can lead to latency spikes. And the user no longer gets a good streaming/browsing experience. I’ve even seen it on an expensive (by consumer-based networking standard) router such as the GT-AX6000.

So what matters is the amount of packets per second that can be processed which these speed tests already cover (albeit, somewhat obfuscated because most people don’t understand the network layers.

I am just trying to better understand this stuff, so I have to ask if seeing how long it takes for a client device to accomplish a certain task wouldn’t be better than just glancing over the average Mbps in a graph? That’s what most publications are showing.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly that collecting the data is not that much fun, especially since yes, I will have to do it. But I think users may benefit to see if the non-enterprise wireless routers can accomplish a certain task. For example, can that expensive Netgear router actually handle four client devices streaming 4K at the same time? What if we add browsing in the mix? The point of this thread was to get an idea if it’s actually worth running these tests (which take quite a bit) and if people are interested in seeing this type of data on the web.

I would love to see this via WiFi.

So you basically spawn multiple instances of iperf3 and then connect all clients to a single server (using the same port?) What do you think about checking the latency experienced at the client level when various tests are running at the same time?

Seriously Lemmy is the best. Few minutes in and people are already answering questions. The concept behind the multi-client tests are to SSH into the server and then simulate whatever type of traffic one wants. I have already done it on a couple of wireless routers and it worked great. I hope at least. Iperf can’t really accomplish this, as far as I know, it’s only one instance on a single client at a time. Netburn seems to be the best tool so far, while keeping things free and open-source.

It’s going to get worse once people stop creating content for the machine.

No.

Lmao or not, Google is still not the Internet. And I hope more people understand this objective truth.

That’s when the search engine usually came in and helped the original content be pushed above copycats. It’s actually very common what you said, but rarely were the content creators bothered by those that plagiarize the content. What Google seems to want to do is to stop behaving like a search engine altogether and start acting like the content thieves. In an ideal world, a new search engine/s would just push Google out and take its place. But when you’re a monopoly, that’s not really an option now is it?

The Internet is not Google’s platform. The www will be here long after Google is gone, which I hope is very soon.

I won’t go very deep into this and will make a very simple case to understand the issue. Let’s say I decide to buy testing equipment for a certain type of devices. I run these tests and then I document my findings on a personal website. I then get remunerated for my original work either by using affiliation or ads. Or both since this is a very common way to monetize a website. Then comes Google which takes the content and shows it before the user has the chance to click and go to the website. Additionally, Bard doesn’t even reference the original work, it claims it’s its own. The consequence is that I will stop testing those devices and the Internet will lose valuable original content. And let’s not forget that Google shamelessly pushed its services above the organic websites, but that’s another whole big can of worms.

That’s a beautiful Bob.

Hah! I already got some tomatoes ready. I stared at them for two months.

Another cool device that will become shittier. Seriously, is there a brand that Amazon bought that they didn’t make worse? I am still salty about eero.