AP vs circuit bandwidth

[Adrian4]

Hello,

I am looking at replacing a lot of older Meraki APs and iv been going through the spec of all the possible MR units to decide what to replace them with.

Going through the specs, it seems that the main difference between them all is the bandwidth they can handle.

In recent years our company has been pushing everything to the cloud so we don't really have many local servers left, and the ones we have are not used heavily. That being the case, is having AP bandwidth that is greater than the total bandwidth our internet circuits provide pointless?

The MR44 can do 2975 Mbps which is the lowest model that, at full capacity would be more than our internet bandwidth. Am I missing anything?

In terms of range I think they pretty much all have the same tx power potential and antenna gain right?

Am I right in thinking there isn't much point in any model above MR44 until we get to the MR57 (which opens the 6GHz band) ?

Thanks!

[Brash]

For AP's, bandwidth is pretty stock standard - 1G or 2.5G.

The bigger thing to look at is client air-time. Essentially, how many clients can feasibly connect to an AP and have enough air-time to have decent connectivity.

Things like 2:2 or 4:4 mimo are applicable here.

If you have a relatively small user base and it's not business critical, you can make some assumptions and over spec a bit and you'll probably be fine.

But if this is for a larger number of roaming users and/or business critical use, I'd suggest getting in a consultant to advise.

[TBHPTL]

"is having AP bandwidth that is greater than the total bandwidth our internet circuits provide pointless?"

No its not pointless. You want your bottleneck (if you have one) to be your circuit not your medium of transport, in the case of the APs- the thin air...   With Wi-Fi, the name of the game is get clients on and off the medium as quickly and efficiently  as possible so the next device gets a turn. 

[cmr]

Also remember that a decent internet circuit delivers all of the theoretical bandwidth to the end users, whether that be one person downloading a file or many people performing multiple different transactions.  A wireless access point will never deliver the theoretical bandwidth, the most I've ever seen is about 800Mbps for a single device and that was on an MR55 or MR56.

The bigger models are able to serve more clients at once with a lower latency and higher throughput.  The MR57 and CW9166 can have two 5GHz radios alongside the 2.4GHz one, so can handle 30 voice clients at once or 90 data devices, whilst giving a good user experience.

We have found that MR44s are the best devices for low density areas such as corridors and fire exits, with CW9166s used in areas where more people spend more time.  We don't use the 6GHz band yet...

[Adrian4]

ah that's interesting, I didn't consider the AP's speed in terms of handling more clients...only in terms of the connection speed of an individual.

the principle of getting clients on and off the AP as fast as possible to make way for the next person - does that mean then its better to not limit user bandwidth?

At the moment I think we limit clients to about 30Mb (with burst mode enabled) thinking it would help ensure everyone gets a usable amount. But I suppose the idea is that all the potential bandwidth in the world is no help if the client that is currently communicating is going slow.
Slow client = slow network i guess? 

[PhilipDAth]

This is just "IMHO".

If the customer is in a dense office area (like a CBD), and there are likely to be a lot of other WiFi networks around and WiFi devices that are not theirs, I tend to use high-end CW9166 (MR56, MR57, etc).

If the customer's office is dense (lots of devices in a small area), I tend to use CW9166.

If the customer has a firm date (such as a shift), I choose an AP based on what can be delivered by the date.

Otherwise, I use the MR36.  Lower end APs like the MR36 are so awesome these days.