Zyxel NWA130BE WiFi 7 AP Test & Review: Is it a better U7 Pro?

[@SamBondor]

A small correction: the amount of storage memory is 512MB, not 256MB.

[@RickActual]

Excellent. Thank you!

[@Qua7100]

my webui has none of the options this video has. think they did an update and removed everything moving it all over to the cloud. so all those points about "paper weight in a few years" is true, there's no local webui anymore, just a basic option for ip type.

[@VaticanTop]

How is it vs U7 Pro & Can i mount this on the wall instead of ceiling? How does it distribute the radio waves?

[@SamBondor]

Yes, you can mount it on the wall or on the ceiling. Both access points offer the means to do so. As for the max efficiency, ceiling is always better and that's true for the Zyxel AP and the U7 Pro.

[@VaticanTop]

@@SamBondor I see, I did purchase one of these and I'm excited to use it. Only issue with ceiling mounting for me is the fact that I need to drop down cable somehow and I've never really gone to my attic (limited crawl space). Wondering if I can wire it somehow else from my PoE switch which is in the same room.

[@TechMa-iv8bm]

How are the results so terrible? I've been on cables for the past few years and thought that WiFi 7 for sure would be able to handle 5 devices maxing out the connection without going into latencies of over 10ms, but it goes above 1000ms??

[@SamBondor]

I used the 5GHz radio since I do not have enough WiFi 7 client devices, but even so, the multi-client tests that I conducted are a bit on the extreme side. The intense browsing is a bit unrealistic since no one moves through pages like a maniac or I don't think anyone streams 4K videos on 5 or more laptops at the same time. Also, the downloading traffic is there to push the bandwidth to the limit, while usually the websites you're downloading from have a certain cap. If you do have a similar config as I simulated make sure that QoS is enabled and properly set up and perhaps invest in a bit better hardware. Or the good ol'cable.. In normal situations, it shouldn't do that bad.

[@williamquentin2886]

How do you obtain results on with a computer? Do you use a software? I would like to test my new AP. My results with smartphones are bad.

[@SamBondor]

What are you trying to test? Throughput, latency, range? I use iperf3 for single-client tests (server PC + client devices) and rely on net-hydra for checking out the latency depending on the type of traffic that I want simulated. You could also use FLENT or Waveform to check the bufferbloat.

[@williamquentin2886]

OK thanks. I was able to test data speed transfer with Iperf3 single client. Who are saying 1Gbe is enough for AX3000 is not true. I got 1.25Gbps at average with a pike at 1.41Gbps with Zyxel Nwa50ax Pro at 1.5m to the antenna of the client (Intel ax200). Average data transfer speed with a TP-LINK EAP225 ac1200 = 340Mbps

[@SamBondor]

@@williamquentin2886 Happy to hear it all worked out. And yes, multi-Gigabit ports should have been a standard on WiFi 6 devices and more so on WiFi 7 hardware.

[@jackipiegg]

13:05 Could you test 5 simultaneous download from a local server (2.5gbe connected or higher) and see the collective wifi bandwidth is maxed at 2.5gbe. i.e. 500 + 500 + 500 + 500 + 500 = 2.5gbe. This is relevant as many ISPs are providing 2.5g or higher internet speeds, meaning a PS5 is downloading at 500mbps, PS4 downloading at 500mbps, PC Steam downloading at 1gbps AT THE SAME TIME would be possible now.

[@SamBondor]

Yes, but to be completely clear. You want to see the latency of five client devices that are connected using Ethernet cables and the throughput is limited to 500Mbps each, right?

[@jackipiegg]

@@SamBondor No, not latency, total throughput. 1) All 5 devices on wifi like in your video. 2) Get 1 pc that can handle 2.5gbps throughput ramdisk or nvme ssd, (simulate 2Gbps ISP) 3) Copy files from the PC to those 5 devices at the same time! 4) Look at the bandwidth from your router/AP in real time to check if it can handle 2.5gbps.

[@SamBondor]

@@jackipiegg Well, that's kind of what I did at exactly the minute you quoted. Five client devices connected wirelessly to a host PC and I made sure that I got the full 2.5GbE available. I set no limit to the bandwidth each could eat up, so it could have reached the max 2.5GbE (or close to it due to the overhead). But due to the high latency, the total max throughput offered by all the client devices at the same time was 542.8Mbps. For the type of applications you want to run, it's better to go the wired route. It's possible to limit the bandwidth per client and prioritize various types of traffic, but at the end of day, WiFi is still not a very reliable medium when compared to using Ethernet cables.

[@ShaunakDe]

Im curious to know if any wifi7 ap has MLO working yet?

[@SamBondor]

The Engenius ECW536 has it working, but it's a very pricey access point.