Are all 4x4 AP antenna configurations useless and 2x2 performs actually exactly the same?
After years of experimenting and trying to find ANY information (as a matter of fact there is no information on this topic in the entire internet), its pretty clear to me, that spatial streams of WiFi 5 and 6 are simply not working for multi user configurations.
Even if the clients are perfectly compatible with DL-MU-MIMO and there is no interference and other signals nearby, its impossible to get more spatial streams then the smallest client has. So normally you never exceed 2 streams.
Which means, in all tests, 4x4 APs achieved the _exact_ same performance as the smaller 2x2 counterpart. As soon as more then 1 client was active in the cell, the performance degraded.
The only case where 4x4 really works is with a 4x4 client, and because there is not a single client device with 4x4 antennas, only a wireless link would actually benefit from 4x4. As soon as a 2x2 client joins the same network, the 4x4 link is also degraded.
It seems spatial streams are nothing more than just another layer of QAM and therefore have the same limitations.
Or did anyone in this forum ever achieve a higher total bandwidth with a 4x4 AP compared to an 2x2 AP? Would be interesting, it seems that this is literally impossible but I stand corrected. Even talking to an Cisco engineer lately he couldnt deny my observerations (but didnt want to go into the detail as well...)
