Redmi AX6S recently got an official release from OpenWrt, thanks to the OpenWrt community!
However, I noticed there's no mention in the OpenWrt wiki about beam forming:
On the other hand, Linksys E8450, which has almost the same hardware, mentioned beam forming:
Here it comes the question: does AX6S support Beam Forming?
Should I turn it on like in the E8450 instruction?
Many thanks!
I'm curious, is there a setting or GUI option visible that says so?
If so, can you show a screenshot, please?
(Reason: this is a quite common technology, I wasn't aware it was still used as a marketing term - I want to make sure I didn't miss it on my devices.)
There's no GUI option for beamforming AFAIK, and it's only available on AX radios.
No option in GUI. I did what the E8450 instruction says here. At least there was no error log, but not sure if it's working.
Is there a way to tell if the beam forming is working?
Well, I know it needs to be using at least 2 antennas, and the client must be at least 802.11ac.
This would be displayed by the RX or TX as a VHT-NSS value >= 2 on the OpenWrt display. AC clients will only show a TX value of 2, as they only RX beamformed signals.
You at least need an ac client (I don't have an OpenWrt with an ac-only chip to verify from the AP's perspective - I tested an ax, setting it to ac). AC was able to send to clients on their downlink. I set an OpenWrt with ax radio to ac to test - it continued to give VHT-NSS 2 on TX to ac-only clients (their downlink or RX).
References:
"Proprietary beamforming technologies had existed prior to 802.11n, but it was only in 802.11n that a standard for beamforming was introduced."
"With the development of Wi-Fi 5 in 2016, there is now a set of specified beamforming techniques for Wi-Fi equipment that allow it to interoperate in a vendor-neutral way"
"Prior to 11n there were proprietary standards for beamforming, in IEEE 802.11n beamforming is standardized."
And to note, 802.11n also includes this. I verify two-stream operation on the same test AP device - connecting an 802.11n client.
See:
