macOS 26.2 update enables 160MHz channels on 5GHz Wi-Fi networks(cultofmac.com)
cultofmac.com
macOS 26.2 update enables 160MHz channels on 5GHz Wi-Fi networks
https://www.cultofmac.com/news/apple-quietly-boosts-wi-fi-speeds-newer-macs-ipads
9 comments
Honestly, this only really helps people in rural areas. The vast majority of urban 5GHz implementations are at 80MHz - 6GHz does allow for 160MHz channelization, but at 320MHz the attenuation is so great that most homes will require multiple APs to actually hit appropriate MCS indexes.
Fot at home, I tend to stick with 2.4 GHz. It is slower, but with a <100 Mbit uplink to the internet, local speed does not matter. 2.4 does just work better with less APs and thicker walls.
2.4 GHz is unreliable for me these days due to interference from bluetooth headphones and hearing aids that other people are using. The issues tend to only show up during extended periods of video streaming, and having looked at a bunch of traffic captures over the holidays, it seems to be limited to certain streaming services sending very large bursts of traffic at extremely high rates (likely from servers with 100+ Gbps interfaces using TSO to reduce CPU usage). That makes me think that the regularly paced bluetooth interference from real time audio streams limits the maximum viable burst size of a 2.4 GHz wifi radio.
Yes, this happened a bunch more over the Christmas holiday when we had an extra 3 or 4 younger family members all listening to music and videos over their bluetooth ear buds and headphones, which made it much easier to track down as it was quite a rare intermittent failure with only a single bluetooth device being active.
Yes, this happened a bunch more over the Christmas holiday when we had an extra 3 or 4 younger family members all listening to music and videos over their bluetooth ear buds and headphones, which made it much easier to track down as it was quite a rare intermittent failure with only a single bluetooth device being active.
I have at least 10 neighbours on each 2.4GHz channel.
This also only works if you're not living in an apartment building. Even then, there's Bluetooth and other things that don't share spectrum nicely with 802.11.
That's why it's been normalized to buy five of those mesh WiFi routers and shove them all over your house, everybody's signal be damned.
Having lots of lower powered routers is actually better for interference.
MacOS won't roam properly unless the signal from the connected AP drops below -75db, so cranking the power on all your APs will give you worse performance if you move around.
MacOS won't roam properly unless the signal from the connected AP drops below -75db, so cranking the power on all your APs will give you worse performance if you move around.
That's only on non-steered roaming though, right? I believe Apple devices have long supported AP/network-side steering.
Since most devices these days only transmit as strongly as they need to, this is actually great for spectrum sharing.