From PC World: Linksys has announced that it’s the first to ship a working MU-MIMO (multiple-user, multiple input, multiple output) router, the $280 Linksys Max-Stream AC2600 (aka the EA8500). That grumbling you’re hearing is coming from early adopters who already bought MU-MIMO-“ready” routers and are still waiting for the firmware needed to turn that feature on.
MU-MIMO is the first step toward the coming generation of “Wave 2” 802.11ac routers. The real deal will also be capable of bonding several channels on the 5GHz frequency band to create one super-wide 160MHz channel. On its own, MU-MIMO promises to improve Wi-Fi performance in homes with multiple users streaming music and video over the network at the same time.
The best that the most recent Wi-Fi routers can offer today is SU-MIMO (Single-user MIMO), which is capable of servicing only one client at a time, forcing everyone else to wait their turn. That can causes glitches in media streams if the client hasn’t buffered enough data to paper over the gaps when the router needs to momentarily stop the stream to service another client.
MU-MIMO routers can service multiple clients simultaneously, eliminating the round-robin situation. The hitch, however, is that the client devices must also support MU-MIMO, and those are few and far between (but they’re not unicorns).
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