Speed to Clients with TDMA Systems

Products
#1

I have a question pertaining speed that clients will see when a Mimosa system is using the TDMA mode.

I understand TDMA. I’ve worked with a TDMA two-way radio system/technology for about 11 years, but with those systems, we don’t measure ‘speed’ at a client location, like is done with internet connectivity. So this is where my question is coming from.

With the TDMA mode, since each client is given a certain amount of time for access to/from the Access Point, then does that mean that every client can ‘see’ the maximum amount of bandwidth that is being fed to the AP?

In other words, if I’m feeding 150 Mbps to an AP, and I have 10 clients connected, if all clients were to run a speed test (assuming that it’s a good speed test server - but that’s another discussion for another time), they all would see the maximum of 150 Mbps (assuming that there’s no throttling of speed in the router that’s feeding the AP/Clients), rather than only seeing 15 Mbps each?

John Rayfield, Jr.

#2

John,

I think your question has a two part answer, depending on the case we are considering. If you were to do the speed tests at the same time (in parallel) then you would get something like a 15 Mbps for each client, in reality it would be greatly skewed for various reasons, but that is not the question at the minute. If on the other hand you were to do the speed tests one at a time (serially) you would get ~150 to each client that tested.

As far as I know there are not any 802.11 systems in the WISP industry that will impose the limitation of equal airtime when not all clients are using airtime. That said, you can have the A5 distribute bandwidth to each client, but that is in the bandwidth limiter (Traffic Shaping Plans) not hard set in the protocol.

If I am wrong I am sure @DavidD or any @webteam would be happy to correct my misinformation.